Surprised by Stillness

I walked out of Arabic tonight being almost affronted and startled by the stillness on the campus around me - I was talking to a friend on the phone when I was stepping out, and I had to hang up because of it. Something was going on...

Now I'm going to do a poor job of describing how I felt. The air felt perfectly still, almost like it was frozen in time for that moment. There were of course hundreds of students and faculty walking in every which way, everyone with so much going on in their heads, but they were weaved into the fabric of the stillness. The usual commotion of people - the noise from their conversation, the faint echoes of their electronic musical devices, the beat of their gait - were muted. Even the lighting, the shadows of the trees and buildings, the glimmer of the moon, the color of people's clothing were stilled. I know I wasn't delirious, I know that someone didn't slip a strange pill into a beverage of mine this morning for me to hallucinate.


















Tonight I lived through and experienced a moment when I was taken just slightly out of my self-centered and regimented world of cognition where objects of sight and sounds ceased to be what I've perceived them to be my entire life. For that moment my whole world and everything I thought I knew about it looked and more strongly, felt different and new. In the heart of the stillness God was there.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 3:5-6