Keeping Still

It's not easy to keep still in our world. Even in the early morning pre-sunrise fog when stillness wrapped itself around the green hills of Oglala, there were crickets and birds to break the silence outside my window, while interiorly, my mind whirled ahead with plans and hopes for the day. Ah, to bring ourselves to a complete interior halt! Takes work to achieve this state recommended by spiritual leaders from the past to the present. "Be still and know that I am God,/ supreme among the nations, supreme on the earth!" (Ps 46: 11). The Trappists strive for this in their perpetual silence, so too the Carthusians. Fine for contemplatives, but how do active people reach this level, for it seems we alway have "so much to do?" True, that's why we are active, but like the Hebrews marching through the desert to the Promised Land, we can find the clue in this admonition: "The Lord himself will fight for you; you have only to keep still." (Ex 14: 14). This is the secret, again we hear it: complete abandonment to God's plan, care, love. Let him do the fighting and arranging. With God managing our lives, we need not fret and can find the stillness we seek.
Bro. Rene