One day while walking with a friend through a local botanical garden, I found that she was, as Frederick Buechner puts it, getting lost in her own rhetoric . She spiraled around and around in her self-depreciating thoughts and pontifications as we quickly walked along a stony pathway. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed another path, one without the sharp, noisy stones, but lined instead with soft, supportive bark shavings. I leaned in the direction of the smaller, curvy trail to our left and invited her to join me. The chatter stopped as suddenly as the noise from our footfalls ceased echoing through the wooded area. Our breathing slowed as we were engulfed in the peaceful area near the ravine. Even from several feet away, I could feel her blood pressure lowering and saw the wildness drift out of her eyes. I slowed my gait and breathed deeply until we became still and listened to the fluttering wings of a nearby jay bird. The call of a raven hovered on the gentle breeze, and then it was still.
After a length of time I quietly entered the silence with a verbalized rumination on the beauty of that place, noting that I had come down that particular trail several times when I needed Mother Nature to break the cycle of chatter in my mind. We continued standing there for a long moment, allowing ourselves to be filled by the presence of our Creator. As I slowly began making my way around another bend in the pathway and I heard her soft footfalls behind me, I noted that when life seems to be overwhelming to me, I search for things to be grateful for – usually from the things that we often take for granted, like the ability to walk, speak, think, run, breathe, and the presence of running water, food, clothing, shelter, the ability to see this beautiful scenery and to reach out and touch it, receiving the sensations through my fingertips without feeling pain. I let the words remain speaking in the silence that followed until we returned to the path of stones and let the rhythmic sound fill the rest of our time together.
At the end of our walk through the garden, my friend noted the intensity of the shift between the spiraling chaos that she had entered into and the serenity she was led into through the simple change of direction. It was as if, she said, I had physically grabbed hold of her heart and yanked it out of the darkness and brought it into the light which, at that moment, she had almost forgotten existed. Although I had neither physically touched her nor pushed her into the light, the change of atmosphere had brought the shift in an immediate and striking way. As soon as the surrounding atmosphere was quiet, her spirit became suddenly aware of its own foolish chatter and it ceased making noise. She thanked me for drawing her out of herself and back into the world again.
The truth of the matter is that I am only able to do for others what has already been done for me. My Lord showed me when I was very young that the quickest way to escape the chaos, whether it be around or inside of me, was to change my direction, to listen to the creation around me, and through the avenue of nature to listen to my Maker’s heartbeat and align my own with that of the Divine. I pray that you will be blessed by relationships with people who know when to bring you into the realm of peace and stillness. You will be tremendously blessed when you enter the silence that draws you into the Light of Love and Peace. May the Lord grant you rich times of fulfillment and the joy of discovering yourself in the awesome heartbeat of our Loving Creator! Let it be through the power of the Holy Spirit, through Jesus’ name to the glory of our Great and Glorious God, amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment