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In my work with young men coming out of prison—especially if they’ve been incarcerated for two decades or less—I have learned how much temptation there is to make up for lost time.
Often there is a kind of frenetic urgency to experience as much as possible in as little time as possible & this desire to live all of the life they have missed very often leads them back to prison.
They are not usually aware of this desire but making them aware of it can help.
They are not usually aware of this desire but making them aware of it can help.
Early in their new-found freedom I try to instill a piece of wisdom from Blaise Pascal: “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
I tell them: work hard every day, go to your support group, listen to your mentors and counselors, go for walks to process your day, make yourself dinner, and at the end of the day learn to be content with sitting still at home in silence in the corner of your room.
This advice tends to bear fruit when they emerge from a second stint in jail or prison and remember the advice to learn stillness.
And as Pascal knew this is a centering reality that every person must embrace if they are to become human and if we are to have a human culture.
And as Pascal knew this is a centering reality that every person must embrace if they are to become human and if we are to have a human culture.
It may seem like a leap to go from guiding my brother prisoners in Jesus Christ to discussing new parents with children but, believe me, something like the same counsel applies to them.
Couples with small children frequently ask me how to handle their new reality of 1-3 small children. How can they keep doing it all? How did Debbie and I do it all?
The hard truth is you can’t and we didn’t.
The hard truth is you can’t and we didn’t.
It may seem like the most obvious thing to say but it often comes as a revelation or a relief to hear it: the way you went and went and went as a couple or as single persons before you had children is at an end. You have to let go of that life.
These littles ones need your presence and your time and your care and that means there’s a lot more staying in one place, usually that’s home.
It’s easier on the budget. It’s easier on energy and nerves and it’s really what these little humans need. And you need it, too.
It’s easier on the budget. It’s easier on energy and nerves and it’s really what these little humans need. And you need it, too.
We all need to slow down and tend to our souls and the souls of our children. We need the space just to be in all of the chaos of little ones at home and then in the evening to be still and silent and content.
When our first five were 6 years old & under we were planted in the rich soil of our domestic life together for better or worse.
Living in California, we didn’t have the resources to go & go & go but if we had I hope we would’ve maintained the sanity of being rooted in a place.
Living in California, we didn’t have the resources to go & go & go but if we had I hope we would’ve maintained the sanity of being rooted in a place.
The Benedictines call this the discipline of stability. Humans old and young need it and human societies thrive on it.
It’s in these little ways that we die to ourselves and our frenetic desires, especially as we lay down our lives for little humans, that the world is reborn.
It’s in these little ways that we die to ourselves and our frenetic desires, especially as we lay down our lives for little humans, that the world is reborn.
Last night, my granddaughter stayed with us while my daughter and her husband got some time away. She was running about the kitchen close to bedtime, generally making new messes while Deb was trying to clean.
I scooped her up and took her outside. I tried to put her down in the grass. I tried to put her down on the rocker. I tried to put her down on the porch. Normally, she would be off to the races but last night she didn’t want to do any of that. She clung to me and shook her head.
What I finally figured out is that she wanted to be held by Pop Pop and to look out on the world and to listen to the world (“doggie” “owl!” ) in my arms and from my height. Ultimately, she just wanted to be still and quiet with me, and in that stillness to commune.
One of the ways I practice stillness now, now that I am in my fifties and my children are grown, is by gathering with a rotating group of about a dozen men for Lectio every Friday morning at 6.
We sit in silence after listening to a passage of Scripture and then we go around the room as at an AA meeting, listening to how each of us is hearing the text we’ve just read out loud.
Today’s passage was Colossians 3:1-11. Drew noticed the way Eugene Peterson rendered verse four: “...be content with obscurity, like Christ.”
In a world of digital distraction, of comparing my life with others via social media—comparison being the thief of joy—this temptation to be endlessly in pursuit of experiences is, it seems to me, at an all-time high in human history.
None of these forces counsel us to be obscure or still or content. They rather teach us to be ever-in-motion, ever-consuming, ever unsatisfied, always fragmented and rundown by insatiable desires.
When we practice stillness and obscurity we can encounter healing, we can be put back together, we can recollect, we can recreate, we can find our center in silence. We can be set free to be for God and for others.
