Episode 03 - Stillness
A number of years ago, on a bitterly cold Manitoba January night, Mark, my husband, our 3 year old daughter and I returned from a trip to Mexico to a ½ kilometer driveway 3 feet high in snow. We quickly decided that I would bundle up our daughter and she and I would walk our way down the driveway while Mark would figure out what to do with the truck, our luggage (he had a papaya deep inside for his mom!).
Within one stretch of telephone poles, Ajah and I became afraid. The wind, the deep snow, the sheer distance. She started to scream; I started to lose my hold on her. Panic ripped through my stomach and had me turn to go back to Mark.
Then, from a distance, an owl called out. Within an instant, Ajah’s body went calm; since I could now hold her, I turned back to trudging through thick snow. Panic was replaced with the sound of that owl’s song. Longing. Deep deep longing.
We’d walk the distance of the telephone poles, and the owl’s song travelled to us again. We’d walk another round of steps towards home, and then the owl’s song. Again and again, until we were home.
That walk and the owl has had me reframe my understanding of prayer. My need, my panic, Ajah’s fear, and turmoil turned to stillness with the call of that owl to the possibility of all the unknowns in front of us.
Prayer, rather than a negotiation to beg for what we want or what we know, is that surrender. A deep need that has us surrender to the spaciousness between what is and what we desire.
And in that surrender, we notice our longing, and when we notice our longing, we place ourselves inside the haunting possibilities of the song that will lead us to real shelter, real home.
My granddaughter, Quinn, is 3 and a half months old. During her first days of being out of her mother’s womb, when I held her, I noticed that she spent the majority of time looking between things. Briefly, we would lock eyes, and then she would roam again.
John O’Donohue, in his book, Eternal Echoes, writes, “…. infants gaze lingeringly into the middle distance….this middle distance is not empty; it is a vital but invisible bridge between things.”
Whatever brings me to a place so still that I am able to be inside the invisible bridge between things, I call that prayer. Including The song of an owl)
Paradoxically so, massive feelings, what I described last week as regret and blame, and feeling them through to the bottom of things, owning them as my forest, the truth of my loss, also brings me to stillness. And in that stillness I am able to notice the invisible bridge between things. In the words of the poet, and then
create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
That, to me, is prayer.
A practice:
Find a place that is quiet. Place your hands on your lap, your seat on your seat, your feet on the floor. Close your eyes. Breathe in and breath out (a little sharper on the out breath) for a few minutes. Any thoughts that flow through, greet them as friends who are passing by and then let them go on the out breath. Try doing this every day at the same time for a week and ask how this practice influences the rest of your day.
As you reflect, we invite you to consider the following questions:
Mark Nepo writes - “The gift of deep silence is that it allows us to let go of what we want so we can receive what we have.
Reflect on a time when you felt stuck, overwhelmed, or dealing with an issue that felt challenging. How do you discern what is worthy of listening to, or as Bonnie states, how do you "get to the bottom of things"? How could a practice of deep listening and stillness help in these moments?
What emotions come up as you think about sitting still in silence? If you feel resistant to the suggestion, is there a curious question you can ask? Or wonder about silence as if silence was an old friend and you’d like to know more about this friend.
Katharine told a story about a bear. Bonnie, about a bird. Do you have an animal dream or story that teaches you about stillness, about surrender, about finding true shelter?
Episode 3 Resources:
There is a moment in the episode where Bonnie wishes she could remember the woman’s name who talked about the soul as an instrument. We did a little research and and discovered the source of Bonnie’s memory. Ursula Martius Franklin, a scientist, political and social activist, and a quaker. In response to a question about how she had acquired “an exquisitely developed conscience” Ursula said, “you tune it like an instrument. You know, when people start singing they develop an ear. They develop their voice. They begin to hear dissonances that they didn’t hear before.….It’s like singing. At every point you say, “Am I in tune?” The full quote, inside of her obituatry, in the globe and mail, is worth reading. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ursula-franklin-canadian-scientist-and-activist-had-a-passion-for-peace/article31123033/
Pema Chodron When Things Fall Apart
John O’Donohue Eternal Echoes
Mark Nepo Drinking from the River of Light
