Hush

I need a break. My body is tired and I'm coming down with something. I've been working hard and the pain in my body was urging me to slow down, to rest, to grasp the silence that I hold so dear up to my ears like an empty shell, and listen to the waves of my life as they find their rhythm once again.

Hushing your thoughts is like hushing a baby. It doesn't always work, but we have to keep trying. My mind is a wild place that wants to create. Trying to clear the deck of useless information is a big project. Just because you "assume the position" doesn't mean that your mind will. It takes practice and I usually keep trying long enough to at least leave an identation in the couch.

Thomas Merton once observed that many of us are in love with our own noise, so we constantly defile silence, fearing that it might accuse us of our own emptiness. If there is emptiness at the center of our lives, it would be the place that paradise used to live before chaos took over. Before the suffering of our souls and the suffering of the world reached in and covered the silence with deafening noise. Or are we afraid that if we are quiet for too long that we will start to cry and never stop? Are we afraid that we will have to come face to face with own darkness? Why not come face to face with our own light. It shines in us. We can find that place of silence and peace. Allow it to happen. Quiet that toddler that you have racing around in your head. Hush the noise. You can do it.

Leaving Your Nest

Life mirrors what we put into it. If we are lazy, it is lazy, when we hold back, it holds back. When we hesitate and stand there staring, life stands there staring right back, but when we commit, life comes on like crazy!

We may find that we can do all kinds of things that we never imagined we could do. We are then faced with the challenge to change our beliefs about what is and is not possible for ourselves.

The more time we sit comfortably in our living rooms with our slippers on, the less time we have to be afraid of all we might become.

If we can just get to the edge of the nest the sun is shining brightly and the birds are singing songs of joy to the heavens. All of life is waiting, in all its glory for us to jump in and splash around.

The Remembering

Writer Toni Morrison once described how the Mississippi River has been straightened out to make room for houses and other livable areas and how these areas are prone to flooding. "Flooding" is the word they use, but in fact, it is remembering. The Mississippi is "remembering" where it used to be.

We review our own histories to remind ourselves of where we were, what we already know, before we have been straightened out. The telling of our stories is doing the work of our souls.

Our histories and our stories are woven together forming the fabric of each of our lives. We take the occasional glance backwards to see if we have still held off those fateful encounters with the truth. Are we still able to avoid dealing with something we have never been able to shake. We may remember some unfinished business and decide that we can find some meaning in finishing it once and for all.

For some of us our histories aren't as much of a gold mine as a mine shaft and beg to ask the questions that have been central to our lives.