Be Still

Another stirring reflection from Peter Norlin, Executive Director of the OD Network. This one stirs us to be still:

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here. 
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers, 
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
                                                   -David Wagoner, “Lost.”

For those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere, we’re now moving toward a dark time-and I mean that literally. On the Winter Solstice we’ll awaken in darkness, and darkness will return more quickly than on any other day of the year. This year, it’s difficult for me not to experience this darkness as metaphoric. Every day brings more information about our descent into (what seems like) an economic underworld, and I find myself feeling more and more uncertain about what’s happening, what’s going to happen, and what I should be doing. I have to work myself hard not to allow darkness to infuse my thoughts about the future and to remind myself, as I did last month, that “this, too, shall pass.” I have to work hard not to feel lost.

That’s why Wagoner’s poem feels like such a lagniappe, a Cajun word meaning an unexpected, surprising gift. The general response in our culture-and certainly in myself-when feeling helpless and confused is to act, to do something, and to do it quickly. Perhaps I can quell the rising sense of my own inadequacy by responding to the injunction in the Nike advertisement: “Just do it!” That’s not what Wagoner’s forest asks for, though. In order for the forest to find us, and for us to be found, we have to stop hyperventilating and flailing about. When we don’t know where we are, we have to do something counterintuitive: we have to stop, quiet ourselves, and wait. That’s the only way we can finally meet-and find ourselves befriended by-that which we fear. The power of this poem is its message that if we do not take time to breathe and pay attention to what surrounds us, in the moment, we will unconsciously bypass the resources we need to find the pathway out of our confusion and anxiety.

Marv Weisbord and Sandra Janoff reinforce this message in the title of their newest book, Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There! It’s so easy in our work, as in many so-called helping professions, to over-function. To allow others’ anxiety to propel us to “do something,” or perhaps more dangerously, to allow our own anxiety to prevent us from suggesting to our customers that perhaps now is a time for a different kind of risk: the risk of not-doing. Perhaps it would be better to take time for careful thought, deliberate reflection, and evolving discernment, rather than to succumb to the seduction of precipitous action and risk its consequences. It seems to me that we’ve seen enough of the latter lately, everywhere we turn. I believe that one of our most valuable contributions as a profession is encouraging those whom we serve to watch, to listen, and to think. And then to let the forest find us.

 

 

Tags: David Wagoner, Marv Weisbord, od network, Peter Norlin, Sandra Janoff, Winter Solstice