I called my dad today. He’s 91 and doing well. He still works; he moves furniture at the retirement campus where he lives.
I caught him up on my life.
I’m crazy busy with transitional activities — selling a home, moving, completely remodeling another home, supporting my two daughters as they transition into adulthood, helping plan and support a succession process at my work.
I always try to get my dad to tell me what he’s been thinking about. He’s a thinker, a very spiritual person, philosophical, a reader, idea-centric.
I thought I’d get nothing this time but then out it popped. He’s been thinking about the “quietness of God’s presence.”
I asked him what that means.
He said, “I can’t sleep at night. I wake up. I don’t know what to do so I just enter the quietness of his presence. I don’t say anything. I don’t pray. I just worship. I’m dumb before him.”
I like it. I told my dad I like it; I do. I can’t imagine why I’d like this right now, but “hmmm.”
He finished up by saying, “In the quietness of his presence the answers will come. When I don’t know what to do, I just wait. The answers will come.”
I’m so busy, and so not quiet. I’ve been so anxious of late, slammed with the tyranny of the processes I am currently caught up in. I’m so in need of the quietness of The Presence.
What a fresh-breath idea from my old, quiet papa!
I hung up the phone, with our mutual “bye, bye’s” and a good sense of what to do next.
Thrive! 