Be Still

Recently I have been practicing being still.  Sometimes I just sit in my room with no music playing and no tv on.  I stop checking my email.  I stop checking my text messages.  I just sit still, in the rare quietness of my room.  And recently this silence has been golden.

Don't get me wrong I am no stranger to the love of silence.  Living in a house with multiple people I appreciate the time sometimes in the dead of night where you can hear only the sounds of a house that is breathing.  It is on those rare occasions that my mother has finally turned off her tv and her snores are so faint that I can appreciate only hearing the natural sounds made by nature during the night.  It doesn't happen very often but when it does I take it in like it is my last breath.

As much as I enjoy the silence it is rare that I am actually still.  I mean isn't rare that anyone is still?  In this age we are are constantly doing something.  We can't even wait at a red light without responding to a text message or checking email.  At least for me, each day is planned.  No matter how spontaneous I try to be to some extent I have a set aside time to be spontaneous.  Each hour of the day is planned for something that I will do or I could be doing.  We are so used to the feeling of being always being busy and shuffling from place to place that we are allow ourselves to be still with our thoughts.

This week I have been practicing this.  And this week practicing stillness has been kind of excellent.  I feel for a brief time that I have actually heard myself think.  I have had the chance to pray freely.  For once in a very long time I have enjoyed letting my thoughts roam free without the guilt of not devoting my attention to someone else or to something else.

In my stillness I am trying to take in more of God and less of me.  I am trying to process all of the feelings and thoughts that I have without the voice of others, just myself.  Try it out and see what you think.