At the still point of a turning world. And Quakers.

There's something about the phrase "at the still point of a turning world" that has kept it with me over time. It's only a fragment, a piece, of something larger. The line comes from the first section, "Burnt Norton" of T.S.Eliot's "Four Quartets." It starts a stanza and is punctuated as though it were a sentence, a full thought: At the still point of the turning world. But it's not complete, not a sentence; a piece of a poem in a group of poems.

It feels complete, though; I hear it, say it, remember it, read it. Partly because it is such a very rich thought to me, so in its fullness, there doesn't seem to be anything missing. But the verb is indeed missing; the one part of speech you need for an 'official', grammatically correct sentence. I think Eliot left it out on purpose. (I am sure Eliot left it out on purpose, he did not craft his poetry unaware, or throw it together. There are no accidents in Eliot.) Imagine the difference in this phrase if a verb of action, or even of being, were to be added. It would remove the (spiritual/physical/emotional?) sense of that very still point he describes, would make it somehow less still, make it somehow just less.

Taken out of the context of Eliot's poem, this phrase, this concept has stayed with me. I once tried to describe to someone that I thought a relationship, real love, should be as though a still point in a turning world. I'm not sure that what I meant came through, or if I would entirely still try to make exactly that statement.

What I do know is that when I came upon this phrase for the first time, it struck me as enormously, fundamentally correct. It somehow struck me, and I literally do mean 'struck' me, as in 'hit me physically, bodily,' as though someone had but into words some fundamental concept, some law of reality, described something essential for which there previously hadn't been words. The passage, the very words, seemed created to do what they were doing. It was almost as though the world and I together made some fundamental leap of understanding.

And so, I took out this phrase from time to time, remembered it when 'things of great importance' were discussed. But, I never meditated on it or thought seriously about why it aroused such powerful spiritual, emotional, and mental reactions it me. It actually makes something ache or twang or sing inside me; I can feel it bodily.

It is only very recently that I have come to begin to undertstand the place of this phrase for me in my cosmology, my identity, my body, my soul. I am searching and have been searching for that still point of a turning world for as long as I can remember. Even before I knew this phrase. I don't know yet all the outlines of what it means to me.

A pause, a rest, a chance to breathe. A moment, a place, a state to think, or more truly to reflect (and not (or not only) in the connotation of 'looking back'). A way to be, ideally, with (not against) the scream and jangle of the always-turning world. A goal. A mission. A desperate need. The cure, the answer, the solution. Peace. GRACE.

I think it might be my notion of God: a still point in a turning world. Or one piece of what I think of when I think of God. It may be where I think you can communicate (commune, perhaps is better) with God. It is where, I think, that the God in me exists.

One of the reasons I find silent worship so profoundly moving, I think, is that it not only allow, but encourages the development and exploration of this still point. In individuals, but also in the process of the meeting itself.

Quaker meeting (and quakerism) has offered me a place and an encouragement to seek the still point in a turning world, and for that I am profoundly grateful.

I felt led to the Quakers. I felt like I needed to go to meeting, desperately, and I overcame my fear of new situations where I don't know what to do, my fear of 'what people might think' more quickly that is normal for me. I am so thankful for finding a community and a faith that fits this search for me. There are other ways, I have no doubt, but for now, this is one that is important to me.

Have I found the still point in the turning world? Or figured out all of what it means to me? No, but there is grace and joy beyond measure in the search, in the seeking. Sometimes I think I touch (in all possible senses of the word and its possible uses), that I am at (the edges of) the still point in a turning world.








And, if you haven't read Eliot's "Four Quartets," here's a link to an online copy. I think it's better read from an older book, where the printing press has 'bitten' into a rag paper to leave texture you can run your finger across and the black of the ink creates warm or starkness against the white or yellow shade of the page. But that's just me!
http://www.tristan.icom43.net/quartets/