I knew a lady who was a café creature. She enjoyed the walk to and from, the ambience there, the smells, and watching the rhythm of human interactions all around. We would smile and nod to each other as we passed on the street, and occasionally chat. She also was a novelist. And at cafes she wrote four books.

I can understand the allure of leaving phones, laptops, and other means through which demands and busyness arrive, and stepping out, old-school-style with a pen and notebook, into a different physical and mental space. There to ponder and create. I’ve done it myself, quite often. Cafes can offer a place to pause.

I’ve been reading the psychologist and lecturer Niki Harré’s new book The Calling: A year exploring what the secular world can learn from religion. As an atheist she spent a year exploring church and what it might offer. One conclusion was the value of pausing. She writes:

“I’m convinced that pausing – taking time to be in silence or with aids that assist reflection – nurtures a gap between our personal concerns and the world at large: whatever I am caught up in right now is not all that is. And that gap can help us care for nature, listen to others, and encourage constraint in pushing forward our own interests.”

Some days I simply call such pausing ‘listening’. Listening to all that is happening around in the moment. Listening to the birds or cicadas. Listening to memories, echoes of previous conversations and events. Listening to feelings in others and in me. Listening for the quiet voices when the traffic of demand and conformity are strong.

And on other days I call such pausing ‘prayer.’

Harré understands though the importance of communal or community pausing. She writes: “personal pause practices fall short of the full package religions offer.”

There is a potency in gathering with others, of being in quiet together, to hear or offer words to nurture us across (or in) that gap. The gap between me and we, us and them, between what is and what could be.

Such pausing also aligns with another learning of Harré’s. Namely that we who gather are simply people trying to do our best. Trying to be and help. We’re not superstars, experts, or ‘movers and shakers.’ We are simply here, together, grateful. We are all aging, none of us last forever. Nor are we remembered forever. So we don’t need to try to stand out or compete for status. Harré calls this ‘humility’.

Humility is a tricky word. In the ancient world it wasn’t a compliment. The Jesus movements positively repurposed it. But it then evolved to mean submission and obedience in a patriarchal and powerful church. So, for example, questioning authority was seen to be the opposite of humility, questioning was the ‘sin’ of pride.

But maybe the word needs to keep evolving to be a pointer to our connection with all life on the planet (humus meaning ‘of the earth’), our need for connection with one another as humans, and the attitude and skills needed to build and sustain such connection. Humility then becomes more about community, and all the little somethings that make it good and keep it so.

Glynn

Photo by Stefan Kunze on Unsplash