Stillness {Day 6}: Stillness and Study

I  attend a class once a week that challenges me as much as any college course.  Any course in my post-grad degree, come to that.

As a teenager, as a young adult, never in a hundred years would I have imagined that a class like this would be the thing that feeds me on a weekly basis. 

It is 2 hours in my week that creates the space for me to think critically, think carefully, and to read and re-read the texts.  In this space I am able to apprehend deeper wisdom through the exchange of ideas, through the study of the text, through the encouragement to examine critically ideas that we've held as Truth our entire lives.

It is 2 hours of Stillness in my week.  A space in which I am forced to still my mind - to leave my to-do lists, my phone calls, and my cherished iPhone alone - and to open my mind to knowledge, insight, and new thought.

This is Stillness.  Stillness of the most generative sort.

It's a bible study at my church, led by our pastor and populated by some of the smartest people I know.


I didn't want to tell you about this part of my life.  Was a little kvetchy about admitting such an active part in my faith.  But as I sat there this morning, in the first class this fall, I understood that I have found a place of Stillness like no other. It is part of who I am, and what feeds me.

It is Stillness of the First Order, and I just had to tell you about it.