The Still Point

via

Sometime, when you look back, you can point to a time when your world shifts and heads in another direction. In lace reading this is called “the still point.”

~ Brunonia Barry (The Lace Reader)

No matter what all the books and gurus claim, we don’t ever live fully in the present moment. How is this possible when there is such a vast sea of memories within us? We can aim to live each given moment to the full, but we can’t escape the past.

Nor can we ignore what lies ahead. The sum total of our being is comprised of past, present, and future. Our history teaches us what we need to know about ourselves in order to move forward. The present shows us where our feet are standing now. 

Dreams and goals direct us toward the future.

The eternal now is the intersection where all three meet.

Within the still point, past, present, and future exist simultaneously and time, as we know it, disappears completely. ~ The Lace Reader’s Guide

One memory haunted me for the longest time. It wouldn’t let go until I wrote it down and contemplated its meaning. It taught me how empty I was, always on a quest for peace of mind, forever roaming about and knocking on doors, seeking for some outer source to fill my lonely ache. It taught me about the God shaped vacuum.

The Still Point

Beneath a dome of gunmetal sky I push my toddler

son along the bumpy pavement, buckled up

and snug in his umbrella stroller. 

We come upon a ghost campus

at spring break.  The only signs of life today are a

concert of birds in verdant trees, and centerstage,

a fountain cascading into a wishing pool. 

Incandescent fish, like kids at hide and seek,

dart underneath the candock.

The stroller click-clacks onward, over brick pathways

in our pursuit of pleasure.  Here, an octagonal structure

on which a plaque is posted: Peace to all who enter

here.  A locked door.  So much for peace.  Whatever

presence might have dwelt within that place

remains a mystery. 

The meditation center, I’ve been told, has since

been leveled like an old ramshackle privy.

A quarter-century passes. My son grows tall

and travels west, ascends the heights

of Swannanoa where heaven

is more within his reach.

And me?  Even now I stroll toward the still

point in my wandering mind.  And sometimes

I arrive to find the door left open.

Looking back, can you pinpoint a time

when your world shifted and you headed in a different direction? 

The Still Point was first published in Crucible.