Well, hey there! It’s been a while since I took to the blog screen. I pray life finds you safe and well.
So, how are you? How have you been? We just embarked upon the last part of the year, entering the second month of the third quarter. The severity of the pandemic and significance of the protests have not stopped the concept of time. I reflect, as we start the month of August. In the southeast, the mind and body have become exhausted due to the heat. It’s almost like an internal clock goes off the end of July and says, “okay it’s time for fall.” We have lived most of this year under the cloud of an unending pandemic and social injustice protests. Yes, they both are closely connected, but that’s another blog (come talk to me if you want to know how). It’s amazing to reflect on where we were, where we are, and where we most probably will be, based on the way things have been done to this point. We can argue solutions and sources, politics and policies, and will most likely gain little progress. There’s still much work to be done, and in no way can it all be addressed in a single blog post from a black girl farmer from Inman, South Carolina.
The issues still perpetuate, and as much as we have tried to “get things back to the normal,” normalcy is far removed. At the start of the pandemic, there was a cooperative brief shut down that brought much peace, serenity and a reconnect to those things that are really important. There was a calming, a settling, a breath of fresh air that even the earth seemed to have noticed. Children had started playing in the dirt, kitchen stoves were turned on the first time, and dinner time at the table was revisited. Individuals were soul searching and a seemingly overall reconnect with YHWH had begun. We relished in the goodness of this good thing in the midst of a pandemic. Yet, somehow, the spirit of anxiety arose and began major disruption and unrest. One of the most terrifying sites I will ever remember is an individual standing in a courthouse with a machine gun strapped to him yelling in the face of one of our lawmakers. In the midst of this unrest, the ugliness of social injustice was brought to surface through the death of George Floyd and others. So in the inhumane, capitalistic desire to keep our economy going, we are STILL in the height of a pandemic, social injustice is still prevalent, and the economy is nowhere near recovered.
Personally, I have had to struggle to keep the focus inwardly. With all that is around, it is hard to be in the world and not of it. When I see the inexhaustible attempt to do things normally, I get frustrated and admittedly somewhat jealous. For YHWH’s instructions to me have not changed since March…”Be Still and Know That I Am God.” There is much instruction gleaned from HIM during stillness. The message rings clear. I cannot be the same person who started 2020. All of these things that we have endured and encountered should make a different person…it must make a different person.
My entire professional life of about 30 years was under the umbrella of busyness. Get it done, make it happen quick, answers needed yesterday. I’m sure this is when anxiety attacks were sparked. So, I engage in daily warfare of flesh against the spirit. The natural desire to do as the world, to get going, to be about it, to hustle, verses Spirit instructing me to “Be Still.” The war is real! The idea of stillness sets the mind in turmoil. Most of us have garnished the ways of the world and think it wasted idleness to set the being still. Doing nothing is not acceptable.
Now contrary to what many may think, stillness does not equate to laziness. This stillness is a settling, a calmness, a fresh breath, a peace that passes all understanding. Here is where the concept of busyness begins warfare. For busyness takes focus away from those things that are important. This anxious spirit hovers overhead trying to maintain center stage, to keep the being from focusing on those things that have virtue and praise. The concept of busyness produces frustration. Frustration destroys peace and to quote my sister…”our peace of mind is no longer marketable; it's no longer on the table.”
My personal fight continues. The fight of the flesh against the spirit. For the spirit tells me to be still, yet the flesh tells me to get busy. Day by day, little by little, precept upon precept, the spirit will win.
What about you?
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