Fill a bottle with water and dirt. Shake it. Watch it settle.
My mind is that vessel.
I am thrust daily into disequilibrium, and so are you. Our heads spinning globes, tossing waves within a torrent of thought. So.
I try to find a place to sit and let the dirt settle in the water. The ideas prostrate themselves like gasping sailors stranded on the sand. The thoughts recede with the tide. Just. Be.
All the wisdom in the world seems to find its source in simple presence. If God is anywhere, he’s in the whisper. Haven’t you noticed?
It takes a while, and I keep forgetting how. Can I get a minute? That’s usually the first step. I crave someplace lonely and holy. The thoughts swirl, and ideas are illuminated in flashing revelations, only to be drowned again. It takes time before frenzy retreats…and it never disappears.
So, I’m sitting in a cafe listening to a lush explosion of rock. Or I’m kneeling at a stream listening to the celebration of birds. Or I’m in my room, in the dark, listening to nothing at all. And the flow of thoughts continues, unabated; the experience is observation not obsession. That’s the second step.
Everything is spiritual. Notice it.
The touch of my hand against her cheek, not divorced from the rhythm of my spirit against hers. Not different. The same. So, everything is spiritual.
Or not?
Is everything only matter? And, if so, does anything even matter?
I return to the experience of her. In our closeness, I see clearly and breathe freely. She sits next to me, and her presence shatters my anxiety: I am physical and spiritual, one and the same. The shape of her head, resting against mine reminds me that I care. What gave rise to this awareness in me, and to care that I care, why?
There is so much that I question.
I recently went for a drive. A sunny, highway meandering. My children fell asleep in the back, my wife next to me, and I fought my demons. It was stuffy in the car, and I wanted to escape into the golden air outside. Likewise, my brain couldn’t seem to escape the tangle of suffocating thoughts. Until.
I looked at her in the passenger seat. Asleep. Alive. Our unconscious breathing in that darkness astounds me. I glanced at the boys in the back. They were completely at rest, the drone of the engine had done its good work.
I returned my eyes to the windshield, and I was healed. I don’t know how it works. Shake your head, and let the thoughts swirl. Watch the questions settle and the water calm.
For me, that day, it was a simple thing: I saw my family at peace, trusting me to drive them, trusting their bodies to carry them. Implicit faith. I began to observe my breathing and not my brain. It doesn’t seem like I’m in very much control of either one. Okay.
I guess that’s where I’m at now. My thoughts and feelings are traitors. I turn to You.