Calm

Calm is a breath.
It is stillness to hear…
no…feel a heartbeat.
It is the patience to
listen to the too long story
without anticipation of its end,
always asking if there is more.
Calm waits free of frustration in the cold
and applies no guilt or shame
when you are late.
Calm wants to be in concert
not conflict and knows how
to do both.

And we resist calm.
We find some strange thrill
in disruption and the push pull
of disagreement.
We are addicted to the tension.
We get drunk on the perfume
of conquest and trying to be correct
defending some fragile and imperfect honor.
We have a fascination with
being in the center of storms
always drawn to peril and chaos
like a balcony, ledge, or cliff.

Maybe we resist calm
because it is surrender.
It is submission.
It is bending to the unknown
unknowable, un-seeable, unheard.
Calm is accepting the future
as it wishes to present itself
not as we would have it be,
but as it is.
Like a pulse
calm is the life rhythm we cannot predict
and it comes…strong or weak
or not at all.

Calm is a breath,
the stillness of life
however it may be.

    —-  Adam Lawrence Dyer
March 23, 2020
@adamlawrencedyer on Instagram

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The Rev. Adam Lawrence Dyer was lead minister at First Parish Unitarian Universalist, in Cambridge, Massachusetts from 2017-2022. He is the author of Love Beyond God (2016), a collection of poetry and reflections focused on black identity and liberal religion. His blog spirituwellness.org explores the relationship between bodies, faith, and politics and has been featured in UU World, and included in the blogs Believe Out Loud, Equity Blog, and The Good Men Project.  In September 2022, he will begin pursuing his doctorate in Ethics and Society at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.