The Weight of Stillness

There is a particular kind of waiting that belongs only to the young. It is a restlessness that has not yet learned to be impatient, a shifting of weight from one foot to the other while the world moves at a pace dictated by ancient rhythms. We often mistake this stillness for an absence of thought, but it is actually a quiet fermentation. In the long, slow hours of a day, when the sun tracks across the floorboards and the air grows heavy with the scent of incense and dust, the spirit is doing its most important work. It is learning to inhabit the present moment, even when that moment feels like a long, unbroken thread. To be still is not to be empty; it is to be a vessel waiting for the light to catch the edges of one’s own unfolding. How much of our own wisdom was gathered in those long, quiet afternoons when we had nothing to do but simply exist?

Ryszard Wierzbicki has captured this delicate suspension in his work titled Bored Monks. It is a gentle reminder that even in the most sacred of places, the simple, wandering mind of a child remains a beautiful, quiet mystery. May we all find the grace to sit with our own stillness today.