It is all that is created.
― Julian of Norwich, on holding a hazel nut in her palm

 
 All The Best Things
 are smaller than we imagine.
  
 Think of acorns with their wee brown caps;
 pieces of bottle glass hidden in the gravel,
 their edges worn smooth enough to pocket;
  
 of snowdrops and their paper white blossoms—
 but think smaller still
 to the embroidery of green that hems
 each petal.
  
 Think of wrinkles that run like tributaries
 from your grandmother’s eyes:
 such rare, fine lines spilling into
 the delta of her life;
  
 of all those frothy seeds that catch the breeze
 and how silently they travel,
 how they make a way
 without fuss.
  
 Think of the moment inside a moment,
 the nucleus of your time here.
  
 Think smaller than you’ve ever dared—
  
 and even smaller still.
  
  
  
   

If I had a flower every time I thought of you. . . I could walk through my garden forever.
― Alfred Lord Tennyson

Throughout my life, I’ve been blessed with a garden of best friends. Brilliant blossoms, each one of them. And how much richer, how much lighter my life has been because I’ve taken counsel from and found refuge in them. Tennyson is so right: if I had a flower each time I thought of these friends, I could walk through my garden forever.

In Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel Beloved (1987), Sixo, a slave at Sweet Home plantation offers his feelings about a woman he walked 30 miles to see:

She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It’s good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.

Someone who gathers up all your messy pieces and gives them back in the right order, who is a friend of your mind, is a best friend, indeed. In some of the lowest points in my life, I can recall the remarkable comfort of knowing that my friend would gently put me back together again. Because she knew me–my past, my dreams, my mind. My best friendships have always been open invitations, guarantees that the door would always be open and compassion just a phone call away. How do you measure such gifts?

And when a child becomes a young woman, when she evolves from one being cared for into one who cares, this is a friendship blossom of rare distinction. My granddaughter, Gracyn, will turn twelve in a few weeks. For eleven years, she has been my granddaughter, but recently, I’ve come to know her also as a best friend.

How do I measure this gift? I hope that I’ll have years to walk through this garden, for each bloom here is more extraordinary than the next.

 
 Why I Am Without Words
         --for Gracyn
  
 Rooted to the kitchen floor, I stand before you
 as sobs crash against your tight-lipped resolve,
 your tongue useless to stay the flow
 of something dark and cold that rises within
 and threatens to undo you.
  
 I’m leaving for three weeks,
 and you’ve just helped me load my suitcases for the trip. 
 We can’t bear to look at each other,
 and shoulder to shoulder as we close the car door,
 we quake, our fragile souls quiver.
 It’s not for long, I say, just a couple weeks.
 But the March wind seizes my words 
 and whips them away like chaff.
  
 Today, you’ve sent me a photo of the hyacinth
 blooming in my garden.
 Because I know you were waiting for them to bloom, you say,
 because they might die before you get back.
 Miles away, you think of how I’ve waited for these first blossoms
 and how I might be missing you as much as you miss me.
 Best friends do such things.
 For eleven years, you’ve been my granddaughter,
 but now—
  
 Now, I’m without words.
 I have no language to speak this mercurial joy that washes over me
 each time I think of you thinking of me.
 What can I say but that the blossoms here are lovely enough;
 that time crawls on as it must;
 and that even if all the hyacinth wither and die,
 my best friend is watching the road
 waiting for me to come home.
  
  
  
  
  
   

  I’m just a soul whose intentions are good
 Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.
 “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” The Animals
    

One of the most complex moral positions I can think of is balancing good intentions with humility. Because our good intentions tend to elevate our self-importance. And because armed with good intentions, it’s too tempting to rationalize that the end really does justify any and all means. We have a penchant for knighting ourselves and climbing onto our moral high horses, intent on vanquishing the enemy and saving the land. For as Ralph Waldo Emerson argues, a good intention clothes itself with power.

As in any age, there is no shortage of good intentions today. Choose any political, social, economic, spiritual, or cultural ideology, and you will find individuals of good intent. At one time or another, these individuals have probably paid lip service to Samuel Johnson’s claim that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. But clothed in moral power, they may not have the eyes to see that they’re traveling a a deceptively dangerous route.

