As a man living with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from years in Afghanistan and from traumas in several close relationships, the peace one might find in a Feng Shui garden with a store-bought Buddha simply will not do. I don’t need to feel less. I need a bath. I need a cold-plunge after the heat of labor, a rigor which converts to renewal. Therefore, learning how to incorporate attentive stillness into my life has become essential.
Stillness has nothing to do with becoming “more spiritual,” as if I were an Amazon shopper looking for the same-day delivery of a therapeutic product. Rather, it has everything to do with a way of beginning again after each success and setback. It has everything to do with a struggle to find courage to be the person I am designed to be and do the thing I am destined to do. You need that courage too.
These things require a constant processing and releasing of all that disturbs and distracts. It is a “bath,” as I said, in the same way your car windshield needs wiper fluid to cleanse it of bugs, mud, and debris. If the view from our steering wheel needs such a bath, how much more our hearts.
Let me explain with a story from June 28, 2018, which, though true, is also symbolic, an allegory understood in hindsight. It took place while my wife Karen, our son Samuel, our Beirut friend Doraid, and I were exploring southern Lebanon.
Embedded deep within the labyrinth of the bazaar of the port city of Sa’ida (ancient Sidon), we came upon the Church of St. Nicholas. The physician Luke records in Acts 27:3 that Paul stopped here on his way to Rome for his trial before Caesar. (ca. A.D. 58) The centurion responsible for Paul favored him so much that he allowed him to freely meet local friends and receive care from them. Local tradition asserts that Peter also met him here for a moment of mutual encouragement. The current church structure was built in the 700s to commemorate those events. On the floor of the church is a glass observation platform revealing an ancient well, a common rendezvous point from the biblical era.
The modern city of Sa’ida, as with much of southern Lebanon, was a patchwork of militias and shadow governments with mixed loyalties. Some homes displayed the flag of a party aspiring to see a revived, Westernized Lebanon, while others displayed banners declaring their allegiance to Iran and the reactionary ideology its regime represents. After decades of turmoil, the once thriving bazaar, the “old souk” with its stone passages, arches, and charming shops, had fallen into a significant degree of dormancy and dilapidation. Nevertheless, it is one of the oldest continuously populated urban areas in the world, and therefore the rhythms of daily life remained as local people coursed through the souk’s passages. And, as with any congested place, it was full of noise, from people haggling over the price of cloth, to diesel generators making up for the city’s anemic electric grid, to megaphones on minarets making loud declarations five times a day. And it was quite hot wherever the shade of countless corridors broke into open squares and courtyards.
It was through this bazaar and its dwelling places that Karen, Samuel, Doraid and I made our way. And then, without planning to or expecting it, we came upon a homely wooden door with an aging multilingual sign indicating to the pilgrim they had reached their destination: the Church of St. Nicholas.
We entered. The outer rooms and portions of the modest church compound had become a storage depot for items mothballed from use: chairs flipped onto table tops. Bedframes stacked on chicken wire. Warped credenzas. Fallen lampstands. There seemed nothing to indicate we had reached a place of significance.
Until we entered the sanctuary.
The room was absolutely silent. Images of saints and scenes of holy events adorned the walls. Candlelight supplemented the natural light from three high windows in the modest stone room beneath unadorned arches. The light, the scenes, and the saints spoke of the story that the sanctuary honored.
But it was the stillness that spoke the most.
Without a word, all four of us became silent, for we sensed a peace so strong that talking was out of place. We moved to a pew and sat down. We became still. We waited—for what, we didn’t quite know, but what was certain was that it was the one thing we should do. And as we waited, the peace of the place penetrated us. And we became still within the stillness.
Doraid, our friend and chain-smoking cab driver, did not light one up. Instead, as he considered the atmosphere, he whispered.
“What is this?” he said in his limited English. “What is the feeling in this place? Everything is going down…everything is going down.”
And with those simple words, Doraid described the dynamic within each of us, wherever we are, as we struggle to reach the place where our inner life no longer rises up to distract or disturb us, but “is going down.” And, like nothing else, stillness reveals that struggle.
