When my surface emotions fail me, run wild, shout an accusing story, demand attention at the most inappropriate time, or worse, say absolutely nothing at all, and go numb. That’s when I look for a deeper movement. Some may call it values or first principles, but there’s something deeper still, a mystery that whispers truth so quietly that I have to be perfectly still to hear it.
Loud, internal tumult is my cue to step away and get still. When numbness comes, it’s almost a gift, because it produces an inner silence that makes it even easier to reach stillness. Then I ask for something truer than emotion, and wait to receive.
The deep whisper is a better compass than loud surface emotion (those transient feelings that change like the weather) because it points to a direction, a north star, a thing that doesn’t shift with our circumstances. If we are willing, it may point to a relationship with something powerful and loving, because how I respond to a broken system is transformed when my response is shaped by a loving relationship.
While we stay faithful to our work in a broken system, may we get so practiced at internal stillness that the whispers become the most real thing we feel.