WORDS LIKE LIGHT 

Saturday, November 27, 2021

STILLNESS

            When I lived for a few years beside a slow-moving river, I sometimes stirred up the water in the shallows just to see it slowly settle back to its usual clearness, and occasionally, when my life seems blurred and unsettled, I still think of how, given time, that river always returned to its accustomed stillness. I guess I need to give my so-called problems, too, time to smooth down and settle. I sometimes need to do nothing but sit on the ‘bank’ of seemingly bad situations and let them loosen and slowly resolve themselves. All too often I stir up the problems more than ever by making anxious attempts to fix things, when sitting in stillness might be a better way. Storms always, in due course, lessen and sail off in front of the sunshine, and my difficulties might do the same if not whipped up more by my fretfulness. Perhaps I should see a problem as simply a short-lived fuss and splash in the nonstop river of life, and look with confidence to see things settle and sparkle once again.  

ONE DAY OF STILLNESS
(November 27, 2021)

One day 
a man said to his desk 
that he would stay still 
as long as light was with him,
and he said to the light 
that he knew it would linger 
around him all day 
because even clouds can't keep light 
from looking for ways 
to work miracles for people
and lakes and squirrels, 
and he said to two squirrels 
searching in the grass 
that he would stay still 
as long as they through themselves 
into life so thoroughly
 and the squirrels smiled 
(he knows their smiles)
because they always live life utterly
and the man said to stillness
that it was absolutely stunning.

Here’s Delycia as we walked three (exhausting for me) miles on very windy and frigid Napatree beach this morning …