Looking For Calm

How do we maintain harmony when we are living in a world that feels so chaotic and discordant? There is violence and bloodshed in shopping malls, churches, concert halls, on fields and in every place imaginable. Our schools are forced to spend time devising catastrophe plans and practicing “shelter in place” drills. All the while we are trying to tell our children that they are safe-we believe they are- but do we really know? How can we assure them when much of what they see and hear (even keeping them away from the nightly news) relates to terror, violence and struggle? I heard an interview recently with Bessel van der Kolk, an influential researcher and clinician in the field of trauma and PTSD.  He asked the question, “Are we doing things to change the harmony inside ourselves?” This one makes me stop in my tracks. I am not feeling particularly harmonious-the Christmas decorations were up around town  and in stores before we could donate our Halloween candy and before the Thanksgiving turkey could be cooked and eaten. We didn’t cook a turkey this year -no I didn’t pardon one like the president-I was simply not feeling up to it because turkey with all the trimmings remind me so much of my dad. He could often be found in the kitchen early on Thanksgiving morning deliberately chopping celery, onions and bread for the Hutchinson stuffing that remains such a huge part of my holiday memories. These memories felt hard to be reminded of this Thanksgiving and more than a small part of me wanted the holiday to pass as quickly as it came. So we spent some time establishing a couple of new traditions. We spent part of Thanksgiving morning preparing food for the homeless with other neighbors at Loaves and Fishes, a ministry at St. Stephen the Incarnation. We cooked a nontraditional meal, played card games, took walks in the woods with the dog on those unseasonably warm afternoons.  Were these small attempts at maintaining harmony? How do we know?  When we live in a time where few seem to value compromise, stillness and quiet and even fewer cannot bear to be “doing nothing” because if we are not doing, we cannot be productive and if we are not productive, we can’t make money, and if we can’t make money, we can’t afford ______ and so on and so forth. Imagine if every day we chose time to sit down and have breakfast or dinner together-imagine if there was enough food for us all to have breakfast or dinner? To take moments to share how we feel about each other before rushing off to or home from the days responsibilities and events. Or a day-string of days-month of days that included ten minutes of quiet,  “pure, healthy, non addictive pleasure” as one of my teachers, Chris McKenna would call it. Would these moments help us to change the harmony inside of ourselves? I believe they would because we would be training our brain to slow down and appreciate the good. There is so much good that we often miss because we are rushing from one thing to the next. Imagine if we all stopped when we saw something that struck a chord with us and breathed in ten times…call it, “10 breaths of taking in the good.” What would cause you to pause and breathe in 10 times…the enormity of the trees in the woods, the grace and chemistry between two ballet dancers dancing the Pas de Deux , a conversation with a stranger, a young child planting a bulb in preparation of springtime, a sunrise that colors the entire horizon, the first smile of a baby or first steps from someone that is learning to walk again, the sound of the waves crashing against the shore, the sounds of the city during rush hour, the wind rustling the few remaining leaves on a tree, a friend sharing with you how much you mean to them, a song that you cherish with someone you love, a futbol game where your favorite player demonstrates their prowess, your beloved animal greeting you at the door with a wag after a full day? Are these moments really capable of altering the harmony that exists inside of each one of us? Can these pauses help us to further appreciate and notice the inherent goodness in each moment and in every being? No matter where they come from, what they do, how they look, what beliefs they practice, deity they worship or not and values that they hold dear?