Seeking Stillness
reflections on my most recent spiritual direction and a day at the lake
During my last Spiritual Direction, we talked about stillness. These days I am craving and seeking stillness. Stillness to me is a quieted mind and soul-deep peace. I was reflecting later and realized that stillness to me is more about internal rest and reset than actually being stilled in my body, but that is certainly part of creating rhythms of stillness.
This week, where I am finding stillness is on retreat with a group of women, courtesy of the Baptist Women in Ministry Mentoring Program. Yesterday I made a brunch of chilaquiles with eggs, and refried beans for the group. And I found stillness in the sizzle of corn tortilla strips in a pan, in the simmer of my homemade sauce on the back burner, and in the act of baking Sara’s Chilaquiles, a casserole -style situation with eggs cracked into wells in the surface of the dish. Delicious.
We are at a rental house on a lake in Portland, Maine. Yesterday afternoon was spent on the lake all together. I always loved going to my grandparents’ lake house. The lake shed was my favorite because the smell of plastic worms, WD-40, and musty “lake house smell” was always a comfort to me. Walking into the lake shed calmed me immediately. Enveloped in a life vest, canoe oars in hand, I was ready for each next adventure.
Yesterday was a little different and I’m not sure why. I got in the water, floating on an inner tube, which is my favorite thing. I always loved floating down the Chattahoochee when I lived in Atlanta, on a lazy Saturday afternoon. But yesterday, the farther I drifted from the dock, the more anxious and unsettled I felt.
I had moments of drifting into stillness, then coming back to where I was , how untethered I was to anything, and I felt a deep sink in my stomach and a fear I haven’t felt before on the water. Maybe it was being in an unfamiliar space. I know how to swim, so if I had ended up drifting somewhere really far away, I could have easily swum back to the dock.
I could have hopped off the floaty tube, away from the uncontrolled state of just being there in the water, and grounded my feet on the rocks at the bottom of the lake. I wasn’t ever in any real danger.
In fact, I was completely held. On and by the inner tube, on and by the water.
I used to be braver. I think I mean that I was never the bravest one in any bunch but I did ok. More than wonder at being in the water, staring up at a vast expanse of blue, cloudless sky, I felt fear. I used to be braver, was my thought sitting on the dock after my time in the water.
But I am brave. I got in, I stayed in, and pockets of nostalgia for my Paw Paw’s lake house held me, along with the water.
As I was floating in a moment of peace, and stillness, having forgotten that I wasn’t tethered to anything, staring up at the sky - not a cloud in sight - just pristine blue to match the water below, a dragonfly lighted on my ankle.
Hi, Evinrude, I said, remembering the time (or times) I had watched Disney’s The Rescuers with my dad. Ever since our first watch together, every time he saw, or sees, a dragonfly, he names it Evinrude.
The nostalgia of the moment allowed me to stay in the water just a little longer, then longer still, until it was time to get out and sit on the dock in the sun, talking with an amazing group of women in various ministry roles - belly laughs abundant - wiling away the morning hours until it was time to go explore a lighthouse. Not a bad way to spend a day.
A lazy day at the lake
I sit on an inner tube in the water
untethered
The dock gets further away from me
I am aftraid
“You’re grown and you can swim,” I say to myself
and my mind and body conspire together
always in cahoots, those two, to embody their truth.
It’s different from my truth.
I am grown woman on an inner tube on a lake barely lapping with tiny waves.
No, I am eleven and in a canoe drifting farther away from the pier
my canoe is safely tethered to
calling for help before I get lost at sea.
Minds and bodies remember.
My mind remembers that mom needs a lot of rest and Paw Paw’s lake house
is a distraction from ceasless worry.
Minds and bodies remember.
My body remembers feeling untethered
in the water, in my mind, in my own life
swirling out of control.
Minds and bodies remember.
My mind and body remember that surrendering control
and leaning into the untethered uncertainty of life itself
is the path to healing, the path to wholeness,
the tether to an adventure that awaits
a heart, a mind, a body
that is ready to simply say “yes.”
