Savoring The Silence
We can make our minds so like still water
that beings gather about us that they may see,
it may be,
their own images,
perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.
WB Yeats
Collectively we share this Corona Virus crisis. COVID19. Most of us are conscientiously honoring the injunctions to enter some degree of social isolation. For some, this is a prison sentence. For others an opportunity to organize the house and clean the closets of heart, soul, and mind. For parents, it brings the stress of arranging for home schooling and caring for house-bound children. For far too many, it brings financial threat as wages abruptly cease and portfolios plunge.
To the degree that is possible, though, might we find a way to seize this moment as an opportunity to cultivate quiet, stillness, and relationship. In this other than normal time, might we find ways to be with our loved ones, hunkered down in the sequestered space?
In our rat race, hurried lives, we often are not fully present to the moments we are living. Multi-tasking has become a way of life and, all too often, a source of pride. In the good ole days we used to at least have some stolen quiet time while driving. Now we conduct business, catch up with friends, and plan schedules with blue tooth hosted conversations in our ears and a gas pedal beneath our feet.
We miss the moments in which we live.
Yet, for everything there is a season. Not only are there seasons of life, there are seasons within a season. The balanced life accords each phase its own due.
There are times to gear up and times to gear in.
This is a time to gear in.
The rat race has been stilled by quarantines and shuttered doors.
Being becomes paramount to doing.
The art of “being” is cultivated by paying attention. By joining heart, mind, and body in full attention to the person or experience with which we are engaged. This is really one of life’s simple pleasures. It is always available to us but rarely acknowledged.
Sometimes life conspires to create these opportunities.
Like now.
Even then, though, we can miss them.
Towards the end of her life, my mother suffered serious health challenges. While no one would wish this on her or anyone, there were hidden blessings. The weeks and months of her recuperation required quiet and inactivity. In these sequestered moments we shared long stretches of time in which to visit, reminisce, and simply “be” together.
Snuggled in the cocoon of home, we sat in the same spot for hours and talked. Or not.
Simple rituals, like at home manicures and pedicures took on special significance because they were shared.
Because we were grateful for the opportunity.
Because we were aware of our gratitude.
In the quite of this space, a certain beauty was born. While it was not formally a prayer, maybe it was one. Maybe we shared time in this end time as mothers and daughters do at the beginning of life.
For those precious moments, the focus was exclusive and the attention exquisite. The world bumped by at its own speed, while we sat peacefully in our own.
These moments are sacred.
Savor them.
May we choose to live in this rare time in ways that strengthen our compassion, companionship, and heart centers. May the love we share and show be more contagious than this wicked virus.
Peace.
