After two extra days of kids at home, everyone is back to their hurried morning schedules. As I suspected, it’s been a lot more of a challenge to keep it simple and take time for quiet. Still, I managed to sit this morning, and after dropping off the kids, I drove the rest of the way to work in (relative) silence.

The rest of the day, so far at least, has been a hurried mess. Ah well.

I guessed I’m destined to do “Listen” after “Stop” and “Look.”

In pre-school, my kids learned a “safety poem,” which they would recite every time we were getting ready to cross the road, encouraging them to “stop, look, and listen” as a precaution against getting run over by a speeding car.

My life seems like a speeding car, some days….

I could benefit from a little more practice with listening. Yes, the outward listening is important, and I think it goes hand in hand with a focus on creating time and space for quiet, but right now I am more interested in nurturing an inward listening.

For all the time I spend talking to myself in my head, it is startling how little time I spend listening to myself.

I’m not one to quote the Bible, but I have always appreciated that God speaks to Elijah not in the wind, or the earthquake, or the fire–but in a “still small voice.”

Then there’s Emerson:

There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word.

It’s only 3pm. There’s still plenty of time left in the day to stop, look, and listen.