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| Moonrise, Angel Lake Campground, Nevada, Steve Brown 2025 |
I'm changing. I'm becoming aware of these perfect moments of near silence, and I love to sit in them and do nothing. They can occur almost anytime and anywhere, and they are intensely calm. I used to approach such moments only out in nature, often my garden. But now, I'll be sitting in my chair in the living room and Marci will be in the office or in the car, running her sister somewhere, and I'll just become aware of the space and silence around me, no noise other than the fishtank pump running. It happens at school too, before and after class. Also, I often don't turn on music in the car anymore, not because I'm seeking silence, but because I'll get in and think, This feels nice, before I have time to reach for my phone to select a play list. At home, I like closing my eyes and doing absolutely nothing. I don't do it for long, maybe ten or fifteen minutes, and it isn't planned or intentional. I'm just more aware being has a profound meaning that has nothing to do with doing. Getting things done is important. A clean house is a nicer environment than a messy one. It is fun to create, whether writing or painting, or building something in the yard. Those are good things. But they aren't near as rewarding as just sitting in silence with your eyes closed.
Fretting is the opposite of that. And I still do a lot of that. So, it's not like I'm this totally new person. But I'm also not who I used to be either. I'll just stumble upon this silence and think Oh, yeah, this is where I'm meant to be. The worrying and the doing are just a necessary distraction to keep us playing the game, which must be important or we wouldn't play it, but this, this is what life is about. And then I just slide into a moment and be. After five or ten minutes, I intentionally step back out of the silence again. Then I usually find a different task more or aligned with who I want to become. Or I go back to the previous one, but without inner-dialog and judgment that so often goes with chores, such as, Why am I the only one doing dishes again?
A couple weeks ago we all went out to help a struggling family member clean out her house and get it ready to sell. Most of the time she was not in a place emotionally where she could help. And I noticed something. Even though the work was difficult and disgusting, dealing with great amounts of mouse urine and droppings, while engaged in the actual task of cleaning, I got great joy out of seeing the improvement. It was only during breaks, when we had time to reflect that the person we were working for wasn't there helping that we became resentful. The task wasn't making us unhappy. Thinking, judging, and voicing our frustrations was. Moments aren't toxic--at least not emotionally. Resentment is. Work, even dirty work, is rewarding because engagement forces you into a moment, and a moment is everything.
I have no clue on how to help those around me realize that. Attempting to help someone usually never helps anyone anyway, especially if it's through advice. All of us are eager to reform others, and almost none of us are seeking reform ourselves. It's always someone else that has the problem. It's especially useful if we can find a scapegoat, because then our egos can join forces and support each other in negativity.
Happiness has nothing to do with what you're doing and everything to do with what you're thinking. The most blissful moments are when you have no thought at all, and space opens up all around you. There's no way to put into words what that is because it's no-thought being. It has no words. Yet, it is precisely in those moments, and only in those moments, you understand what life is. And yet that knowledge, whatever it is, has no words. It just is. I think stillness points towards the essence of God rather than being God's essence. I can't conceive of a God that isn't about doing, creating, engaging lovingly with his creations. Yet, somehow silence, stillness, an actual void, is at the center of his command. Moments without evaluating life are the only moments when life is actually understood.
Living is more than doing. Living is being. The greatest gift of God is life itself. For whatever reason, in this realm at least, that can only be comprehended in moments of complete personal silence. Not silence out there, all around you, although that helps, but silence deep, deep within where everything is cool and calm always, that perfection in absolutely everyone and everything. You can't earn that. It is God's grace. All you can do is witness it, and that comes in moments like this. Moments of total peace in the near silence.
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