practicing stillness and quietness

While driving to pick up dinner, from my favorite vegan restaurant, it occurred to me how much I depend on commute time as an opportunity to engage with spiritual practices of stillness and quietness.  The mundane activity of driving to and from social commitments requires that my body physically slowdown. With this embodied stillness, if you will, my commute time serves as an invitation to quiet my inner being so that I can communion with God. In companionship with my Maker, I am invited to seek inner quietness while contemplating, self-reflecting, processing and reflecting on social interactions, or creative ideation.  It’s an exercise of grounding and centering that is embedded in my daily rhythm of life.

I don’t think about.

I just do it.

Over the past week, like most, I’ve been practicing social-distancing and self-isolation from my apartment.  Alas, I haven’t had any commute time.

The other night, before bed, I recognized that my body had been struggling to slowdown, for days. It felt as if I had been steadily progressing towards spinning out of control while simultaneously wrestling with myself to slowdown, re-center and re-ground.  I paused long enough to recall that this tug of war was not unfamiliar to me. I’ve been in this place before.

Finally, I whispered, “God, speak to me in the way that only you can speak to me. Slow me down.”

And, then I paused.

With a pen in one hand and a journal in the other, I remembered a post from a pastor urging folks to seek God to discover our purpose—our calling—in this current moment of COVID-19. Before I knew it, I was sitting in the stillness and quietness of contemplation, reflection and creative ideation, imagining the purpose that I was being called to embody at this present moment in history. My center was being recalibrated and I was standing still on firm ground in preparation for this new way of being.

Wisdom reminded me to take time to listen for the ways that my body speaks to me? 

Wisdom invited me sit in the inner turbulence so that I could discover stillness and quietness.

Wisdom revealed that it is time to create a new space, within this new rhythm of being, for a fresh practice of contemplation, reflection, and creative ideation.

Cheering us on…