Sit Still & Shut Up
My best advice
I’m out on the paddle board sitting so still. My legs are crossed. My open hands rest on my knees. I’m sort of praying. Let’s say, I’m in a prayerful state. I look across the perfectly still lake and see double, my view bisected by the straight, blue/green/brown line of the shore. Above the line—a house, trees, dock, sky. Below the line—a house, trees, dock, sky, all of it upside down and just a little blurry—but not so very blurry because I am the only boat on the water and there is no wind and the water is glass. So the house looks like a house. And the trees look like trees. Even the leaves on the trees look like leaves on trees. The dock is mostly straight and hardly wobbly. The clouds still look like clouds—like cotton candy or maybe mushrooms or dinosaurs. It seems like a trick, like a miracle, this seeing two things at once, two things that are one thing, one thing seeping into the other thing that is not it but somehow seems perfectly attuned to the task of reflection, revelation. It’s as if the lake was made to be a moon, in existence only in relation to the truer thing it mirrors.
I live in two worlds. You do, too, but maybe you don’t know it. Maybe you do, but you sometimes forget. It’s easy to get confused. Both worlds are real, and we see them both at once—like the reflection on the lake. There is the world above the lake and the world of the lake, but even if you could only see the lake world you could still see the other world. It’s there. The lake exists to reflect it. Look—there they are, the lake and the object of its devotion—like the lake got an excellent tattoo.
But sometimes the reflection is more smear than portrait. Sometimes the above world gets blurred, blurry, hard to make out. Especially when the water is choppy—storms, motors, too much flailing about.
Is the world above less real because the reflection is hard to see?
Here’s all I want to say. It’s hardly anything. Just one thing—
Have you considered cutting the motor? Have you thought about waiting for the storm to pass?
What might happen if you tried to sit still and shut up and look?
I def get this. I sit on my little screened porch and see/hear nothing but sky, trees, birds and animals.
Where I find God every day.
Yes.
Thank you.
Frequently when I am out on my porch, I spend more time looking and listening than reading. Being not only silent but still - meaning not even turning a page - allows me to enjoy watching one of my favorite little Carolina wrens as she sneaks in and out of the holly bush and hops to get a bug not 3 feet from my foot. And all of it makes my spirit overflow in love and appreciation for the magnificent Creator Who did it all.