Episode 7: Ten Minutes of Stillness, An On-Ramp to Joy

 

We just finished up a series on breath prayer, how this simple practice is rooted in an Ancient Christian tradition as well as the brain science.

It is summertime and we’re entering into a new practice which goes hand in hand with this season: 10 minutes of stillness. It goes hand in hand with your morning coffee on the back porch, with hours at the pool, or a walk on the beach during your actual vacation. After you experience it, you’ll find you want to dive in again and again, that it will make your life richer and become a doorway to settle the spinning inside your head and become more aware of the Presence of God. The I AM present in your here and now.

Share on instagram…using that hashtag along with #thepresenceproject. I promise this will become your favorite 10 mintues of the day. I’ll be opening up The Facebook Page so you can post pictures of your #10minutesofstillness, be encouraged by others, listen to how this simple practice is transforming the summer months for other listeners eager to taste and see that God is good.

 

Andrew and I had been serving shoulder to shoulder with this people for nine years on the edge of Lake Michigan when an argument threatened to scatter our parish. Two families sat on opposite sides of the aisle.

They were & [are] a beautiful people. Stunning. Spirit-drenched. It was a privilege to minister to the community with them, a privilege to place the Eucharist inside their empty palms, a privilege to throw burgers on the grill and play corn hole in the summer while sailboats slipped into the harbor.

We were together for nine years. That’s a whole lot of life, a whole lot of life done side by side.

& You know the story. An argument becomes a lightning rod for fear and all of a sudden people who have knelt and prayed together are no longer talking. Worse yet, they ARE talking, just not to you.

Sunday mornings they made excuses to stay home.

That summer we were afraid our small outpost of the Kingdom was going to be crushed with a tsunami…in slow motion. Our livelihood, our home, our life in this small picturesque town was about to come crashing down.

Into Ashes.

Those two months I woke with my jaw tight with anxiety. I ate anxiety with my mini-wheats. I walked down the sidewalks toward the Farmer’s Market gripping anxiety tighter than the bags of fresh tomatoes I brought home.

Until I began practicing these two things, #10minutesofstillness and Ann Voskamp’s gratitude practice in her book, One Thousand Gifts, writing a list on my phone of simple thanksgivings, returning to it at night before bed, reading it again the next morning.

But here’s the thing,

my anxiety was so debilitating I needed an on-ramp for gratitude.

Anxiety had caught me by the ankles. My brain couldn’t make the gargantuan leap from fear to praise.  

But,

I could sit down beside the playground while the kids ran from slide to slide and run my fingers through the grass.  I could sit down and open my ears to the creaking of the swing as my little girl pumped her legs. I could lie back and watch one puff of cloud make its way slowly across the sky.

 

I could lay back onto the earth and take my place in it.

 

I am dust and to dust I will return and sometimes the stuff of earth as we turn it over in our hands, smelling the moist soil, opens a doorway to peace.

I discovered that “Taste and see that God is good actually begins with tasting.”

 

The on-ramp to gratitude turned out to be something I could literally taste and touch, a grounding in the senses. One sense per minute. No judging. No making meaning. Just information. Awareness. Receiving. By paying attention to the stuff of earth, my brain stopped spinning and came to a place of rest.

 

 

Here’s the ten minute practice:

Open one sense at a time. Again, no judging or making meaning, just receive and notice.

1. hearing
2. sight
3. touch
4. smell
5. taste

6 All five at once

7-8 Gratitude

9-10 Practicing His Presence – recognizing that God is here.

What I wasn’t expecting was that this on-ramp would deepen my ability to experience the present moment, not just in that 10 minutes, but throughout the day.

I was Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz from black and white to technicolor.

And did you know that gratitude and our capacity for relationship are smack dab right next to each other in the brain in the prefrontal cortex?

Gratitude opens us to relationship.

Enter His gates with thanksgiving. It all makes sense now.

These simple gratitudes were like laying out a placemat right next to me, setting the table. I would point out gifts and gratitude and find He had pulled out a chair and sat right down. And when we walk with the Presence, the hills of our anxious hell smooth out and we find we’re walking the streets of heaven. It’s an on-ramp not just for gratitude, but for living in the Presence.

And this precious church? One day those simple words, “I love you,” from one side of the aisle to the other was like an electrical shock of empathy and care and life rushed right back in.

We witnessed resurrection.

And friends? I wish you could have been there the following Sunday. The welcome. The hugs. The words, “Peace be with you” “and also with you” spoken while looking into each others eyes, tears streaming. Corporate repentance. True, beautiful, humility. Then we resealed our communion as we shared the common cup.

But I could have held my breath that whole time. I could have lost an entire summer. I lived where other people took their vacation, but if the anxiety had won, I would have been blind to the beauty.

At night I would sit on the back porch of our yellow cottage with a hot tea in my hand, a cool breeze playing around my shoulders, and with my head back in the canvas of a captain’s chair searching for a shooting star. And whether I saw one or not, the truth is that I was present. My anxiety was forgotten…for at least ten minutes. And the next day? Twenty. And the next? A few hours gloriously free.

 

 

Listen to be led in the practice.

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