Sunday Soul Food | Reflections for the Soul The Place Where Quiet Finds Me

My quiet little breakfast table, overlooking a rice field in Ubud, Bali.

Good Sunday morning to you my friend, thank you for being here.

As the morning patiently waits outside my door this morning while I gather myself and make my favorite warm brew, I’ve noticed something about... the quiet.

It never comes looking for me when my calendar is full or when I've been busy with household chores.

It waits.

Patiently, fervently until I surrender to it...and it's there every single time I do.

Some mornings, I think I’m searching for peace...

Then I sit outside with my coffee, and I realize…

Peace was never the one that wandered away...

I was.

The trees have never once asked me to hurry, they are just steadfast in their presence.

The birds have never wondered if I’ve accomplished enough this week, they simply carry on about their way.

Even the breeze seems content to move wherever it is carried, asking nothing from the sky except permission to pass through.

Nature has never demanded that I become someone else before allowing me to belong.

Perhaps that’s why I return to her so often.

There is something sacred about a place that doesn’t need anything from you.

But, if we look deeper, we'll see it's not really a place at all, but rather a state of being.

Quietude.

It simply receives you, as if to whisper...come as you are. And somehow, the quiet always knows how to hold me and how to unfold me.

It's never asked me to earn my place within it, it simply always reminds me that I belong.

The quiet doesn't mind if you arrive thriving or barely holding it together....

and it never mistakes busyness for purpose...

it is always enriched with the deeper meaning of existence.

Over the years, I've come to personally believe that the this is the sound of God's voice... quiet...suspended in the depths of stillness....and if you're able to slow down enough to touch that space...you've Graced the most valuable asset you'll ever access.

Maybe that’s why the verse, “Be still, and know that I am God,” has always felt less like a command and more like an invitation. ~Psalm 46:10

I’ve arrived there joyful.

I’ve arrived there carrying questions too heavy for words, and not really wanting the answers I was seeking.

I’ve arrived there after seasons when my heart felt more like winter than spring.

And every time, when I've arrived at it's doorstep... quietude welcomed me just as I was.

Without explanation, no rules of engagement or preconceived notions...

Without expectation and nothing being measured in this space.

Without asking me to leave any part of myself behind, in order to belong.

I wonder if that’s why I feel closest to God when my world grows still...and perhaps that's the infinite quest we're all on in this busy world... to touch it for just a moment's time...to feel what it's capable of..

And it's not that He wasn’t speaking before…He always is...

But we must become quiet enough to hear Him.

Sometimes His voice floods in like sunlight slipping through the trees on my evening walks...

Other times it's in the sound of rushing river waters that gently put a hush over my soul..

And yet sometimes it says nothing at all.

And somehow…

That is enough.

I think we’ve become a little afraid of empty spaces, stillness without distraction....and the true intimacy required to allow that kind of closeness in our souls..to allows ourselves to be unfolded by the silence, the stillness...

The silence between big moments in life or in conversations doesn't always need to be filled.

Remember, the quiet...and the depth of what it's holding for you will always meet you where you are...with an open door...you must simply walk in.

I don’t think the soul was ever meant to bloom in constant noise.

Everything beautiful, rich and alive seems to trust its own becoming.

Maybe we can, too.

So today…

Leave a little room for the quiet.

Not because you have something to accomplish there.

But because you don’t.

Remember, the quiet asks nothing of you...so allow yourself to be held.

Let the wind untangle what your mind cannot.

Let the birds carry the conversation for a while.

Let your coffee warm your spirit.

Sit beneath the sky long enough to remember that you belong to something much greater than your worries.

The quiet has never asked us to arrive with answers.

Only with an open heart.

And somehow…

That has always been enough.

Stay spirited,

with so much love,

Kimberly Ray XO