From the book “The Power of Stillness”
Brigham Young once taught, “This is the counsel I have for the Latter-day Saints this day. Stop, do not be in a hurry.”1
Easier said than done, right? Maybe, like other things this non-hurried-living will take some practice. But how? One of the classic traditions in all contemplative traditions is getting away from the hustle-bustle “doing” of life and retreating enough to get into a deeply restful place of “non-doing.”
President M. Russell Ballard offered encouragement to “be still and listen” as a way to understand better God’s will: “We simply have too many distractions to capture our attention, unlike any time in the history of the world. Everyone needs time to meditate and contemplate.” He added, even Christ at the height of His mortal ministry, found the time to stop and engage in purposeful periods of solitude.”
During particularly difficult times, President David O. McKay would leave Salt Lake and retreat to his beloved hometown, where he could “be by himself” and away from all the people.” An assistant said of this retreat: “I’d take him to the Huntsville house . . . make a fire and he’d just sit in front of it when he was particularly weighed down with problems.
On a few occasions, we have experienced more seven- and ten-day retreats. These are always challenging experiences as we set aside our hurried, pressed madness of daily living to do the simplest of things: watching, listening, hearing, and seeing. No talking, NO phones, No waiting, No looking others in the eye. Only intentional, continued quiet.
By the end of these retreats, we come away feeling clearer, more energized and hopeful—more like ourselves and in tune with the divine. All because we stopped for a time.
It’s rare, however, that anyone has the luxury of going on and extended retreat. How, then, can we build more of this quietness into our regular lives? As Saints we already have three “retreats” built into our worship practice: the Sabbath, the home and the temple.
Sabbath as a Mindfulness Retreat
Despite a prophetic re-emphasis on the importance of the Sabbath, it’s common for many to end Sunday callings, visits, meetings, family gatherings, and wrestling with the kids feeling more exhausted. How could this day become more life giving, cleansing, and retreat-like? How about learning how to deeply rest—pushing back on the relentless momentum of life to truly experience a rejuvenating pause? Scholar Adam Miller writes: “The Sabbath is God’s way of interrupting our lives. It’s his way of interrupting time, of breaking its spell. With the Sabbath, God introduces a hiccup into time, and a beat of stillness, a little pocket of eternity.”
Like God Himself, we can “bring the world to an end every seven days,” as Miller puts it, and use the Sabbath to celebrate the end of our own work. Creating still spaces to savor our relationships with God and our loved ones takes intention and practice. After one especially exhausting Sunday, one of our families decided to start protecting the day more—trying to make it more of a legitimate retreat. . . . Alongside various smaller adjustments like stepping away from email, news, and social media, we looked for ways to block off more time for just sitting together and talking or reading—even opting out of some of the family gatherings so we could have a little more space. The result was a new refreshment flowing from the Sabbath—far more than we had experienced previously.
Sometimes the way we begin the day can set the tone. In response of the common habit of waking up too late, rushing with baths and getting the kids dressed, and trying to get out the door to (hopefully!) make it to church on time, we’ve experimented with building more stillness into the morning routine as a way to set a different tone. After specifically waking up earlier for some early morning time to pray and meditate, we’ve found that having kid-free time to commune more intimately with God leaves us feeling more filled rather than rushed in the morning. We’ve also been intentional about waking kids up a little earlier to allow for a slower paced morning, thus creating a Sabbath energy that ripples throughout the day.
Brother Mark de St. Aubin similarly writes about adopting a practice with his wife of “taking time on Sunday to be silent with one another — turning off even music and allowing our home to be a silent place for a few hours.: He reflects: When we can do this, it feels like we are fasting from the usual chatter and junk food from the world and our own monkey mind provides us in order to enjoy instead a quiet oasis from sound and, communication and chatter. It allows for my mental digestive system to come to a place of rest and feels like the kind of welcome renewal for which the Sabbath was intentionally designed. 5
What could discovering deeper Sabbath rest mean for your own life? If you move in this direction, don’t be surprised if you get hit with worries about “being unproductive” or “wasting time” that could otherwise be accomplishing something else. That’s normal for anyone trying to make more space. Resist those voices. Something beautiful lies beyond them.
This is something different from pursuing “vacation time” or finding some way to entertain ourselves. A Christian author Henri Nouwen writes: “We say to each other that we need some solitude in our lives. What we’re really thinking of, however, is a time and place for ourselves in which we are not bothered by other people, can think our own thoughts, express our own complaints, and do our own thing, whatever that my be. . . . but that is not the solitude of John the Baptist [and other ancient disciples]. For them solitude is not a private therapeutic place. Rather, it is a place of conversion, the place where the old self dies and the new self is born, a place where the emergence of the new man and the new woman occurs.6 ~~Jacob Z. Hess, Carrie L. Skarda, Kyle D.Anderson, Ty R. Mansfield The of Stillness (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2019), p. 27-30) . . . . continued with “Wrestling the Kids”
