It’s 8:36 am and the only sound in our kitchen is the electronic tick of the clock. Tick-tocks came from pendulums, but they are no longer needed to power an electronic clock, but the sound is an assurance that the clock is running. That’s the only answer I can think of this morning. Other than that noise and the tinnitus in my ears the house is still. I’m writing these words on a MacBook Pro which is connected to the internet and someone somewhere today might read them. I’m connected but unconnected too in an increasingly connected world.
Yesterday a fellow educator wrote about the need for quiet and stillness and especially for his children and I could not agree more. There is a point of over stimulation. That’s part of why I don’t watch the news. I don’t want to be programmed to think a certain way. I’m not Republican nor am I a Democrat. I’m fiercely independent. You can’t put me in a box, I’m bigger than that. I refuse to be a yes/no dualistic thinker. Life is way more complex than that. I’m neither liberal nor conservative. I’m me and I’m created in the image and likeness of my creator and I think you are too. I used to have these words above my desk until I removed them last year, but the thought is still in my heart and it’s borrowed from one of the greatest men to ever live, Robert Holbrook Smith.
“Perpetual quietness of heart. It is to have no trouble. It is never to be fretted or vexed, irritable or sore; to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me.
“It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised, it is to have a blessed home in myself where I can go in and shut the door and pray to my Father in secret and be at peace, as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and about is seeming trouble. “