Part 2 of 2: (Still) Off beat and seeking stillness...

Sunset in Sonora

Hi all,

If you did not yet have a chance to read last weeks blog posting (and part one of this) please feel free to do so before jumping in below. Or not. As you like. But if you dive right in I take no responsibility for your confusion, if you read the first part on the other hand, I take full responsibility for your confusion. Cheers!

Do you know yourself? May seem like a totally unrelated question to music, stillness, and being out of sync as I was speaking about last week, right? Well, it's not. Do you know yourself? God knows you. You should be the one on this planet who knows you best. Do you? Do you take time to know yourself in Him?

Maybe you're not so into the God thing, again, another topic, but really, when was the last time you were still? To be. To listen to the STILL small voice inside? Don't get me wrong, I know this is not easy. It is not easy to find the time or metaphorical space (or often even a physical place) to be still. On the occasion that I get myself to physical place in which I would like to be still, I then face the challenge of my active brain. At times I wish I could open my head, take out my brain and stop it running. We, or should I say "I", I am so wired, have so trained myself to go-go-go---GO faster! Than when I try to say stop - at best I need a cool down lap (or two) before I can be still. Really still.

Sunset in Sonora, CA

This afternoon God was playing with clouds and sun outside and kept on inviting me to come join. It took me a couple of hours to answer the call and take a seat on the deck glider swing. To watch the sunset, with the long low light across the hills in front of me and the sun popping out of the high clouds to turn the hills and trees gold before setting behind the next layer of clouds that were blowing by. As I sat and was trying to read (wanting to make my stillness productive of course) each time I looked up my gaze lingered longer and longer before looking back down at my book.

It was spectacular.

I sat and listened to robins flittering around (no, 'flittering is not a real word, in case you were wondering), geese over head, a very distant plane motor, a train many miles away honking, the cows, horses, and dogs at least a mile below me in the valley enjoying the last bit of sun on them. A flock of robins swished down from the roof over my head, making the sound of dozens of falling arrows.(Because I am very familiar with the sound of dozens of falling arrows - haven't you seen Lord of the Rings?) If I were the reactionary type I might have feared something was falling from the sky as I heard the loud swishing sound before seeing what it was.

Sunset in Sonora, CA, USA

Stillness is remarkable. To be, when so much around us is doing. To know our place and our value because we know ourselves (ching- back to the starting question, did you catch that!?) and our purpose from time spent alone, with God, in nature (or whatever refreshes you with something real in a world so full of superficiality). Doing 'nothing' as life is always turning and teaming around us. It is when others are dancing and I am sitting still that it is the most challenging to disconnect, and yet often the most essential. The challenge of putting down and walking away from the phone, stopping the language lesson, eating dinner later than normal, or skipping my movie night to make time and to escape it all. In times that seem the most difficult, it can be the most critical and life giving moment to sit in peace and stillness.

Aaaand, again. 

Because dancing a dance is not tracing or copying someone else's footsteps, nor is running a race, or building a edifice. To dance a dance one goes forward as the other goes back, running a race requires you to stay in your lane and do your utmost to complete that race to the best of your ability, conquering the mental battle of self before you can ever accomplish the physical race. And constructing a building requires different tools, skills, over a long time frame, with a variety of workers doing his or her part at a particular stage. It would not work if the framer, electrician, roof man, and plumber were trying to do their part at the same time. Each works in their own stride, own time, with their own constraints, to complete his or her individual best work, which in turn contributes to an even greater end result with benefits multiplied from the smaller contributions of each engaged person.


A very good articulation of this I read recently:

If we overextend ourselves beyond our personal calling and don't prune (quit) our activities that are fruitless, we use the capacity we do have on things that don't really matter. Thus, we undermine our divine responsibility and derail our destiny.(pg140)Poverty, Riches and Wealth

Lovely Yosemite Falls

In general I love my off beat life, not only what I do and how I do it, but the very fact that it is different from so many others. This is true for each of us (I hope). There is great value in many things in our lives, but what if we became better at BEING a human-being instead of trying to be a human-doing. The pit of self worth that will never be filled by hundreds of likes on Instagram, shares on Twitter, forwards on emails, can be filled in stillness, truth, knowing you are deeply valued and profoundly loved by a heavenly Father. Grounding ourselves in our incomparable and priceless worth to the King of Kings.

I'm all about action. (Dang it, did I just completely undo the whole post with that comment?!) I mean, I am about muscle memory and visual and physical reminders of important things. :) Put a stake in the ground, a physical one, that you can return to, because it is from that place of certainty, of having taken the time to know oneself, knowing one's value and purpose, that one can change the world.

Because  music always sounds better when someone plays on the up beat and the down beat (together, yet distinctively different and individual) and it is those who are strong enough to set a new beat who change the direction of the song, which then shifts the mode of the room, and carries out to new melodies in the streets!

I hope to have another post for you next week, but don't have too high of expectations. I am already setting records with two weeks in a row!

Until then, May you fill your mind with stillness and the streets with new melodies,
Jessica