Sometimes my life can be like this. Work issues roll into family issues roll into health issues. Last year was like this for me and it felt like one big rolled up ball that gathered pace, until it left me exhausted and I stopped.
But it was in the not being able to do, that I found a way to be. Oh, I do like to do. As Adam Gopnik says in his insightful book The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery (3), learning and mastering a new skill is not ‘rocket science’. It’s down to repetition. Doing something over and over and over again, until you, maybe, get good at it. You may not become a grand master, but you may go some way towards mastery. So, I keep on writing, keep on playing piano, keep on swimming. I keep on reflecting on why, when someone pushes my buttons, I react. It’s a bit squirmy sometimes, but I guess I’m a work in progress. Like Robert the Bruce’s spider I ‘try and try and try again’. Maybe I’m getting better.
(4)
But doing, in a world fixated with doing, is exhausting. I have to do and I also like to do – to get up, go to for a walk, a swim, to work. To meet with friends and family. To do the daily routines and so live this precious life I have been given. But I’m realising more and more that I can get ‘the cart is before the horse’. Doing is not peaceful unless it comes from a place of peace.
Horse before cart (5)
Contemplative prayer has helped me with this. It’s a time aside to still myself in the presence of One who is higher and bigger and lovelier and more peaceful. He is Peace. He is my peace. I read about Him, I talk with Him about it, I listen to music and worship Him. But real peace comes as I ‘quiet and still my soul’ (6) and just be with Him. Just to sit and be aware that He is with me, I am with Him, and I am loved. It’s a choice just to be with Him. It’s not new, but a well trodden path that mystics, and others, through the centuries have followed (7). The horse goes back in front of the cart.
You do not have to look for anything, just look. You do not have to listen for specific sounds, just listen. You do not have to accomplish anything, just be. And in the looking, and the listening and the being, find Me.
(8) Lewin, A (2002) from Seasons with the Spirit (Churches together in Britain and Ireland: 2002) in Celtic Daily Prayer Book Two Farther Up and Farther In (2015) London: William Collins (Eata readings 21 May p1485)
Trying to notice heaven's blessings and human joys. Using the the time I have been given to explore this beautiful world to shine light on its dark places and bring hope.
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Into the heart of things 
