Faith and practice. Faith always stayed strong but the practice . . . When I attended Quaker Meeting regularly, it was so easy to slip into the silence. To pause the outside world and let the inner world unfold and reveal itself to me. My mind would easily let go and I’d find the silent rhythm of collective consciousness and my own place within it.

Having only gone sporadically for the last few years, it amazes me how much I must relearn. The distractions, the thoughts are louder than I remember. The silence feels foreign yet I feel less displaced for having sat in it. Like a language that I once spoke fluently that now sounds broken as I try to speak and comprehend. But I recognize it as my own tongue.

I think if I go back and smell the familiar smell of the meetinghouse, feel the familiar grain of the wood floor beneath my bare feet, gaze at the tree through the old distorted glass window, return to the context… maybe I will recall how to be still.