Stillness

11/4/20

Why is stillness so tough for some?  Maybe because it requires you to feel, see, and experience all you’ve been running from.  Patience is a virtue I’d love to embody when all I can hear is the voice in my mind that’s saying in a Trump-like voice “shit or get off the pot.”  Sometimes you’ve got to give things some time.  Our culture went and got itself into a chronic case of . .. running.  

I remember M. telling me “I think I’m just looking for something a little more fast-paced,” when I asked her about her reasons for quitting as a caregiver for a 94 year old woman – the job I felt called to do.  Slowing down feels like a welcomed change of pace most of the time for me, especially when caring for someone who is approaching the completion of their life.  I owe it to them.  Don’t we owe it to the wise old souls within us as well?  Can’t we learn to give ourselves that?  

Sit, calmly and contemplate that same old question that same sneaky question that creeps in any time I’m in the presence of a dying one. . . ‘What’s not dying?’

There’s some sort of divine thread between me and the person on their deathbed that’s the same.  It’s quiet, but bold.  It’s thin, like a veil, yet present, tactile and more real than any errands or preoccupations or past-time I can let my attention get flooded with. It’s presence.  I trust it, when I let myself.  It’s free like a child dancing to music at a party with adults gathered around the little being who hasn’t yet learned self-consciousness or separateness or its ability to hurt others or be hurt by others.  It’s wild in its natural understanding of the creative.  It doesn’t know about all these words. It’s silent, or loud when it needs to be. It’s listening to birds, the rooster’s call, the breath, and the heartbeat.  It’s here, alive and well.