stillness

Stillness.

This is the word that, in this moment, drips from my pen, my heart.

It appears on the page and I instantly want to write about something other. Wait, strike that (it isn’t true). It’s more that I think I should write about something other, something novel and noteworthy and new. But in this moment, if I stand in my truth, I want to write of, think of, cultivate, be stillness. I want to wrap my body in a shawl of stillness, a shawl that protects and warms, a shawl that comfortably weights itself around me, a shawl whose touch reminds me I Am Alive.

Sometimes when I’m still, I feel a ripple. It’s a curious thing to experience stillness and movement (even a tiny ripple) simultaneously, the seeming difference melting into sameness, a contradiction erased. Stillness and ripple... same-same? Perhaps.

Together, they are the essence of beginning and circling back, of going out and going in, of emptying and filling. Together, they counsel: don’t rush, take a beat / you are here before you are there / everything is connected, wisdom is woven / pay attention.

And so my prayer (if I was a praying kind of woman) would be this:
let stillness fill me in moments of anger, confusion, hurt.
let stillness fill me in moments of love, compassion, joy.
let stillness fill me, fuel me, fire me up.
let stillness empty me, completely.

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
~ T.S. Eliot ~

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