mindful monday : stillness

2011-10-08_21-27-43_809 Sometimes you just need to stop. Halt. Breathe.

That's where I am now.

Breathing. Halting. Hibernating.

I'm on sabbatical for a little while from Facebook and social media.

I'm contemplating my new orange desk, the one I wanted, the one I ordered, and the one I got delivered to my front porch yesterday. It is the color of clementines. I love it. My orange desk.

And I found the right color to paint the walls in my attic office as-yet-created: It is by Valspar, and it is not white as I imagined those walls might be, but "Stillness." Yes. Stillness.

That's where I am now. Not in the attic, but resting. In stillness. My 3x3x365 duties this week are kindly being handled by friends in New Jersey and Illinois and Nebraska and beyond. My Facebook profile is standing still except for automatic posts from my blogs. My Google+ and Twitter have ground to a halt. And I'm okay with that. My phone is unanswered. I need rest. And rest I am getting.

So, today, just a wee link to a radio interview with me that was recorded recently and that will play tonight (Oct 10th) at 7pm. I hope you'll listen in. I loved LOVED talking with Lesley Riley, the host of the show. She and I might do it again, and again.

I am heading back to bed. To read, perhaps. I have a large stack of books on my bedside table to read or re-read. You? What are you reading?

Reading is an amazing gift. Sleep is also good. It is not overrated, as it turns out.

Here's to more stillness in our lives, yours and mine.

[The gorgeous orange paperweight was a gift from glass artist, teacher, and songwriter Tamara Mangum Bailie.]

About Patti Digh

Patti Digh is an author, speaker, and educator who builds learning communities and gets to the heart of difficult topics. Her work over the last three decades has focused on diversity, inclusion, social justice, and living and working mindfully. She has developed diversity strategies and educational programming for major nonprofit and corporate organizations and has been a featured speaker at many national and international conferences.

12 comments to " mindful monday : stillness "
  • Megan Everett

    How beautiful to design a space you love, that inspires you, and then to pause and drink it in as your vision begins to unfold! Thank you for sharing the sense of serenity and “I love this” – I want the same for my workspace :) Rest well

  • Juliana

    Patti, I’ve just discovered you (so much that resonates) but I’m staying 100% because you have an orange desk in a white attic! Perfection. Enjoy the stillness, it brings many gifts with it.

  • jylene

    i just started reading Away by Amy Bloom and it is very good so far. i am also reading The Four Agreements and Meditations from the Mat, both very very good books. i, too, have a big stack of books beside my bed, and another one on the floor just across the room, and a bookshelf full of them just outside the door. if i am ever ordered to have complete bed rest, i am beyond prepared!

    wishing you a wonderful rest…

  • Marilyn

    here’s to stillness, rest and hibernation. i’m reading “The Giant’s House” by Elizabeth McCracken. last week i read “South of the Big Four” by Don Kurtz (which i loved).

  • Enjoy your rest Patti, and thank you for wishing us stillness, I can feel it all the way over here :-)

  • Sharon Martinelli

    Grinding to a halt – pausing for rest, refueling, centering – all perfect. Right here, right now. I have been in a forced down time, not one of my liking or one I ever would have ordered and yet, by pausing for a moment and having gratitude for the space that holds me, has helped. Congratulations for taking the time to spell yourself and refuel. May the orange desk open wide open the next pages of your book as it is being written.
    Hugs to you, dear Teacher.

  • Rest well, Beautiful Lady. So happy to imagine you there in the stillness.

    Light and love, my friend.

  • How great to advocate taking a break from Twitter and Facebook. I think Twitter is absolutely worthless and I wouldn’t give it one second of my time. I have to take regular breaks from Facebook, too. I want to be with people…not reading about them. I just started reading The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything. It’s great for people of any or no faith. I’m just loving it.

  • I loved the experience of your words and your voice today on the World’s Biggest Summit, Patti. I have one of your books by my bedside, but I had never found my way to your online home. I’m so glad that I did! I believe quite deeply in our ability to choose our responses to life. Hearing you speak so eloquently about it today was very moving. And it sounds like you are making a lovely and restful choice for yourself right now. I wish you peace(and stillness.)

  • I truly respect the fact that you have listened to your body and that you are taking care of you. I am learning how to take care of me. Read, sleep, eat ginger chews and peruse through trashy magazines clipping out pics of Johnny Depp. Know that you are loved and respected by many. Take care.

  • I just bought “Essential Sufism.” I love that Sufi poets remind us to LOVE big, and that they refer to themselves in the third person.

    Also just re-read “True Love” by Thich Nhat Hanh. It’s a tiny book that I’ve read about five times and always glean some deeper truth about love than the time before.

    Enjoy this delicious time immersing yourself in your own precious human life. I’m betting that as you start to add more activitiy you will automatically choose things that will allow you to continue being present in your precious life, instead of diminishing it. Sending love!

    Brandie

  • brooklynchick

    I think Anne Lamott calls it “prone yoga.” Love it. Just read _Cutting for Stone_ which was *amazing*.

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