Technically, I don’t have a problem with stillness and quiet. I can do it. I have told my students that I can live in an awkward silence (so they might as well say something). I welcome the opportunity for quiet and reflection. I have been reading a great deal recently about the importance of stillness in our busy lives. Anytime someone discusses prayer and meditation, quieting your world is bound to be part of the discussion. I do not have a problem with stillness.
Buuuuuuuuuuuuut…
There are times when stillness has a difficult time finding a home inside my head and heart. I can be physically still. Being spiritually and mentally still is far more difficult. I live in my head. I have a vivid imagination, which is either awesome or terrible. When I lay down at night, my brain begins to whirr like a fan on a 90s desktop computer: coming up with ideas that eluded me during the day, replaying conversations I wish had gone differently (or creating imaginary conversations), swatting away insecurities, or coming up with ideas for the book I’ve always wanted to write. I am often silent on the surface, but quite disquieted underneath.
I have learned that movement is strangely the thing that often stills me. It’s why I write so often about what I experience on runs and hikes. It is why I love praying labyrinth. If I am anxious or getting tripped up by writer’s block or not sure what to do, moving my body will help. It won’t solve everything, but it will help in that it quiets my mind for just a bit.
I know this. And I often forget this. There are times when I try to sit down to pray or read or even work and it gets swamped by whatever tempest is inside me. Fortunately, EA knows this about me too. She knows when my wheels are spinning and she will tell me to go outside and move my body in some way. Yesterday was just another example of her compassionately looking out for me.
After a frustrating day, I walked a little over three miles last night to bring home dinner and it was one of my most sacred experiences of the week. It helped that the weather was nice; Fake Spring is in full effect in Nashville. And it helped that a brilliant sunset painted the city skyline a golden orange. Yet it was truly just the action of putting one foot in front of the other that quieted my soul. I could find silence in the sound of footsteps, singing birds, and the sounds of traffic. My feet could pray what my words could not.
On the way back home, I thought about the prayer that is often attributed to St. Francis: “Lord, Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace.” It ends with a series of seeming contradictions:
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
The faith of Jesus that I try to follow is filled with these paradoxes: the last shall be first, to gain your life you must lose it, and so on. There was a time when those contrasting ideas would have troubled me. As I have continued to grow up in this world that alternates between beauty and dumpster fire, those paradoxes are actually a great comfort. Of course it is in giving that we receive, in pardoning we are pardoned, in dying that we are born to eternal life. So I chuckled as I realized that it is in motion that I find stillness.