So, to stillness
Our dog, Pepper, and I have just returned home from an overnight trip to Bendigo, which is over two hours drive away. Pepper has returned with an insatiable need to itch. I have returned home with an insatiable need to be still.
There was a lot of activity, conversations, connections and general goings on while I was away. There was the travel itself, the pace of speed as we navigated the freeway, and the winding roads of the green outer suburbs of the city. There were precious times of catching up with family – conversations over wine snuggling in a warm loungeroom, dogs at our feet, at the end of the day. Of a sunlit hearty pub lunch, coffee and blackcurrant cake while the birds flittered in the morning sun. The deep breaths of crisp country air, laden with whispers of winter coming, of coldness settling in. The most unexpected activity was getting on my hands and knees, small garden saw in hand, a hammer at my side, with the mission to widen a small hole in a kitchen cupboard wall. It was a very awkward task, and yet very satisfying to produce a tidy result with less-than-ideal tools.
So, to stillness! After the pace and the people, the preciousness, the productivity.
Stillness is a lit candle, a blanket over my knees and quiet.
It’s a heart wanting to be open to God, and getting distracted by images of beaches, thoughts of the movie I watched last night, and by a kookaburra in the distance that give a half-hearted attempt at singing only to give up very quickly, but which still served as a random distraction.
It’s a head bowed and hands open – a moment of reaching out.
Stillness is writing while nestled under winter blankets, layered up – with the birds calling across the valley, dogs random barking interrupting the hum of traffic. The dog that sits on my legs and scratches itself with determination.
It is a marking out a moment, claiming it for something within and beyond. It’s leaning into mystery. It’s exhale.
Stillness – a place to dwell. But which also becomes a juncture. A place marked out that becomes something different from ‘before’ and ‘after.’
I arrive from before with longing, I’m ready to kneel on the floor – waiting, focused. Here is an opportunity to be let loose, for a time, in a freedom and a relief from all that has come before. To let go, to stop and to be.
And then, at the end, I step into ‘after’, with the knowledge that like ever before, something has shifted, opened up a little more, so that who I was before is now a little altered, here, at after. I carry something of the silence, of the presence a little more, perhaps. Or that love has sung itself a little closer with my being.
What I have glimpses of, and what I want more of – to save me, this fumbling person that I am – is for this juncture point of stillness to work its way more and more into my before and after. That a little pause, a moments breath, will usher in this song of presence, love. That it would enlarge this moment and that moment, and recall me to this freedom that I yearn for – that attends and feeds me.
Like the ancient prophet on the run, fleeing for his life, who was led to the Kerith Ravine. He found water in the brook, and, it is said, God provided ravens to bring the prophet bread and meat each morning and night, preserving his life. So may this stillness be a shifting wing, a hovering presence as I step into ‘after’ and beyond. Bringing sustenance, life, goodness, hope. Bringing a fullness, a morsel of eternity.
And also, through the transformative work of love - to keep transforming who I am, my presence, in these moments, and my understanding of these moments themselves, also. For love, so powerful, it tumbles and shifts and flies through it all.
Love is the prophets’ hand, reaching out. It is the raven, with food, with life, descending. It is the Ravine that holds the story of goodness. It is the provision and the presence that sings and dances through it all.