Standing Still

There is no breeze and everything is still. The thousand shades of green in the trees glisten with wetness. The air is full of moisture and the purple-blue sky looks as though it will burst into tears at any moment. The silence is deafening. Goddess and I stand on the wet boards at the end of Shirley’s sad little holy dock. The tide is high but the water doesn’t move. The marsh grass stands straight.

It seems that all of life has stopped for the moment and while nothing is happening I can tell that it is getting ready to. It is a moment of anticipation. At any moment, all hell can bust loose.

I am one with the stillness as I take the time to appreciate it. It mirrors my life at this moment because I’ve stepped outside of what it used to be. A couple of years ago I tried to take a Sabbatical from the relentless needs of Union Mission but couldn’t make it happen.

My life was out of balance at that time and I knew it. Too much of it had been consumed by the work and managing the tragedy of a whole city. The work never went away anymore. It invaded my nights and stole the time that I had with my wife. It left me numb and as time passed I grew resentful of those that got in the way of it.

Things have a way of happening that are supposed to even though you’ve got other plans. I’d always lived a very public life in the press and in public so it didn’t bother me when there was an explosion of publicity about things that I’d been managing. For the first time in two decades things failed to go as I’d planned. So I managed harder and the parts of me that I’d refrained from giving to work were suddenly consumed.

My wife left. Then I left work. And in the holy arms of St. Martin my fast pace, relentless, 350 emails per day, world came to a screeching halt. And it was quiet like it is today.

I remember sitting on the patio of the little studio that I was in, after rain over the aqua-blue water noticing how still it was. It was the day after I’d resigned and my life was as still as the air for the first time in three decades. I didn’t know what to do and I just sat there stunned that things do not have to move.

That was almost three months ago. A line from an Arlo Guthrie runs through my head. “All these thoughts just rip me open, who can heal a heart that’s broken; like the wind that blows unspoken, blew my love away.”

I stand today one with the stillness.

Comfortable in it.

But full of anticipation.

So that the sky can bust open and the wind can blow the love back into my life.