My guardian angel told me to be still and know. Be still and know. Be still and know. Stillness as sides of the brain connecting. Stillness as truth and peace. Stillness as awe and attention. Stillness as true love.

How do we find stillness?

So desperate for stillness, seeking answers about imagination and compassion and empathy, I wrote a dissertation about wide-awakeness. I researched the classrooms of two accomplished high school theatre teachers to see how they create powerful encounters with the arts. Theatre had provided stillness to me during high school when nothing about my life was still. When nothing made sense in my world. Plays made sense. The beautiful words of scripts made sense. The choreography made sense. My dissertation allowed me to look deeply at the stillness I had known during those years.

Think about where you go when you are empty, scared, and alone to feel full, confident, and surrounded in love. Go there for stillness.

I participated in a Turner syndrome study at the NIH. I wrote about it in an essay entitled, “The Unspeakable Gift.” I started the journey of making peace with my body during that study.  I knew no stillness prior to that time. I could never really rest in the silence I maintained around my genetic condition. Finding out about every inch of my physical well-being — about the parts that I had been told for decades would fail, about all the things I would not be able to do, about the soft under belly of feeling ugly and other — brought stillness. Conversation brought stillness. No cure was/is possible, but stillness surrounds the truth.

Think about the the silences in your life. Think about the things that are not spoken but felt deeply, weigh you down, and keep you from soaring. May you find words for those times. May you find stillness there, too.

I went to New Zealand to stand on top of a glacier.  A sculpture outside the art gallery in Christchurch spoke to my heart, Graham Bennett’s “Reasons For Voyaging.” It was part ship’s mast, part sky scraper, part rainbow. The questions that propelled my trip to New Zealand – my reasons for voyaging – were complex. My reasons were a mixture of silences and screams, feats and defeats, scars and celebrations, beginnings and ends. New Zealand brought stillness. I stepped out of my everyday on that voyage. I stepped out of my Turner syndrome reality. I stepped out of the weight of lost jobs and broken friendships and ugly mistakes. I soared over glaciers, felt the mist of fjords on my face, heard a whale’s song, danced with Maori elders, and flirted with tiny blue penguins. I remembered that true love is born of loving myself.

Think about your voyages. Think about your edge and what you learn at the edge. Stillness can be found at the edge.

I went to Bali to study yoga. I learned about stillness there, too. In the silence of the Balinese New Year, I bathed, breathed, burned, chanted, cried, journaled, sat, and twisted. I stood under the waters of Tirta Impul asking for forgiveness. I visited a Balinese Healer seeking spiritual answers to deep questions. (He reminded me I did not have to carry my pain.) I walked on rice terraces searching for Ganesha to remove my obstacles and bless my beginnings. I played with monkeys in a forest. I sent offerings of flowers down a jungle river in a prayer for wholeness.

There is stillness in movement and healing and the warm embrace of the holy in our lives.

Stillness and love are woven from the same thread. I have always loved the Mary Oliver line, “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what is loves.” That seems to describe the stillness of true love perfectly. We all search for true love. In loving ourselves from our full selves we love one another. Listen to the soft animal of your body. Hug and smile and cry and dance. Love what you love. Simply love. That is what it means to be still and know.