Motion

So I’ve had a rough week. Maybe a rough couple of weeks. I’m going through something that people everywhere go through, that is rejection and confusion. So I wondered where these people find their hope. Psalms. That’s a good idea. I’ll read Psalms.
Being the sensible person that I am I started with the first chapter, with every intention of skipping around its’ 150 chapters until I found a temporarily satisfying one-liner which would remind me of a song which might lift my spirits for the moment. I had high expectations this morning. What I found, in the very first chapter no less, was this:
Blessed is the man
Who does not walk in the council of the wicked
Or stand in the way of sinners
Or sit in the seat of mockers
But his delight is in the law of the Lord
And on his law he meditates day and night.
He is like a tree planted by streams of water
Which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not whither
Whatever he does prospers
What has stood out in these verses to me is the concept of a tree planted by streams of water. The image is stuck in my head. I did not at first get the intention of this image and I misunderstood how this tree would be compared to a blessed man.
A tree is a plant and plants come from seeds. A seed recently fallen onto soft ground has the company of other seeds that are going through the same experience and has the safety of the nearby mother tree.
Then the rain comes and the streams form and carry this seed off from safety and into a world of confusion and unrest. The seed is beaten down and washed away until if it is lucky it finds a soft in the sand where it can bury itself.
The problems don’t end there.
If it is fortunate to plant itself, it will spend the rest of it’s’ life struggling to grow while everything rushes around it. Alone and caught in every piece of debris that floats by. Alone.
And the psalmist compares this sad little tree to a man blessed?
Then the revelation occurred. The light bulb which occupies my brain suddenly was now illuminating my senses.
What I realized is that nothing in this entire universe is standing still. The wind is blowing; the sea is turning and the tectonic plates are shifting. The planet is rotating while it spins itself around a sun that, along with everything else in the universe, is propelling further away from each other and while this is all happening I am getting older. Time just keeps going and going and going. I realized that God is the very motion at the center of it all.
He is the stream, constantly moving forward, around, into, out of, underneath and above all of me and all of everything. The problem then, lies in me.
I see that real reality is motion and I do everything I can to keep up. A tree does not move like a stream.
If God had intended on me keeping up He would have made me a stream. He made me a seed. When I find it is impossible for me to keep up- to reach that impossible standard, to be at all times in tune and willing to follow- I give up. When I say I give up, I really mean that I devote myself to a greater, far more challenging task; that is to make everything else stop. I want today to be just like yesterday when I was comfortable with the other seeds under the shade of the mother tree. I want to be able to control my surroundings and their effect on me. I want some predictability.
Nothing in the universe is standing still, who am I to tell it otherwise?
I can’t keep up so I give up and try to force my surroundings into something I can control. Something consistent, something safe, something stagnant. Of course I fail miserably.
But wait! If God didn’t create me to keep up with Him, He therefore can’t expect me to. His command to me is simply to be still. He says "Be still and know that I am God"*. The beauty lies in the motion and I miss that motion when I kill myself with unreal expectations to move as swiftly as He or to keep everything from moving at all. Be still.
Stop trying to understand where I am going and just stand in awe of the fact that I am going. Let My wind rustle through your leaves and My water over your roots. Look around and be amazed at My motion. Be still and know that I am God.
It makes perfect sense. God created us with full knowledge that we could never be who He is so He uprooted us and planted us right where we could be, in the middle of His glorious motion. He planted us in the exact spot where His motion could benefit us the most. We are perpetually nourished because He has channeled all of His motion into our very roots. It’s only when we sit still that suddenly we start moving, but by no means of our own, upward and outward and every way a healthy tree can grow, reaching our highest potential that was instilled in us by our Creator. Our fruit yields in season and our leaves don’t whither. Whatever we do prospers.
We get to be apart of this motion simply by being planted beside it. The beauty is in the motion. Everything around me may look different tomorrow. Everything in me may feel different tomorrow. I might not like it. I may feel like God has moved me to the wilderness. I might be right. I may feel like God has stopped moving all together but it will be ok. God will move somewhere else the next day and I will be with Him because the beauty is in the motion. My emotions may take a downward spiral to depths unseen, or they may traverse the grey line between despair and contentment but it will be ok. The beauty is in the motion, because the motion is from God and I get to be apart of it.
This still life is no doubt a painful one. It is far easier to get hit by debris when you are standing still, but the chaos of His glory makes it worthwhile to suffer the beating of anything which may float your way. Most assuredly it will be uncomfortable, and you will be scarred by the things you are hit with but you will know that God is at work.
This stream doesn’t end in a ditch. It ends in life, real abundant mouth watering life that can never be quenched by stagnancy. Please note there is a difference between stillness and stagnancy. Stagnancy is refusing to be moved, and stillness is subjecting yourself to a flow other than you own, thus allowing God to move through you.
Stillness also is not spectatorship. Spectators merely watch but we get to be apart of it all. We get to be apart of this motion by moving our roots in the direction the stream is flowing so that this stream flows and picks up more wandering seeds and plants them as it did to us.
Stillness is flexible. It has to be as there will be times when God uproots your fully grown trunk and replants you further down stream in a place where His motion is faster, more powerful and covers all places so that your can receive all the nourishment you have grown to need. It also has to be content knowing that absolutely nothing in it’s power can be done to further along the stream or hinder it from moving a certain way.
The stream is wild and untamable, reckless and powerful. The best thing to be is to be beside it. Still. Watching in awe.
I will finish with an excerpt from T.S. Eliot’s "Ash Wednesday."
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea
Suffer me not to be separated
And let my cry come unto thee



*Psalm 46:10