letting the quiet in
Let me be like a little light, a little flame that grows, stronger, steadier and brighter.
I’m not religious (nor am I even Catholic to begin with), but I do like going into churches in Europe when I can; I like finding one in a city I stay in for a while that can start to feel like “mine.”
There’s just something incredibly peaceful about it. Walking the length of the apses slowly, looking at the candles people light for the sick or lost. The way the flame flickers when first lit, as if it might go out, but then it finds itself, settles, grows. When somehow a breeze passes through the church, all the little flames tremble together.
I like to just sit sometimes as well, for a sort of non-religious contemplation. Sometimes when I’m feeling mixed up, just being somewhere so quiet, so monumental, my thoughts come a little clearer. Sometimes I just sit down and it hits me: the things that are really important, the things I’ve maybe been neglecting. Who are the people that come to mind when I’m sitting there, just letting my thoughts wander? If my mind keeps repeating one person’s name, that means something, surely.
I think what it really is, is something psychological: creative people tend to work best when they find a rhythm - if you sit down to write every day at 6, somehow your subconscious gets used to that, and with time can automatically open at that hour. It’s why our thoughts can be so abstract if we’re up all night, when we should be dreaming. Similarly, I think your mind can “learn” to focus on the important things if we pick that place that matters, a place to conjure them up specifically, a place uncluttered by all the other things in our lives.
It can become a place where you can’t lie to yourself, where that little tiny voice of “stick with it” becomes audible.
Catedral de Santa Maria del Mar, Barcelona
