A quiet time...

Waiting for the movie to start I relaxed and thought of the time I spend just sitting. It is a lost art I think.

Whether you call it prayer, meditation, contemplation or navel gazing, time spent sitting and trying to NOT think about what you need to do next, or when you stand up again is getting to be almost impossible in our 24/7 connected lives.

Two plus years ago, sitting in the RCU (Recuperative Care Unit of the homeless shelter), I spent 16 hours a day sitting in a chair, sitting in a hallway four and a half feet wide staring at the wall. Then the floor. Back to the wall. Floor. Wall....and so on. I listened to the people walking back and forth in the hallway. I could hear the TV in the room at the end of the hallway with Judge Judy and Jerry Springer. But after a couple of days...well, not much to think about when there is NOTHING to do next when I stood up, not that standing up was something I was happy to be doing.

So. I just listened. Mostly I tried to ignore the barely audible brain destroying TV (I swear I could feel brain cells dying whenever I walked into that room). In the evening when people started coming back in for overnight...there were conversations but mostly, 16 hours of sitting.

A funny thing happened. I can't tell you WHAT it is, but I can tell you that I heard things. Not voices, not rumblings. I began to be aware that I knew things I had no particular way to know

I would start to say something and as I was getting ready to speak, I knew that it wasn't right...and the words died before passing out.

I would say something and knew it was right the second I said it. I said things to people that others had told them miles and hours earlier. I said what they needed to hear. I was just spouting my usual pretentious stuff...you know, the stuff I say HERE!

This is of course not turning out as sage as it sounded while I waited for the movie to start....guess that's what happens 7 hours later.

What I want you to do is to find a comfortable place (no, the RCU hallway was NOT comfortable!), relax. Turn off the phone, TV, radio, IPod, turn it ALL off. And listen. Take a shot at 10 minutes, work your way up to an hour over the next month. Try every day.

The Universe is trying to tell you a lot, but ya got to LISTEN.