Come and Find the Quiet Centre

How do we find the quiet centre when calamity hits?

How do we find the quiet centre when all around us we are being reminded, in the news, and in conversations on the radio and in many circles, that our world is filled with fearful happenings?

I’ve spent the past few months moving from one test to another, always aware, sort of, that I may be harboring something fearful in the cells of my body.  I say ‘sort of aware’ because through it all I was never overcome with fear.  In fact, I don’t think I ever really even acknowledged the possibility that at the end of it all I would not be all right.  And, finally, I am at a place where I am at peace.  I have found the quiet centre.  In fact, I think it was because I was always centred in the certain knowledge of Holy Love, holding me and strengthening me and sustaining me, that I may not have really acknowledged the possibility of an other outcome.

We cannot deny the reality of fearful happenings.  On Sept 9 - as we are all so very aware of ‘9/11’ - we must acknowledge that fearful things happen.  But the gifts that we have been given in ‘9/12’ and ‘9/13’ and ‘9/14’ and all the days that follow are invitations to us to do as Shirley Erena Murray’s hymn proclaims:

Come and find the quiet centre in the crowded life we lead,

find the room for hope to enter, find the frame where we are freed:

clear the chaos and the clutter, clear our eyes that we can see

all the things that really matter, be at peace, and simply be.

Friends, on this weekend of 9/11, ten years later, come and find the quiet centre wrapped in the arms of God’s utterly dependable and unstoppable love.

Sharon Copeman