It was as if the labyrinth of the old souk was a symbol of the labyrinth of our souls, with their various passages of hopes, hurts, and hunger; and with their various areas of light and darkness. But, just as we navigated the maze of the souk, even so we can learn to access the place where we become still inside, and the noise of what distracts and disturbs no longer has prevailing influence, but rather, the vulnerable state of being quiet enough to see and hear clearly. It is a state, which, like the glass revealing the sanctuary’s ancient well, reveals the Wellspring we can draw from. For this was the fruit of the stillness in that ancient, hidden place. We emerged from the sanctuary and returned to the complicated world outside with fresh clarity, calmness, and strength for our journey.
The story I have told you is true, but it is also an allegory: You, likewise, can emerge from stillness with the gentle power to navigate the noisy complexity of your world.
To be sure, the first moment in that ancient room of total stillness was like a cold-plunge after a hot workout. It was a shock to the system and initially uncomfortable. Such is the rigor of stillness. But, as when one adapts to the sudden, severe cold-plunge and experiences renewal of the physical body after athletic endeavors, even so, as we persevered in the living stillness of that sanctuary, we discovered a renewal at work in our hearts and minds as the chaos and carnival of thoughts and feelings settled, and inspiring thoughts rose to the center of our attentiveness.
Now, just as in that place, we too can find a peace that gives us power to begin again as we grow in attentive stillness, a habit well served by silence and its companion, solitude. Solitude is to set oneself apart for the sake of attentiveness, rest, or both.
Along with the modern cold-plunge of sports medicine, there is another, ancient version of the cold-plunge: the making of a sword. After each round of fierce heat, the smith plunges the blade into cold water to shape it. And just as the forge tempers and refines a sword, stillness shapes and strengthens your soul.
Life is, in many ways, a battle. It is not only a battle, but often we are contending for hope, for confidence, for courage, and for a clear conscience. Stillness serves that battle. It “forges the sword” of our inner being. It slices through the fog of war to reveal where we are, what we are facing, and what we must do. This is why, in the end, stillness brings joy. For now all is clear, and all that remains is the choice to be brave.
Silence and prayer are related. Prayer is on a spectrum from deep silence to loud cries with tears. Stillness is just one of the vehicles for communing with our Creator and Savior.
Some of us come from a tradition that interprets Psalm 46:10’s command: “Be still and know that I am God” as “Do nothing, for God is sovereign.” Others of us come from a tradition where “silent prayer requests” are a means of avoiding shame.
But stillness and its accompanying silence are not meant for those things. Rather, stillness, silence, and solitude are means by which we cultivate trust and friendship with the One who loves us in the midst of the fractured edges of our culture and the challenges in our lives. Stillness can hold the fragments together and position us to begin the journey of mending them together again.
Perhaps there is no better demonstration of the fruitfulness of such stillness-borne friendship with the Savior than Gregory the Illuminator, of Armenia (A.D. 239-330). A member of nobility punished for his faith, Gregory was cast into a dry cistern infested with snakes and vermin. But instead of perishing, he flourished. Those who knew he was a man from above supplied him with food and drink. Along with the supplies, people would send prayer requests, for word spread that his prayers were effective. What is more, the creatures of the dark were disarmed by his peace. The nation was becoming a tangled mess while the peace from Gregory’s stillness became a new center of gravity. The home of a new word, a new hope, and a new identity for a people was found in silent stillness.
Gregory spent thirteen years confined to that place of silence and stillness. What was the fruit thereof? When the king ordered him to be recovered from the cistern in order to pray for his deliverance from conscience-stricken torment, he healed the king. And in gratitude, the king commissioned him to disciple the nation.
Most of us will not be thrown into a pit for thirteen years, but all of us will face the fractured edges of our world and the challenges of our own lives. Listen to this training video for practical exercises in stillness you can do and assess their effectiveness. The first fifteen minutes recaps most of the above, while the remaining half hour is the series of suggested exercises in stillness.
© Kurt Mähler
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