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Posted on 23 November 2007
Wise Blogger Matt Campbell said:

Restless spirits

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Last night, about midnight, unable to sleep, I stepped out of the
bungalow where I live and walked to the middle of the old stone bridge
that lies about three hundred yards away from my front door.

I stopped, and listened to the beck that flows out of the mountains,
over a series of waterfalls and past my front door: a constant
rushing, churning, noise you can hear all the time, day or night.
Always active, always pounding away down the hill to the lake. (When
the workmen have the hydro-electric generator, it'll power my lights.)
How, I thought, can we claim to live in a place of quiet and
tranquility? How can people find this endless fury and power restful?

...By now, you'll guess that some changes have gone on since I last
posted on this blog, over two months ago. I am no longer a writer and
editor living in Milton Keynes - I am now a community and staff member
at a retreat house in the Lake District, helping keep the place going
and provide a space for people to come, explore spirituality and
prayer and the natural world around the 'big house' by the beck.

I never thought about it until last night, but the fury of the
waterfall is the perfect metaphor for the contradiction I've been hit
with since day one (and biggest reason it took me so long to come up
for air and start blogging again) - providing a place of stillness and
tranquility is flippin' hard work!

Every day, there are beds to change, toilets to clean, guests to
welcome, food to order, prepare and serve, dishes to wash, wood to
chop or grass to cut, phones to answer ... and someone on our small
team does each of these jobs (and more) pretty much every single day,
so that guests can have a space in which to reflect on their lives,
their sense of god, or the direction of their career, their family, or
strategy for their charity, or church, or company. Some days that
tranquility comes at the price of some very worn-down staff, however
much we might love the place or the work.

It's something the ancient monks knew, in their combination of working
and praying: spiritual awareness - the search for calm, tranquility,
unclutteredness and guidance the Wise Traveller ethos is all about -
is not an effortless woodland stroll. It's a struggle. Not always an
unpleasant one, but it goes on, day after day. Some days you can hear
it clearer than others, but if you're a pigrim-person, searching for
god, there needs to be a waterfall thrashing away inside you, a great
thundering hungry energy to keep going. And, somehow, if its harnessed
right, that struggling energy can, sometimes, be turned into stillness
and peace.

Odd, isn't it?