Still, still, still

A winter morning’s soothing start

Over my years of intentional spiritual formation, I have gradually come to understand the need for quiet moments. I’m thinking back to the well-used Bible I had during my (Christian) college days, a brown, hard-covered NIV which now sits on my shelf as a reminder of the early days of my spiritual pilgrimage. Inside the front cover is a sentence I wrote in my late teen years, which I can still remember without opening the book: “Without solitude we will not become people of God.” I no longer remember the source of these words, but the sentence has followed me most of my life.

I had little idea in those early days of fever-pitched spiritual intensity what exactly that meant, but I knew it might take a lifetime to figure out. While I don’t have it fully figured out yet, I have a much better idea, nearly forty-five years later, of the value of stillness.

A moment ago I made my just-about-first-thing-in-the-morning trek from Otis’ sleeping space to the darkened world that is Minnesota in late January. The past week has been a blustery one, with near continuous wind of varying levels of speed lowering the air temperature with “real feel” values below zero. As I opened the garage door and gently deposited my puppy on the ground, the ebony darkness of early morning surrounded me as chilly air pervaded my lungs.

I stepped haltingly into a new day, while my canine companion trotted forth confidently, his little legs propelling his Oreo-hued, silky little being into the fresh day before us. Otis is so small that he makes no sound, his white-padded paws delicately transporting him across the driveway into adjoining piles of now. As he makes his investigative rounds, I pause.

Because there is no breeze this morning, I can actually see the steam from my nose, warm human exhalation thrust into the frigid environment. It is still dark, but street lights allow me to see the neighbor’s flagpole, our national flag bowed in obeisance to morning’s gentle stillness. Across the street I see the chimneys of other neighbors’ homes, the straggling whisks of grey rising straight up into the deep abyss that is early morning.

I listen to distant sounds. The near-constant thrumble of the railroad and its ever-present traffic. There are no automobiles this early, there are no bird sounds in the deep silence that is winter, no one else is yet awake in my neighborhood.

Mostly what I see and hear is … nothing. Just sweet, soothing silence.

We are not outside long, but in only a few minutes I find my soul becoming oriented to the day. Depositing myself in my sun room (an odd descriptor during winter months, when there is so much more darkness than light), and before snapping the switch on my book table lamp, I pause.

Otis is in the living room, eating his morning ration of puppy kibble, so I am momentarily alone. I reflect on the stillness I am experiencing, and I am taken to one of my favorite Christmas hymns, “Still, Still, Still.” I find a rendition on YouTube and listen, allowing the music to flood my quieted being.

It is a still morning that soothes my soul, and somehow I know that whatever lies before me this day, I will move through the next hours discovering what it means to live into my true identity as Love’s child.