Whether we canonize ourselves or villanize our enemies, both come too easily for many of us with good intentions. To keep our moral fervor burning, we frequently fuel the fire with a tried and true accelerant: a big, fat, decisive battle line. As long as we can keep the bad guys solidly on their side of the line, we can rally the troops, most of whom really want a well-defined common enemy. Threatened by ambiguity, we argue that we must be clear-headed and single-purposed if we’re to do the good we intend.

English Nobel Prize Winner Sir Ralph Norman Angell writes:

Let us face squarely the paradox that the world which goes to war is a world, usually genuinely desiring peace. War is the outcome, not mainly of evil intentions, but on the whole of good intentions which miscarry or are frustrated. It is made not usually by evil men knowing themselves to be wrong, but is the outcome of policies pursued by good men usually passionately convinced that they are right.

We go to war with so many enemies, real and abstract. And, as Angell writes, we do it paradoxically in the name of peace and righteousness. If our intentions are miscarried or frustrated, we want it to be known that we acted for good. I’ve been reading Dr. Kristian Niemietz’s book Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies. Dr. Niemietz is the Head of Political Economy at the Institute of Economic Affairs and formerly taught economics at King’s College London. Whether you advocate for or against socialism, it’s hard to argue with his claim that intellectuals have historically praised each of the world’s socialist experiments at their conception and throughout their infancy (the Soviet Union under Stalin, China under Mao Tse-Tung, Cuba under Castro, East Germany under the SED, to name a few). Later, after each failed–some more tragically than others–these same intellectuals claimed that this was because these socialist leaders had gotten it wrong. That is, they weren’t doing socialism right. Even though they may have begun with good intentions, ultimately they miscarried and botched the real ideology.

I wonder if generations to come will look back at our current political, economic, and social battles through the same lens: that we just weren’t doing it right. And this goes for advocates and activists on both sides of the political aisle, for those who hold very different views on how to make the world a better, safer, more sustainable place. Most speak and act with passion for the greater good, but in the end, many of their good intentions are still miscarried. By whom? Too often by themselves.

Hindsight is 20/20, and it’s certainly easier to look back on any battle with clearer heads. But consider those who have remarkably clear heads during the battle. When I think of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. leading civil rights’ advocates through the streets of Birmingham and other southern cities, I am amazed at his clear head in the midst of a terribly complex moral situation. How do you fuel the fire of your cause without these fires burning uncontrollably and damaging everything? That is, how do you keep your righteous passion from erupting into violence? While your eyes are fixed on the final prize, how do you also keep your eyes fixed on the means by which you win it?

King, a minister as well as civil rights’ activist, adopted the model of Christ’s civil disobedience. In doing so, he worked tirelessly to temper passion with humility. If police arrested you, King modeled that you were not to resist but go willingly to jail. If someone spit at you, cursed you, struck you, you were not to respond in kind. He instructed his followers to treat others, especially those who intended to hurt them, as they would like to be treated. To gauge King’s success using the model he’d adopted, I’d argue that King worked with good intentions for a good end, which was realized through good means.

Professor and novelist Shanti Sekaran writes of good intentions in her novel, Lucky Boy:

And good intentions? These scared him the most: people with good intentions tended not to question themselves. And people who didn’t question themselves, in the scientific world and beyond, were the ones to watch out for.

Our world moves fast. We can send our well-intended views digitally to a global audience in the blink of an eye. We can do this so quickly and so automatically that we often don’t question ourselves. To ask ourselves for restraint, for more time to consider, for greater understanding–particularly of our opponents–seems so counter cultural. Still, if we don’t ask these things of ourselves, what will keep us from clothing ourselves with unchecked power?

If I could write my own epitaph, I’d like it to be something like this: She was one who lived her good intentions with humility. Considering I’m not dead yet, I’m hoping to have some time to work on this.

photo by Greg Rosenke

  
 
 
There is nothing to save, now all is lost,
 but a tiny core of stillness in the heart
 like the eye of a violet.
 ― D.H. Lawrence       

                      

Google stillness, and you will find a multitude of sites dedicated to the practice and benefits of stillness. Stillness is cool now. It’s the thing to do–or more aptly, to be–the stuff in which yoga masters, gurus, meditators, counselors, and wellness entrepreneurs find their bread and butter, their strong foundation, their core (choose your favorite metaphor).

