Practicing stillness in order to move
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communionT.S. Eliot, Four Quartets: “East Coker”
Athletes are known for their action. But have you ever noticed how often athletes utilize stillness in their particular sport? How many people remember the stillness that comes before some of the most memorable actions? The sprinter is motionless before the start. The basketball player pauses before the game-winning free-throw. The gymnast stands motionless before the final tumbling maneuver. It is easy to forget the stillness that makes each of these significant actions memorable.
It is not just major actions in sports that should be predicated by stillness. Our everyday lives are filled with activities that can be greatly enriched by prefacing them with stillness. All too often we focus on all of the things that need to be done in a day, and we fail to recognize how stilling our body, mind, and soul enables us to engage in each of the day’s activities with better care and intentionality.
There is an old story that comes to us from desert saints that highlights the necessity of silence, stillness, and solitude. The story begins with three students who became monks and they are deciding what kind of work they are going to dedicate their lives to. The first monk was inspired by Jesus’s words “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and decided to bring reconciliation to those engaged in lawsuits. The second monk decided to care for the sick and nurse the wounded. The third monk sought inner stillness in solitude. The first monk found that in his efforts to settle quarrels he couldn’t always succeed. Totally discouraged he went to see the second monk who was nursing the sick and found him similarly depressed and unable to fulfill what he had set out to do. So the two of them agreed to go and see the monk in the desert. They told him their troubles and asked him if he had managed any differently from them. He did not answer for a while, then poured some water into a bowl and told them to look into it while the water was still disturbed. And after a while when the water had become still he asked them to look again. And when they looked they saw their own faces as in a mirror. Then he said to them, “Thus it is with anyone living in the midst of people; there is so much agitation that you can’t see your own shortcomings. But when you find inner stillness, especially in solitude then you can see your own sins.”
The story is not meant to suggest that you run away from your problems. Quite the contrary. Solitude, silence, and stillness settle the waters of your soul in order that you may better encounter your self and the world. This practice helps us to remember who we are before God and that God still chooses to love us and work through us if we are open to the Holy Spirit. Such a perspective cannot be attained in the busyness of our everyday activities. This is why Jesus constantly “went to a solitary place to pray.” When we regularly follow Jesus’s example of practicing prayerful solitude, silence, and stillness we are better situated to approach our daily actions with intentionality and openness to the Holy Spirit. And when we sustain this practice over the course of months, we are better situated to see how God might be moving in our particular season of life.
(This is part 1 of a 3 part series on prayerful solitude, silence, and stillness)
Written by Ben Lee