Editorial January 25, 1988 Issue

The value of stillness

Ann Kenrick

My father had an inner core of stillness that enabled him to commune with nature in a rare way. He was familiar with the minutiae of life in the fields and hedgerows that surrounded my childhood home, and it was thrilling, as a young child, to go out with him on a spring morning to search for the first bird's nest and early primroses. But it was not always so easy for an excited five-year-old to maintain the stillness and patience necessary for these treasure hunts!

My father was also a disciplinarian, and sometimes if I had been particularly fidgety at a family meal, he would make me sit quietly beside him for a few minutes when the others had gone. This I found a real ordeal at the time, but it did help me to value quiet times and to develop an inner poise that I have found invaluable as a city dweller in my adult years.

A tranquil state of thought has really nothing to do with the external environment in which we find ourselves, but rather it gives us resort to the higher ground of spirituality, which is man's natural habitat. In this spiritual altitude we can begin to discover our eternal selfhood, forever at one with God, Spirit.

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