Sister Doreen’s Reflections
How often in the midst of the busyness of a day or of time, when we seem to go from meeting to meeting and project to project, I wish I could make time stand still!
In the midst of psalm 46 – which Lynn Bauman translates and calls “God’s Presence in a World Torn Apart” there is a verse which says: “Be silent, then, and in the stillness know the transcendence of our God.
Know too the immanence of God present in each being.”
Perhaps you are familiar with a meditation on psalm 46: 10 Be still and know that I am God, but I have found it helpful to pull it out and use it often when I feel like I am being torn apart by so many things. It goes like this:
Be Still and Know that I AM God.
- What does this mean to you?
Be Still and Know that I AM.
- What is your image of God in your life?
Be Still and Know.
- What does God want you to know?
Be Still.
- Stop. Relax, take a deep breath. Empty your thoughts and focus on the presence of God. Be still.
Be.
- What does it mean to just be? Who are you? strip away all your roles and identities … and just BE.
The prayer of this psalm is to find and maintain balance in the midst of chaos and turmoil. In order to do that it is so important that we find our center in our relationship with God who is always with us and is at home in us. How important it is then that we stand before time in stillness and in silence in order to know and experience that we are held by God in an eternal embrace of love. That the world and everyone and everything in it is held in an eternal embrace of love.
Stephen McKenzie wrote a poem in the magazine of the Religious Community of the Society of the Sacred Mission called “In The Stillness of Time”. I share it as a source of reflection and meditation.
“In the stillness of time, when all seems farfetched and beyond control,
Do not lose heart.
Engulf yourself in silence.
Look with your eyes shut.
Hear the air flowing calmly embracing the uneventful moment.
Feel time’s own mist settling on you hand:
Breath the elegance of beauty unseen
And speak out the spelling of words untold.
Senseless talk
Lost what is
Escalating frictions
Faceless moods
Vanished, never to return.
Pretend
Imagine
Dream
Fly away
With all the mighty power that lies within you.
You are here;
It is now.
Be still!
Do not look back and delay the way forward.
Move and progress ahead.
There are humps and bumps and potholes all along the way.
But you can jump across all of them, at just one go!
The platform is set and balanced.
The speed is agreed; the check points are secured.
No need to run.
Time is still; wait; listen; feel!
The air is still; the heartbeat is calm.
Look with your eyes shut in the stillness of time!
You are here!