Most people define stillness by negation. It’s not movement, it’s not doing something, it’s not noisy. But ask others, and they’ll tell you that stillness is our most intense mode of action (Leonard Bernstein), the still small voice of God (Annie Dillard), the most beautiful of all trees in the garden (Thomas Merton), the dancing (T. S. Eliot), the eye of the violet (D. H. Lawrence), the most profound activity (Rainer Maria Rilke). Where some see what stillness is not, others see what it is and what it can be.

There’s something romantic and spiritual about stillness. It conjures up images of Henry David Thoreau tucked away in his cabin at Walden Pond, communing with nature–and only occasionally with people. Or William Wordsworth tramping through the Lake District of England, lonely as a cloud. Or St. Therese of Lisoux, the little flower, who lived her short life as a cloistered Carmelite nun. It seems almost other-worldly, a practice reserved for special people, perhaps reserved for those upon whose unique genetic code has been written all the secrets of stillness.

It goes without saying that for most of us regular folk, stillness seems exotic, exceptional, and exclusive. Even as we sit at our desks or kitchen tables, as we wait in line or in the car, our thumbs and eyes move rapidly as we text, scroll, and search. And our brains? It often seems that they can’t–or won’t–land. They’re swallows without roosts, stringless kites being whipped about in the March wind. And so it’s no wonder that stillness has become a business. Too often, we’ll buy what we can’t do for ourselves (or what we won’t do for ourselves). We’ll order the stillness how-to books from Amazon. We’ll attend weekend seminars. We’ll listen to podcasts and watch YouTube videos. We’ll download apps. Because we can’t turn off the noise in our heads, we turn to those who’ve made stillness look possible.

In The Angle of Repose, Amercian novelist Wallace Stegner writes:

[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.

Here’s the rub: our age knows nothing about isolation and nothing about silence. If to be still means that we must be isolated and silent–at least for a time–then we’re up the proverbial creek without a paddle. Many of us work actively to never be alone and to fill any silence we encounter. And we have such easy access to information and entertainment right at our fingertips. We can stream it all 24/7. So, to intentionally isolate ourselves from others and to turn off all of our devices seems so counterintuitive. And downright tough.

Once again, I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to attend an artist’s residency for several weeks. With the exception of an introductory meeting with the other two resident artists, I’m alone with my books and computer. And because there have been near gale-force winds the past couple of days, I’ve been relatively still (as in physically inactive because it’s too challenging even to walk). The only sound in my apartment is the furnace going on and off, as well as the persistent wind in the trees. I’d like to say that this isolated, quiet environment has made it much easier to still my thoughts and my fingers that continually search for something to hold or to do. But that would be a real stretch.

Still (pardon the obvious and horrible pun!), there have been moments. In his Letters on Life, German poet Rainer Maria Rilke writes:

I have often wondered whether especially those days when we are forced to remain idle are not precisely the days spend 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. The days when even our hands do not stir are so exceptionally quiet that it is hardly possible to raise them without hearing a whole lot.

I’ve realized that my moments of authentic stillness have come from a confidence in, a devotion to, and a joy in being idle. Away from my real life, I find it easier to be rather than to do. After all, that’s the point of a residency like this. It’s my job to be still, to set myself apart from all that might interfere with creating. Like Rilke, I have found that the most profound activity has come in these moments of stillness. And I don’t take these moments for granted.

Author, activist, and spiritual leader Marianne Williamson cautions us to slow down, to learn how to go deep. She writes:

The world we want for ourselves and our children will not emerge from electronic speed but rather from a spiritual stillness that takes root in our souls. Then, and only then, will we create a world that reflects the heart instead of shattering it.

I don’t believe that many of us would argue with Williamson’s claim that the world we want won’t emerge from electronic speed. Some of us will agree that this world must come from a spiritual stillness that takes root in our souls. And most of us hope for a world that reflects the heart instead of shattering it. But how do we cultivate a spiritual stillness in our souls? How do we carve out the solitude in which this stillness can take root? And how do we teach our children?

Good questions, all. Perhaps we can start with the recognition that stillness gives more than it takes, that it’s profoundly active, and that it matters deeply. I’m sure that I’ll leave this residency with a greater appreciation of and deeper devotion to stillness. But I realize that this isn’t enough. It’s the continued commitment to the practice that will truly make the difference between paying lip service to stillness and living it. I hope to live it.