Holy Stillness

Reflection and Poem for Winter / Lent

Treasures of Darkness : Holy Stillness

I have found that spiritual, emotional, and physical healing can begin even in times that are darkened, cold, alone, silent … when I still my heart and contemplate the “treasures of darkness” (Isaiah 45:3). One of the sweetest treasures of darkness is the realization that we are not alone. This realization encouraged me anew this winter as I considered that nature also experiences the waiting of weighty clouds, chilled soil, and dormancy.

In much of the Northern Hemisphere, at least, we have been waiting for lighter, warmer days of nature’s renewal. And during these days of Lent we also recall, again, Jesus’ crucified body waiting in a dark, cold cave of death. When Jesus “woke up” in that closed tomb, did he open his eyes to darkness? Or did his open eyes, his very breath and resurrection-life energy, shine light into the darkness even before the stone rolled away? St John wrote about that Light shining even in darkness, perhaps especially in darkness (John 1:5).

Moments come during periods of waiting that are holy, even healing. One morning this past winter I sat in meditative prayer in a corner room of our basement. That room has two windows with below ground-level window wells. During the summer, toads and tiger salamanders dwell in those metal-walled, dirt floor spaces. In summer, my grandchildren like to look for and watch the toads and salamanders.

During winter, these denizens of the deeps dig into the earth and wait in darkness, finally emerging again in late spring. One cold, sequestered, lenten morning I was thinking about these creatures—and my own sense of waiting—when this poem began coming to me:

Holy Stillness

There is no heartbeat
in a seed
Yet life waits
in that brittle encasement
as surely as in the stilled
breathing and slowed
beating heart of
toads and salamanders
in winter deeps and
sleeping bears in caves

Waiting, waiting, we wait
in lengthened nights and
chilled soil and cloistered suns
for warmer, lighter, moister days
to dawn
From on high—and pulsing
in the depths—we hear
“Wait… Wait… Be still…”
and “Coming—
I have, I am, I will.”

~Catherine Lawton
   from the book Where All Things Meet, Mirror & Mingle

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Photo: Ehud Neuhaus / Unsplash