Be still

A view from the walk home from school when it was still winter (a week ago). 

The psalm for morning prayer today begins, “Be still . . . “  It goes on, but I stopped reading because that was all I needed to hear.  Be still.  Be still.  Be still.  But I wasn’t still today, in most ways.  I didn’t do Centering Prayer, though I had it on my list of to-dos above the desk.  I didn’t journal very much this morning.  I read some of Romano Guardini though, our spiritual companion for this semester of MAPS-CGS.  And there was so much about stillness in the article I was reading, that I only read 5 pages and then decided I needed to stop because they were so rich.  And I needed to be still with them. 

In the article, “Romano Guardini’s View of Liturgy, A Lens for Our Time,” theologian Kathleen Hughes, RSCJ says,

Guardini suggests, despite all the distractions around us and within us, we must learn the art of stillness, which is absolutely indispensable for the liturgical act.  “Stillness is the tranquility of the inner life; the quiet depths of its hidden stream.  It is a collected, total presence, a being ‘all there,’ receptive, alert, ready.”

           

And though this sounds so comforting and reassuring I want to curl up and watch the fire burn, there is an urgency to Guardini’s message too.  Hughes sees it mirrored in the book The Good Society.  The writers (Robert Bellah and “his colleagues”) proclaim,

Few things in life are more important.  For paying attention is how we use our psychic energy, and how we use our psychic energy determines the kind of self we are cultivating, the kind of person we are learning to be . . . If we are going to be the kind of persons we want to be, and live the kind of lives we want to live, then attention and not distraction is essential. 

Walking to school in December, just as the sun was coming up.

            And so heeding the call of stillness, (or maybe just overcome with fatigue from two nights of inadequate sleep and the worry of not being prepared for a doula meeting tomorrow) I stayed home today instead of venturing out into the rain to do errands.   I did homework.  I ate lunch.  I organized all of my doula files and handouts and paperwork into a bin and I wrapped it all up just in time to walk to the school and get Jessica for our walk home. 

            There are many good things in the world to do.  But today the best was to walk my children to and from school (Jackson one way, Jessica the other), to listen to their chatter about all things essential and peripheral, to breathe in the fresh Spring air (I’ve decided it’s Spring), to remember the experience and excitement and joyful privilege of being a doula and to get the kitchen incredibly, disastrously messy making Thanksgiving meat balls, blueberry sauce, steamed vegetables and garlic mayo. 

            And looking back just before bed I realize, almost like a hidden gift, that in all the activity today, I somehow found stillness.  It wasn’t the stillness I thought I needed to find.  It was the quiet calm and energy of doing work that is totally engrossing.  It was the stillness of a 3 year-old pouring beans in the Atrium, of a 4 year-old sitting with me before the lit candles of the model altar and saying “let’s say all the prayers, I want to watch this candle melt”.  I was “all there” and it was enough.