What grabs our attention? Things that move. Sights and sounds. Colors and clanging. Smells and textures. Our senses are continuously overwhelmed. As we begin to travel through 2026, I want to draw our attention to attention and to the necessary tensions dancing with our attentions.
Decades ago during my first year of teaching, I had one student who was described as what would come to be termed as ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder (and then later labeled ADHD).1 We tried to keep candy bars out of his school day diet. I believe he loved Snicker bars. Sugar hyped him, distracting him from his work. He became disruptive.
Related to ADD is TDD.
She gives her attention to the beauty of the view and the freshness of the breeze.
“TDD? What’s that?” you ask.
Well, it’s not a clinical diagnosis. It’s a term coined by a theologian and some of his theological friends to describe a characteristic he and they observed in Christians of every stripe over time. According to Peter Kurowski, TDD is Tension Deficit Disorder, which describes a malady of extremes where “one truth from the Bible is pressed excessively at the expense of a balancing truth” 2
I summarize and define his term this way:
TDD is the lack of attention given to the necessary tension existing between balancing truths.
How can we avoid TDD? What is its opposite?
Practicing the opposite of this observed behavior should help us better understand the Bible, our personal lives, and our broken world. What would the opposite of TDD be? TOO?
Journey North Character 