I have often wondered whether especially those days when we are forced to remain idle are not precisely the days spent in the most profound activity. Whether our actions themselves, even if they do not take place until later, are nothing more than the last reverberations of a vast movement that occurs within us during idle days.
In any case, it is very important to be idle with confidence, with devotion, possibly even with joy.
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters on Life
In a few weeks, I’ll become a grandmother again when my son and daughter-in-law’s baby is born. For many of us, I suspect that the joy of welcoming a new grandchild is matched only by the joy of watching our children become parents. It’s been nearly 13 years since my grandson, Griffin, was born. This was the last time I spent hours holding a baby. The last time I felt the kind of idleness of rocking a sleeping child and surrendering to the kind of stillness that whispers, “You are right where you’re supposed to be, doing exactly what you’re called to do.” This is the kind of idleness you can own with “confidence, with devotion,” and most definitely with “joy.” And paradoxically, this idleness often results in the “most profound activity.”
Best known for his Christian allegory, Pilgrim’s Progress, English writer and preacher John Bunyan claimed that “[i]f we have not quiet in our minds, outward comfort will do no more for us than a golden slipper on a gouty foot.” Too often, I’m guilty of seeking “outward comforts” as I reach for my phone or computer, scrolling through posts and videos that invariably lead me down one fruitless rabbit hole after another. When I could—and should—cultivate silence and stillness, I don’t. The images and words that lure me, promising relief from my “gouty” self, tease me with “golden slippers,” which are little more than tantalizing distractions. As they fall away, I’m left with a vacuum that, as Aristotle contended, nature abhors.
Some may argue that, indeed, human nature increasingly abhors a vacuum. In his 1971 novel, Angle of Repose, American writer, environmentalist, and historian Wallace Stegner lamented the many ways we fill our silences:
[The modern age] knows nothing about isolation and nothing about silence. In our quietest and loneliest hour the automatic ice-maker in the refrigerator will cluck and drop an ice cube, the automatic dishwasher will sigh through its changes, a plane will drone over, the nearest freeway will vibrate the air. Red and white lights will pass in the sky, lights will shine along highways and glance off windows. There is always a radio that can be turned to some all-night station, or a television set to turn artificial moonlight into the flickering images of the late show. We can put on a turntable whatever consolation we most respond to, Mozart or Copland or the Grateful Dead.
Of course, if Stegner were alive today, undoubtedly he’d substitute cell phones and streaming services for televisions and turntables. Still, his claims that the modern age doesn’t understand—or value—isolation and silence are founded. We walk and run with earbuds, filling the miles with podcasts and music. We clean our homes and work to our favorite playlists. We subscribe to services like Audible so we can work and drive while listening to books it’s unlikely we’ll sit down to read. Nearly a half-century ago, Stegner understood that, even if we didn’t consciously fill our days with noise, the noise would be there nonetheless, filling our silence and assuring us we aren’t alone.
But there are others, like 14th-century German Catholic priest and mystic Meister Eckhart, who caution against rushing to fill the vacuum, for “[n]othing in all creation is so like God as stillness.” American writer and naturalist Annie Dillard agrees. She contends that “[w]henever there is stillness there is the still small voice, God’s speaking from the whirlwind, nature’s old song, and dance.” And in an oft-quoted scripture, the Sons of Korah, authors of one of the Bible’s oldest psalms, exhort us to “Be still and know that I am God.” [Ps. 46:10] Even as we fill our lives with noise and activity, most of us know—consciously or unconsciously—that to be silent and still is to embrace what St. Augustine calls that “delightful hidden place inside where we can be free of noise and argument.” I think it’s safe to argue that most of us crave a space “free of noise and argument”—for a time, at least. Without this space and its sacred stillness, we struggle to hear God speak. Without this space, St. Augustine contends, “there is no room for reflection in our lives.” And in this space, American author and political activist Marianne Williamson claims we might “create a world that reflects the heart instead of shattering it.”
The world has always been a heart-shattering place. We lose those we love to illness and death, to distance and hurt. Despite our best efforts, we fail to stave off suffering and scarcity. We push through our days treading water, fearful that if we stop moving, we’re losing. In the process, our hearts shatter from exhaustion and fear and loss. In the face of such chaos, however, Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl explains: “You can either panic or pause; choose stillness.” We might argue that this is so much easier said than done. And to this objection, we might do well to remember that Frankl survived four concentration camps, choosing stillness in the midst of chaos and suffering we can only imagine.
Years ago, I chose to “pause” when I walked. This was—and continues to be—one of the best choices I’ve made. I walk in silence. Through the miles, I cultivate the mental and spiritual stillness that too often eludes me unless I’m walking. French painter Henri Matisse understood the power of such stillness, arguing that “[c]reativity requires stillness; it only flourishes in the silence of thought.” As a writer, I compose when I’m walking, for my best words are born “in the silence of thought.” If I fill my time on the trail with others’ words, there’s no room for mine. Over the years, I’ve learned to protect the stillness that prompts creativity.
And soon enough, I will protect the time I have with my new grandson, too, relishing hours in a rocking chair where I can be confidently and joyfully idle, my heart and mind profoundly still. And remarkably full.
