I am learning that to quiet myself is not a quieting of stillness where everything becomes still and frozen. Quieting myself now is awareness of what is different, the texture of change, the awareness that the key of life’s symphony has changed ever so delicately. Perhaps the softness of an oboe or violin has joined the brass and percussion, or even the reverse. Unlike the migrations of my heart calling for certainty knowing that no cloud remains fixed, the wind twists and turns, and even the landscape has changed since the last migration was complete.

Today was a velvet day. The lake was surreal in color and movement. What I thought was a tree I had never seen before, with the aid of the camera, became a buck with velvet antlers lying in the grass. The supple geese wings caressed the air. A mama deer and baby quietly climbed the hill. A heron stood still against the silky lake gazing at the movement of life.

To seek frozen stillness dismisses the buck’s beauty as a tree. The gaze upon the lapping lake would have obscured the geese in flight. Even the necessary concentration upon the road almost stole the breathtaking view of three hawks engaged in battle with their legs and talons extended in the air. To seek now the quieting within the constancy and beauty of movement and change and find my stillness.