The Putrified Pond

Growth requires stillness.

In our chaotic lives there is too much movement all around that is not ours. We are pulled one direction then another by our obligations, our duties, our desires. There is so much noise we cannot hear our own voice from the voices of our families, our friends, our lovers, our bosses, our enemies, the woman behind the counter at Starbucks. All the noise runs together. We seek silence, that still pond. There are many ways to find it.

But once we find it … after we have taken our breath of fresh air and listened to the silence for a moment … we begin to miss the noise. Sometimes we splash the water to get it moving again, finding comfort in the noise we made. But we really need to sit and be still. This is hard. We don’t know how to listen to silence. Silence of the soul is the hardest of all. We question if we are even alive. But eventually, after we sit long enough in the still water … the silence is disturbed by the first mosquito that flies by our ear. Out of habit we wave it away, and the water stirs ever so slightly … Then we see.

The water has new color to it. A film has appeared … a small bit of movement as stirred a cloud of dust beneath the surface that was not there before. There is a new smell, a new oiliness to the water. The color turns green. Small fishlike things swim in this still water, larval insects or future frogs.

This is the true nature of our stillness. In the absence of all else, finally we can hear our own voice, but it is not a roar … no … the great foundation moves quietly, dedicatedly evolving. The process stinks. It is unclean. It is impure. It is life … our life. This is who we truly are. There are those who see this and begin working to clean the water, afraid of the effect the transformation would have. Others glorify the transformation and try to maintain the new pond as it is, never letting it grow beyond the muck … but I, and my brethren, want to grow, to transform from simple origins to the meadow, the glen, the forrest.

This is where new life is made. This is where new truth is revealed. Find the stillness so that what is hidden can grow freely. The growth will not be the pretty manufactured ideal others would have you embrace. The growth will be its own. The challenge is in finding the natural beauty that is being created … not in forcing the creation into something else.