Quiet Time

creating a personal retreat at home

Is your heart ready for a time of stillness, meditation, and connecting with Nature? Before the busyness of the holiday season arrives, gift yourself with time to reflect, connect with Nature, and express your gratitude for the beauty and bounty of Mother Earth.

Everything offered below can be used to create a personal, private, contemplative retreat day right at home. So claim time, mark your calendar. Slip out of the busyness of life and into the timelessness of your inner life. 

The words, poems, images, and stories shared below can be used as inspiration for journaling, art journaling, painting, meditation, or anything else that nurtures your soul.

The themes of this season offer many possibilities for turning inward and finding calm within yourself.

• The Themes of the Season: slowing down, turning inward, simplifying, unburdening, letting go, releasing, aging, vulnerability, nakedness, essentials

In this season, seek Nature's wisdom. Look for the uncomplicated and essential. Discover what's beneath the surface of everyday life. 

Sunset, Andrew Wyeth

Ponder these words from Andrew Wyeth...

"I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it; the whole story doesn't show."

Allow the beauty and simplicity of the cycle of life to turn before your eyes. Glean its lessons and let them root in your heart. 

"Have you ever noticed a tree standing naked against the sky, 

How beautiful it is?  

All its branches are outlined and in its nakedness 

There is a poem, there is a song.  

Every leaf is gone and it is waiting for the spring.  

When the spring comes, it again fills the tree with 

The music of many leaves, 

Which in due season fall and are blown away. 

And this is the way of life."

-   Krishnamurti 

Is there enough grace and elegance of spirit in you to be like the trees? Can you find a poem or a song etched in the vulnerable nakedness of your soul?

When the mind and body are still, what arrives in you? Do you ease into peaceful bliss, or do intrusive and worrying thoughts cloud your mind?

One of the reasons we often avoid meditation, being still, making space, and being silent is because fears, worry, and pain all too easily slip in. 

We can never heal ourselves if we flee from our wounds. 

Mary Oliver has beautifully wise words for us about worry...

I Worried

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers 

flow in the right direction, will the earth turn 

as it was taught, and if not how shall 

I correct it? 

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven, 

can I do better? 

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows 

can do it and I am, well, 

hopeless. 

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it, 

am I going to get rheumatism, 

lockjaw, dementia? 

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing. 

And gave it up. And took my old body 

and went out into the morning, 

and sang.

I love how she begins by admitting worry over things entirely outside her control, like the garden growing and the earth turning on its axis. But, then, there is a moment of recognizing the ridiculous when she realizes that she cannot "fix" these things, nor is it her responsibility should they ever go amiss. 

She then moves to worry over her own perceived shortcomings. Here she must make peace with her imperfect self. 

Finally, she has peeled back the layers and confronts the root of her genuine and terrifying worry. Will her body fail? Will her mind collapse?

Of course, they will eventually. It is with this final acceptance that freedom comes. We must pull ourselves together and live, preferably while singing. 

 

In A Time for Leaving, Mary Fahy tells an enchanting story through a conversation between two trees called Faithful and Joy.  

"I think we are blessed by the rhythms of our year," Faithful said at last. "We may not always be ready, but it is necessary for us to let go of one season in order to welcome the next. The weight of snow on leaves is a heavy burden."

"What about oak trees?" argued Joy. "I remember seeing old brown leaves on their branches in the springtime."

"Ah yes! They are a mighty stubborn family," laughed Faithful. "Their leaves hang on tenaciously until spring buds come to push them off. When all others stand in graceful nakedness, the oaks are burdened with their stubbornness," said faithful. "It is scary for each of us to let go and open ourselves to the unknown."

Joy is angry and fearful about losing her leaves and asks Faithful if she is sad about losing her leaves.

"Part of me is sad," admitted Faithful, "but another part feels relieved, for it is time to lay down my burden of fruitfulness.

""Burden?" Joy was incredulous. "I never knew you considered fruitfulness a burden. You seem so happy to be giving to others."

"I love being fruitful." her friend said, "but I also need a time when I can stand stark against the sky and just be me -- not for my shade or beauty or nurturing. I need to feel the sun and rain directly, not as they filter through my leaves. The leaves stretch me to grow, but they also weigh me down. When the wind blows they pull me in all directions. I love them, but I need a season to be without them."                                         

Being in a state of "not giving" may be entirely new to you. You may never have experienced a time when you weren't taking care of others or taking responsibility for people, projects, or outcomes. But, like the tree, Faithful, your entire identity may revolve around what you provide for others. 

As the mother of an adult child with special needs, I know this situation well. I also know that stepping out of the role of provider, protector, carer, fixer, nurturer, and leader is essential to your well-being. 

This doesn't mean abandoning those you care for or even going on a three-week vacation. On the contrary, brief times of mental, physical, and emotional respite are far more practical and can be therapeutic and affirming for you. 

Finally, we come to a call to release. Releasing what burdens us refreshes and renews our souls. 

Beautiful words from Asia Suler guide us in this process.

"This Autumn, let something die.

A worry, a relationship, a project that has run its course. Let go of anxiety over the future. Let go of guilt.

Let go of other people's dreams for you. Let go of the fear that happiness or success or love or joyousness somehow isn't for you.

Let go of feeling unwanted. Go outside. Can you feel how deeply your presence is craved here?

Let go of the small and burdensome things. Gifts never opened. Keys without a lock. Broken earrings, old love letters, the ephemera on your fridge.

As David Whyte writes, "Anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you." This Autumn, let go of all the clothes you have outgrown.

Let go of comparison. Let go of doubt. Let go of the feeling that you are somehow not good enough.

Because every imperfect apple that lays soft in your hands and every ray of low Autumn sunlight that warms you through woolens will tell you a different story, a much truer story. The story that you are more, much more than enough. That you bless this world simply by being alive."

Enjoy your time of retreat and contemplation. Rest in it, and allow it to renew you from the inside out. 

If you create art, write, take photographs or gain insights during your fallow time of quiet rest and would like to share them in the comments so they may be witnessed, received, and inspire others, that would be a joy to see.