Thought for the Week: Stopping
Richard Thompson reflects on waking up to the fullness of life
There are phrases that jump off the page at a particular period in one’s life and make a huge impact. Two such phrases were in some notes I took from the Pendle Hill pamphlet Living from the Center by Valerie Brown: ‘stopping is a radical spiritual act and the first step into leading a spiritual life’ and ‘stopping is about waking up to the fullness of human life – the ordinary and extraordinary moments.’
It was in 1969, on the occasion of my first attendance at a Quaker Meeting, that I first came across the importance of pausing or stopping during my everyday life. From that time I built a morning sitting into my busy day. However, I found it impossible to repeat the effort during the rest of the day. Perhaps it is now, in this period in my life, that my whole being is able to respond. My thinking, my feelings and my body are working together more than normally.
Recently, the impact of these words by Valerie Brown was very deep for me. It was when I took my niece to a class in town. I decided, instead of driving back home and then returning for her, to wait for the two hours and read some notes I had made a month ago. That afternoon my body and my feelings, in addition to my thinking, were fully engaged. Why? Three weeks ago I had suffered intense physical pain, as it happened, in Quaker Meeting. As Meeting started, I remember feeling an urgent need to go to the toilet, but I thought: ‘What better place to take on my pain than here, with all those present in prayerful stillness?’ I stayed. Two hours later I was in accident and emergency. A full scan was recommended, in the Urology Department, for ten days later.
I am no youngster, so was reconciled to receiving bad news, despite the fact that the pain had not returned in the waiting period. The big day arrived and I received quite invasive probing by the proficient hospital staff. The results were… clear! (The actual word on the report was ‘asymptomatic’.) Moving forward another ten days to my niece’s class in the centre of town, I see, now, that when I read my old Pendle Hill notes the presence of my body and my feelings were very much to the fore. I was aware of the temporary nature of the physical body and of the need to care for it.
I had written in my diary, soon after the results of my scan: ‘I want all the time remaining to me to be meaningful.’ The shock I had received had raised my awareness of my physical existence. My feelings were also engaged while I sat there reading my notes. I felt gratitude for being, just for being able to be present to the sunshine lighting up the leaves outside, drawing them out of the darkness. I now feel that I need to extend, for myself, the Advice ‘Come to Meeting with heart and mind prepared’ to include the body, too.
In the last three years the planning committee of France Yearly Meeting, of which I am clerk, has included gentle physical movements, sitting or standing, before each session. The responses, judging from the smiles and the requests to do them again, have been very positive. Valerie Brown writes about including the body in those first few minutes of ‘centring down’ in Meeting: ‘I often feel both physically and energetically as if I am becoming heavier, settling into my seat. I begin by noticing how I feel physically. I notice how I am breathing, how I am sitting, the parts of my body. Centring is not about having an empty mind – but an open and receptive mind.’
The next day my T’ai Chi teacher said: ‘Be quiet in your mind and body. Then energy flows!’
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