Being. Not Wanting, Having or Doing

The other day my friend Richard Burbach posted a wonderful poem by Edwina Gately, titled Let Your God Love you. The poem reads

Be still.
Alone.
Empty
Before your God
Say nothing.
Ask nothing.
Be silent.
Be still.
Let your God
Look upon you.
That is all.
God knows.
God understands.
God loves you
With an enormous love,
And only wants
To look upon you
With that love.
Quiet.
Still.
Be.
Let your God –
Love you.

I was reminded when I read it of something Evelyn Underhill wrote in The Spiritual Life:

We mostly spend [life] conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have and to Do. Craving, clutching and fussing, on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual, even on the religious plane, we are kept in perpetual unrest: forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in, the fundamental verb, to Be: and that Being, not wanting, having and doing, is the essence of the spiritual life.

The essence of the spiritual life is Being. Such a simple statement, yet one we have to be reminded of over and over again.

Be.

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Be Still

Be still and know I am God, says the psalmist in Psalm 46. It is a reminder I periodically need. I think it is a reminder many of us need now and then.

Actually it is a reminder we need quite a lot. We are always doing.  Always going.  Always planning three steps ahead to get everything done.  We spend so much time doing so many things. Then we do some more. We spend so much time doing (and worrying about the things we didn’t get done) that there is very little time for us to simply be.

Sometimes we need to just stop.  To just be in stillness.  To sit with God with no agenda. Perhaps to give God a chance to get a word in edgewise. I read the other day, “Stillness is the language God speaks, and everything else is bad translation.”

So find a few moments today to stop. To be still.

Be still and know I am God.
Be still and know I am.
Be still and know.
Be still.
Be.