On Doing Nothing

          Many years ago, in another time and place, when my son was a very small boy, we had an overstuffed, wing back chair that sat close to a bay window. Often my son would scramble up onto the shoulders of that chair and silently gaze out that window for long periods of time. If I saw him, I would usually ask: “What are you doing?” The answer would always come back: “Nothing.”

Who knows what goes in a mind....

I was wise enough not to probe any further. Who knows that goes on in a mind engaged in non-engagement? What flights of fancy or far-stretching vistas can be taking place in the mind’s silences? And who am I to interrupt a young mind’s searching?

Let the mind have its wandering ways....

Would that such unplanned times were easy to find again, that we could shut out the news and the noise enough to let the mind have its wandering ways … perhaps to allow a light long hidden from the fracas to illumine the quiet, receptive mind. And not simply a young mind either!

"Gathering" times...

I believe we all need "gathering" times to let the mind stray away from necessary attentions into the fields of discovery that always await. I call these “God’s wonderful surprises,” and they are simply uncountable.

It would be wonderful again, wouldn’t it, to sit on the back of a big chair, doing nothing. Surely it can’t be that hard to find!


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