Undisturbed.

A few days ago I woke up around midnight with roiling emotions. It wasn’t a personal conflict, but I felt conflicted about a set of relationships in my life. Predictably, it was in the middle of the night that my subconscious decided to churn through it all…and when I woke, my barely-conscious mind obediently took up the task. Knowing that mental gymnastics would solve nothing, I got up to pray and journal through my troubled thoughts.

I walked up the stairs to our prayer room, but instead of turning on the light, my gaze was drawn through the window to the wooded hillside glimmering in the sheen of several neighborhood lanterns. The silhouetted trees stood stolidly in the deep calm with mystical awe. The contrast was gently jarring, my inner tumult juxtaposed by these peaceful sentinels keeping watch through the night.

The wonder and beauty held me in reverence and whispered to my spirit: “I am undisturbed.” It wasn’t a voice as much as a simple, profound knowing that entered my awareness. And I realized that the Voice that spoke this wooded, leafy audience into existence echoes through it still. I wonder if David gazed upon a similar starlit sky when he penned his effusive words…

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. (Ps. 19:1-4)

So if the Word-birthed creation still casts sacred words, what might they be saying? I’ll tell you what I heard that night; it went something like this:

Not a sparrow falls to the ground outside my care. I grieve its passing…yet I am undisturbed. My children are worth more than many sparrows, and they too fall to the ground within my care…yet I am undisturbed. Great tragedies assail my beloved earth—wars, pandemics, and unspeakable injustices. I weep, I mourn…yet the very nature of my kingdom is to be undisturbed.

There is something timeless and unshakable about my Presence in the world that cannot be rocked by human drama, and this is meant to be a great comfort to you, an anchor for your soul. You must carry my heart and then labor for peace and justice in the world, but your authority comes from the quiet place, the undisturbed place. When you forget—when you get swept up in the currents of grief and struggle—tune your ears again to the silent language of the trees, the mountains, and the sky. They sing the great, enduring refrain of birth and death and resurrection. They sing the mystery of the Undisturbed.

 And so it was from this newly-hopeful, freshly-grounded center, I found myself able to intercede for holy realignment within my community…without yielding to the clamorous currents of the drama itself. Albert Einstein famously said that “no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it,” and I find this to be a pretty reliable maxim. I cannot speak meaningfully to the deepest needs of either my own small family or the expansive human family unless I am rooted like the trees in an eternal, transcendent reality at once richly empathetic, yet fundamentally anchored.

Saint Teresa of Avila, a sixteenth century Spanish monastic, mystic, and author of the enduring classic The Interior Castle, lived out this profound rootedness as she engaged a deeply tumultuous era that included the Spanish Inquisition and Catholic Reformation. From that proving ground, she left us this prayer that described the crux of her relationship with God:

Let nothing upset you

Let nothing disturb you

Everything changes

God alone is unchanging

With God all things are possible

The one who has God lacks nothing

God alone is enough

The winds of crisis and dismay abate only momentarily in the brief sweep of our lives, and 2020 has only doubled down on the disturbances we are trying to weather together. Yet like those great wooded sentinels outside my window, we too can weather every storm if our roots run down deep into the heart of the earth, into God’s generous undisturbed self.

ThriveTip

Use Teresa’s prayer above as a journaling prompt this week. Take the first two lines…and write your heart’s response, the next two lines…and again your heart’s response, the final three lines…and your heart’s response. Describe the circumstances in your life right now that challenge those truths, along with your intent to surrender to those same truths. Receive God’s comforting and securing embrace. From this posture, now pray for the needs of those you love.

Takeaway

Healing Presence flows from the Undisturbed Place.