Stillness of God

Mark and I have been married ten years, soon to be eleven.  In our life together we have moved a lot, as we are now in house number eight.  In the corner of the brick paver patio in the backyard of this house lives a terracotta pot.  I can't recall if anything was alive in that pot when we moved in, though if there was anything there, I did not tend to it and it died.  For the entire summer, fall and winter, this pot must have known I lacked a green thumb, because it sat with trepidation as I glanced at it from time to time, my mind wondering if I should throw it out - give it to my neighbor - or leave it.

The crazy pace of this thing called life allowed the pot to remain, untouched, fruitless and empty on the patio as a million other things were placed ahead of it in the neverending to-do list of all things "urgent and important".  It sat, dormant, quiet, still and barren.  I never touched it, never watered it, never pulled the weed-looking sapling that began to grow out of it out.

Yet this past week when spring came a bit early, visiting with warm winds and wet rains, the little terracotta pot yielded its bounty - a cluster of small, but vibrant purple flowers. 

As I surveyed the landscape this morning, I noticed even more green shoots coming up through the forgotten soil, pushing the baby tree out of the way as they came thundering out of the dirt.

Recently, I've begun the practice of meditation and silent prayer.  It has been a touch and go habit, because sometimes I think I really can't waste that ten to twenty minutes doing nothing.  The pace of life and of our society informs us that stillness and and quiet are not to be rewarded.  In beginning the practice of meditation and prayer, my own body and soul, quite attuned to the busyness factor, detested the uncomfortableness of it all.  It's easy to think that if you don't see any action, that nothing is happening.  Somehow we equate stillness with nothingness. Except in the terracotta pot, with months of no water, no food, and the coldest of weather, purple flowers have bloomed out of that stillness.