Stillness
In the stillness of the quiet, if we listen, we can hear the whisper of the heart giving strength to weakness, courage to fear, hope to despair. Howard Thurman
Gregg’s Reflection
There’s no stillness like time in nature after a fresh snow when the wind dies. As I took this picture 36 inches of snow has fallen. The snow dampens any sound, and whatever the condition of the land, the snow makes it pristine wilderness.
Stillness as a spiritual practice emerged in the early church and was called Hesychasm.
Hesychasm is a contemplative monastic tradition in the Eastern Christian traditions of the Eastern Catholic Church in which stillness (hēsychia) is sought through uninterrupted Jesus prayer. While rooted in early Christian monasticism, it took its definitive form in the 14th century at Mount Athos.
The practice of inner prayer, which aims at "inward stillness or silence of the heart," dates back to at least the 4th century. Evagrius Ponticus (345–399), John Climacus (St. John of Sinai)(6th-7th century), Maximus the Confessor (c. 580–662), and Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022) are representatives of this hesychast spirituality. John Climacus, in his influential Ladder of Divine Ascent, describes several stages of contemplative or hesychast practice, culminating in agape.
As I have waded deeper into my spiritual journey, stillness emerged as both as practice and state of being. I realize now that the most important thing I offer to my coaching clients is my inner stillness and peace.
So, find your own practice of stillness because, as Frank Baron said,
The Divine flow that wants to move through me requires stillness.
Stillness
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Journaling Prompts
Where do you find stillness in your day? How does stillness draw you to places of inner peace? How might your inner stillness overflow and touch others?
Scripture
The spiritual life actually begins with God speaking to us and our listening to his voice. Our spirits grow when we listen to the voice of God. There is nothing more important than being still within and attending to him. As we mature, we will grow more sensitive to God’s voice. Too often today the tables are turned. We speak and God listens. We never stop to hear what God wants to say. As a result, we wonder if God has heard our voice. But, the better question is, have we heard his voice?
RENOVARE Bible notes on Numbers 1.
The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.
Exodus 14:14
Be still and rest in the Lord; wait for Him and patiently lean yourself upon Him.
Psalm 37:7
Be still and know I am God.
Psalm 46:10
He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.
Mark 4:39
Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.
Mark 6:31
Ancient Writings
The seed of mystery lies in muddy water. How can I perceive this mystery? Water becomes clear through stillness. How can I become still? By flowing with the stream.
Still waters run deep.
Latin proverb
Let us leave a little room for reflection in our lives, room too for silence. Let us look within ourselves and see whether there is some delightful hidden place inside where we can be free of noise and argument. Let us hear the Word of God in stillness and perhaps we will then come to understand it.
One way of engaging in meaningful inner work can be achieved through a state called hesychia, in other words, a fixed, concentrated stillness. It’s a way of prayer that steers away from iconography, or words, in favor of simple communion with our Divine indwelling.
Resting in the Wisdom of The Philokalia, From Center for Action & Contemplation: We Conspire
Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness.
To get at the core of God at his greatest, one must first get to the core of himself at his least, for no one can know God who has not first known himself. This core is a simple stillness, which is unmoved itself but by whose immobility all things are moved and all receive life. Stillness is where creativity and solutions are found.
In the inner stillness where meditation leads, the Spirit secretly anoints the soul and heals our deepest wounds.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility.
Modern Writings
When winds are raging o'er the upper ocean And billows wild contend with angry roar, 'Tis said, far down beneath the wild commotion That peaceful stillness reigneth evermore. Far, far beneath, the noise of tempests dieth And silver waves chime ever peacefully, And no rude storm, how fierce soe'er it flyeth Disturbs the Sabbath of that deeper sea.
Come away from the din. Come away to the quiet fields, over which the great sky stretches, and where, between us and the stars, there lies but silence; and there, in the stillness let us listen to the voice that is speaking within us.
Jerome K Jerome
Within you there is a stillness and sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you Which shall be the darkness of God. . . . So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Stand still, and allow the deadly restlessness of our tragic age to fall away like the worn-out dusty cloak that it is. That restlessness was once considered the magic carpet to tomorrow, but now we see it for what it really is: a running away from oneself, a turning from the journey inward that all must undertake to meet God dwelling within the depths of their souls.
Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Encountering God in Silence, Solitude and Prayer, p. 4-5, 7
If a man would travel far along the mystic road, he must learn to desire God intensely but in stillness, passively and yet with all his heart and mind and strength.
Sometimes in the stillness of the quiet, if we listen, / We can hear the whisper in the heart / Giving strength to weakness, courage to fear, hope to despair.
Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart
How good it is to center down!
To sit quietly and see one’s self pass by!
The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic;
Our spirits resound with clashings, with noisy silences,
While something deep within hungers and thirsts for the still
moment and the resting lull.…
The questions persist: what are we doing with our lives?—
what are the motives that order our days?
Over and over the questions beat in upon the waiting moment.
As we listen, floating up through all the jangling echoes
of our turbulence, there is a sound of another kind—
A deeper note which only the stillness of the heart
makes clear.
It moves directly to the core of our being. Our questions are
answered,
Our spirits refreshed, and we move back into the traffic of
our daily round
With the peace of the Eternal in our step.
How good it is to center down!
Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart, p. 12–13.
Emptiness is only a disguise for an intimacy of God's, that God's silence, the eerie stillness, is filled by the Word without words, by Him who is above all names, by Him who is all in all. And his silence is telling us that He is here.
We all have within us a center of stillness surrounded by silence.
Only inner stillness enables us truly to listen to God, to hear His voice, and to commune with Him in the depths of our being. . . . Stillness . . . charts a way, a movement, a pilgrimage into the depths of the “secret heart.” But once established in that sacred space, it reveals the presence of God and makes Him known in all His power, majesty, and love.*
John Breck, “On Silence and Stillness,” Orthodox Church of America.
Our true nature is stillness,
The Source from which we come.
The deep listening of pure contemplation
Is the path to stillness.
All words disappear into It,
And all creation awakens to the delight of
Just Being.
Thomas Keating, “Stillness”
Stillness is not the absence of sound, but the absence of resistance.
Thomas Keating
Stillness is our most intense mode of action. It is in our moments of deep quiet that is born every idea, emotion, and drive which we eventually honor with the name of action. We reach highest in meditation, and farthest in prayer. In stillness every human being is great.
The stillness of this prayer is not a stillness that we perfect in our ability to sit still. The stillness is an inner stillness in which God is unexplainably transforming us into the love of God in our nothingness without God. We’re stilled by it, and there’s a kind of quiet amazement, in awe of the grace that’s unfolding within us in the midst of all the unresolved things in our heart.
James Finley and Kirsten Oates, “The Way of a Pilgrim: Session 3,” Turning to the Mystics, season 9, ep. 6. MP3 audio download and PDF transcript.
Your ability to still your mind through the process of meditation and inner reflection and outer change brings a stillness to the mind all the time, even in the midst of the busiest activities.
Meditation is the calm in the chaos, the fastest way to settle down and get in touch with the stillness within.
Close your eyes and follow your breath to the still place that leads to the invisible path that leads you home. Listen. Softly, the One you love is calling. That is your Beloved reclining in the innermost chamber, waiting for you.
Mirabai Starr, intro to The Interior Castle, p. 2-3
The Divine flow that wants to move through me requires stillness.
When the mind comes into its own stillness and enters the silent land, the sense of separation goes. Union is seen to be the fundamental reality and separateness a highly filtered mental perception.
Stillness is vital to the world of the soul. If as you age you become more still, you will discover that stillness can be a great companion. The fragments of your life will have time to unify, and the places where your soul-shelter is wounded or broken will have time to knit and heal. You will be able to return to yourself. In this stillness, you will engage your soul. Aging can be a lovely time of ripening when you actually meet yourself, indeed maybe for the first time. There are beautiful lines from T. S. Eliot that say:
'And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.'
John O’Donohue, Anam Cara
The air is untroubled, and I become aware for the first time today of the immense silence in which I am lost. Not a silence so much as a great stillness … A suspension of time, a continuous present. If I look at the small device strapped to my wrist, the numbers, even the sweeping second hand, seem meaningless, almost ridiculous.
Edward Abbey, who, in the 1950s, spent two summers as a park ranger in a dilapidated mobile home in the remoteness of then-Arches National Monument.
When we purposefully build periods of reverence or stillness into our days, we practice gazing through the eyes of love, and we get better and better seeing love everywhere we look.
Mirabai Starr