The Counter-Cultural Invitation to Stillness

 

This is the last week for the 10minutesofstillness practice. I’ll be sharing more notes in my weekly newsletter coming out Saturday morning. Subscribe on the right or in the pop-up screen. Next week I’ll introduce the power of a simple sensory reminder for practicing the Presence of God. I’ll be buying a new candle to keep lit on my kitchen island and every time I see the flicker of the flame I’ll remember, You are here.

 

I’ll share more in next week’s podcast.

 

Today on the podcast we’ll talk about stillness and God’s invitation to rest and finally I’ll lead us in a short lectio divina on one of my favorite scriptures, Isaiah 30:15.

 

We vacationed in the Chesapeake this summer. I described it in another podcast as 16 people in a five bedroom house a pinch too small. Mom and I skidded into vacation stuck in mental states of hurry and hustle. It took a bike ride, #10minutesofstillness, and a visit to Fairbanks’ dock to change our mindset and the trajectory of our vacation.

 

But before I share that first simple story, I want to briefly share two modifiers for #10minutesofstillness:

 

A walk and a scan.

 

 

Take a walk.

Pay attention to your feet hitting the ground. Allow your eyes to fall on the yellow wildflower, notice the feel of the dry grass, follow the flight of the white crane in the neighborhood pond. 

 

A scan.

This is a practice from Professor Anne Halle and engages some of the same techniques. She told the story of sitting on her back porch and taking a slow scan of her backyard from left to right. Noticing details. the bare tree. The birds flitting around the bird feeder. The Rose of Sharon bush in bloom. Slowly. Noticing. Paying attention. Taking as much time as she needed. And then asking God if He wanted to speak to her through an image that she was seeing.

 

…………………………………………………….

 

 

Early that first week, After eggs and toast, Mom, Maddie and I filled our bike baskets with peach iced tea, and journals, and turned left down Black walnut point inn road toward Fairbanks. We rode past the farm where deer wander, past the cattails in the marsh, and through a turn of the century neighborhood at Fairbanks…with a dock as an exclamation mark. Fishermen often stand at the end of the dock, hoping for stripers, and crabbers tie chicken necks (no joke people) to common kitchen twine and watch for the line to go taut before they pull in softshell blue crabs the area is known for. 

 

 

Before we separated for quiet, I led us in #10minutesofstillness, the practice we’ve been parked in since episode 7. 

 

I invited them to first close their eyes and take a few deep breaths and then listen, paying attention to the sounds around them, not judging or making meaning, just observing.The osprey’s high pitched whine. A lawn mower on the point. The guttural bark of a blue heron. Then touch. The rough wood of the dock. The breeze playing around their shoulders. Then pick a detail in the landscape to focus on. Something not moving, a small, square inch of their world. Again, just Notice.

 

Then onto smelling the brackish water, the warm wood of the dock, the freshly mowed grass. Next, Tasting peach tea. After the brief thanksgiving and inviting God into the present moment, we ended and dispersed, each to a corner of the dock to journal. 

 

To outside eyes, we looked inactive. Unproductive. But those 10 minutes laid a groundwork for our entire vacation.

 

We debriefed afterwards. Madeline, 12, shared that she had journaled 3 pages about a recent mission trip. I shared about an internal shift from anxious to rest, and mom shared about how ten minutes had felt like an hour to her soul. We both remarked at how deep our prayer time had been, how we didn’t have to wrestle with distraction. How stillness had fed our focus. 

 

This morning on the phone I asked again. She said that right there on Fairbanks dock had been a huge turn from fear to love, from frustration to grace. Her ability to be present to her people was deepened by resting in God’s Presence.  

 

…………………………………….

 

Some of us grew up in an evangelicalism that equated outward fruit with God’s blessing and taught us to determine our worth by numbers. 

 

I bought the line. I bought the lie.

 

My worth, I believed, was determined by doing big things for God. 

 

As often as I could, I spread my hands on the berber carpet in front of the steps to the podium. I smelled adventure. 

 

But the mustard seed kingdom life doesn’t work that way. We are not plucked out of obscurity into big. We are taught to get down on our knees with a basin and a towel and rub tired feet with cracked heels. The Spirit teaches us to plant lines of seed one at a time. We learn to love big, not work big.

We learn to sit in the dark and quiet and sow seeds of prayer which will never be counted, nor should they. 

 

We learn that who we become for God is infinitely more important than what we do for God. We learn that becoming a good news person means listening to the heartbeat of God first, leaning on His chest like John the Beloved at the table, and finding our home in that steady pattern. Sometimes we are encouraged to whisper what we hear into the next waiting ear. 

 

It’s been a long ten years of unlearning the siren song of Big. I tied my worth to it. I tied God’s love to it. I made vows to it which had to be cut off. But the Kingdom is built by small offered to He who is big He who was planted in a womb as a tiny seed.

 

Jesus’ decision to pour his life into 12 would have been utter nonsense to this world of big. At the culmination of his work, the apex, stood a cross and the internal devastation of abandonment. Jesus was left with just a few stragglers who stayed in the cross’ shadow, men and women whose love overcame their doubts. No one could have imagined the victorious shouts of Palm Sunday could have ended like this. 

 

Was the fruit of obedience of Jesus an upwardly mobile venn diagram? 

 

Stillness is utterly incompatible to a world of hurry and hustle that idolizes big. 

 

So why am I poking my finger into this wound? This is my story, not yours. Just this:

I often have to wrestle to remind myself that choosing stillness is not a waste of time, it’s how we learn the rhythms of grace. 

 

Maybe resting in God feels like oxygen, like you’re coming up to the surface for air. Maybe it feels like a beautiful invitation to slow joy, to Presence, His and yours. 

 

OR perhaps you’ve been struggling with this particular practice. No judgement here.

 

But I wonder if we can press into the discomfort for a moment.

 

If you’re feeling uncomfortable settling into stillness, notice it. In the next few moments we’re going to ask ourselves some simple questions: and remember, always treat yourself with gentleness. As Robert Woodcock, one of my professors said, pursue self-revelation with curiosity, not with a baseball bat.

 

 

Ask yourself where the awkwardness with stillness comes from.

 

 

1. Does stillness feel like a waste of time; there are more important things to do. 

 

2. or does it feel like a focus issue? A clarifying question: (while you’re trying to be still are you internally looking for your smartphone)?

 

3. Or does your lack of comfort come with a side of guilt, someone’s going to need me.

 

OR 

 

4. Do you often feel uncomfortable with solitude, perhaps it even feels scary? This would be entirely natural if you’ve lived through trauma. 

 

Ask God. Why do I feel uncomfortable being still? 

 

What are You inviting me into?

 

……………………………………………

 

Join me for a short lectio divina at 14:25 on the podcast episode above:

 

Isaiah 30:15 “This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.

 

(Join the Newsletter by subscribing on the right hand side under “subscribe” or in the pop-up screen.)