Stillness and Sanctuary
Stillness is the altar of Spirit.
Where motion ceases,
Spirit begins to manifest.
—Paramahansa Yogananda
My outer world is filled with people and projects, pressures and pains, noise and nastiness. When my outer world seeps into my inner world and I inwardly become filled with people and projects, pressures and pains, noise and nastiness, I forfeit my center and begin to wobble. As I wobble along, I do things that are not mine to do. I comply with others’ wants and desires and do not live true to my values. I easily become who others want me to be. In short, I lose myself.
During these times, I find I must be even more attentive to my own personal spiritual practices.
I return to my breath. I return to one word, one phrase, one verse.
In my latest experience of this, Isaiah 30:15 found me and entered my soul: "By returning and resting in You I will be saved. In quietness and trust I will be made strong.” This verse gave way to words and phrases that companioned me this past month, taking up residence in my soul and being etched anew on my bones:
In stillness and rest I find my salvation
In stillness and rest I find my completeness
In stillness and rest I find my wholeness
In stillness and quiet I find You
In stillness and quiet I find myself
The re-etching on my bones was a slow, gentle process of time spent in prayer playing with the words, rearranging them, and mapping the phrases on pieces of paper.
The top of the circle, the True North is GOD IN ALL. The truth that holds everything together.
I started at the top and made my way around clockwise discovering completeness and wholeness in the center of the circle. Wholeness and completeness have become another word for salvation.
My Journey
The journey around this sacred path gives me strength and makes me strong. It increases my capacity for retaining my center against outside forces and expands my emotional and spiritual resilience.
Stillness has a resolute depth and a vibrant center. She allows for inner listening. She creates space and possibility, which cultivate the conditions to hear the voice of God and make a beautiful echo chamber to sing within.
I have found that stillness arrests what is out of control and allows me to observe the unintended harmful consequences of my best efforts in the world. She teaches me to notice and restrain my default tendencies and ways of being.
I have discovered how stillness recovers my wholeness, helps me find my true nature. When I am still, I realize I already am and have what I’ve been looking for all along through life’s addictions, malformed loves, and unhealthy attachments.
When I rest in stillness, I notice the momentum of my habits and urges, but I don’t have to act on them. I can actually experience the moment–the feel of the wind on my skin, subtle sounds I never noticed before. I can tell what my body wants and needs. I am here, alive, receptive.
An inner sanctuary has been built with stillness tethering the sacred space to the Holy. It has become an inner refuge and shelter, a safe haven. A place to regain my center and find myself in God once again. An inner holy place where God is especially present and palpable, near as my breath, close as my skin. An inner sanctuary that I can carry out into the world of people and projects, pressures and pain, noise and nastiness with a sense of rootedness and stability.
I am reminded of the verse in Psalm 46, “Be still, and know that I am God.” Stillness creates the sanctuary to know and encounter God.
How do you welcome stillness?
What practices support you in this desire?
In what ways are you creating an inner sanctuary?
How often do you go to and use your inner sanctuary?
Inspiration
Today
Today I’m flying low and I’m not saying a word I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.
The world goes on as it must, the bees in the garden rumbling a little, the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten. And so forth.
But I’m taking the day off. Quiet as a feather. I hardly move though really I’m traveling a terrific distance.
Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple.
—Mary Oliver
A Blessing Called Sanctuary
You hardly knew how hungry you were to be gathered in, to receive the welcome that invited you to enter entirely— nothing of you found foreign or strange, nothing of your life that you were asked to leave behind or to carry in silence or in shame.
Tentative steps became settling in, leaning into the blessing that enfolded you, taking your place in the circle that stunned you with its unimagined grace.
You began to breathe again, to move without fear, to speak with abandon the words you carried in your bones, that echoed in your being.
You learned to sing.
But the deal with this blessing is that it will not leave you alone, will not let you linger in safety, in stasis.
The time will come when this blessing
will ask you to leave,
not because it has tired of you
but because it desires for you to become the sanctuary that you have found— to speak your word into the world, to tell what you have heard with your own ears,
seen with your own eyes,
known in your own heart: that you are beloved,
precious child of God, beautiful to behold, and you are welcome and more than welcome here.
—Jan Richardson
“Sanctuary” A Beautiful, Beautiful Song by Carrie Newcomer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjOioWTVAl4
I am here to serve your soul in whatever ways you might need or long for … spiritual direction, spiritual companionship, leadership coaching, enneagram coaching, Ignatian Spiritual Exercises guide, and guided retreats. What does your soul need? What does your soul want?
In stillness, Becky