The Still Place in a Turning World

Finding presence in chaos

The Noise That Never Ends

The day begins not with birdsong but with breaking news, the kind that pounds on the soul like a drum you never asked to hear. Before I’ve taken a sip of coffee, my phone is buzzing. The headlines cascade like falling debris from a collapsing building—wars breaking out, storms breaking records, politicians shouting louder than the truth they bury.

The other morning, I read that one of our courts issued yet another ruling so convoluted it left scholars debating its meaning more than its consequence. And while experts parsed commas and precedents, people’s lives trembled on the line. Ambiguity itself had become a weapon.

It struck me as the emblem of our age: confusion packaged as authority, chaos wearing a suit and tie. In moments like that, I can feel myself shrinking. My heart rate ticks up, my mind starts racing. It’s as if the world is whispering, you must respond, you must keep up, you must not fall behind.

But here’s what I’ve learned—sometimes the most courageous act is to stop. To refuse the treadmill. To plant myself in stillness even while the world insists that movement is survival.

A Still Place Inside

When I was younger, I used to think peace was something you earned once life slowed down. That peace was a kind of prize, given after the chaos had been conquered. But life kept teaching me otherwise. Peace never arrives as a gift from the world. It emerges as a discovery within it.

There’s a still point inside us, deeper than panic, deeper than urgency. You can feel it if you pay close attention. It’s not the absence of movement—it’s the center of it. The calm eye inside the storm.

Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote, “The only journey is the one within.” (Letters to a Young Poet).

And Rabindranath Tagore had his own companion truth paraphrased it went something like this: The silence of the night brings us nearer to the eternal.

Together, they remind me that stillness isn’t retreat from the world, but the way to stand firmly in it.

Light Against Empire - the Podcast

Failing at Peace

There have been seasons in my life when I believed stillness was a project to master, like a fitness routine or a course of study. I downloaded meditation apps. I bought journals. I made schedules. And yet, more than once, I found myself sitting in a quiet room with clenched jaw and jittering leg, furious that my thoughts would not obey my command.

The truth is, stillness isn’t something we conquer. It isn’t forced into being. It’s something we allow. Something we notice. It’s like holding out your hand to catch rain—you don’t create the water, you only open yourself to receive it.

What I came to realize was that my failure wasn’t personal—it was cultural. We are trained not for stillness but for speed. We are praised not for presence but for performance. To sit quietly feels like rebellion. And maybe it is.

The Tyranny of the Turning World

We live in an age where the market for our attention is more ruthless than any empire that ever taxed its citizens. Screens demand it. Politicians weaponize it. Algorithms auction it off by the second. We’re told we must consume every headline, weigh in on every controversy, stand ready to perform outrage or solidarity on command.

But that is not citizenship. That is captivity.

I’ve had to remind myself: I am not a cog in their spectacle. I am a human being. And human beings require space—inner space—as much as they require food and water.

The still point is not a withdrawal from responsibility, but the very ground from which real responsibility flows. Without it, I risk becoming just another echo in the noise.

Anchors in Daily Life

So how do we find it? How do we stay human when the world is intent on scattering us in fragments?

For me, the answer has been anchors—small, repeatable gestures that tether me to the present. They are simple, almost embarrassingly so. But I’ve come to believe that simplicity is the only way to survive complexity.

• Silence before screens. I refuse to check my phone before I’ve sat in quiet, even if just for a few breaths. It reminds me that the day belongs first to me, not to the market of noise.

• Walking without purpose. I’ve walked the same block a hundred times, and yet when I leave my earbuds at home, I notice the cedar shingles on the roof, the uneven sidewalk, the way light scatters differently at dusk.

• One sentence a day. I keep a notebook by the bed. Each night I write a single line capturing where I am. Not a masterpiece—just a marker. A small flag planted on the map of my days.

• The ritual of breath. In conflict, when words sharpen and tempers flare, I return to my breath. One slow inhale, one slow exhale. I’m always surprised how much space it opens.

As Rilke counseled, “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.” (Letters to a Young Poet).

Patience. Presence. These are not dramatic acts. They won’t trend online. But they are what keep me from unraveling.

When the World Screams

There was a week not long ago when it felt as though every conversation in America was designed to provoke rage. A new scandal broke each morning, each side hurling accusations, each headline daring us to despair.

In that week, I decided on a small act of resistance. I sat in silence for ten minutes each evening, no matter what else was happening. I would not let the volume of the world dictate the state of my soul.

Here’s the paradox: the more I gave myself to silence, the clearer my convictions became. The less I drowned in noise, the more I knew what mattered. Presence didn’t make me passive. It made me sharper. More anchored.

Stillness is not surrender. It is preparation.

The Sacred Without Religion

When I talk about stillness, people sometimes ask if I mean prayer. My answer is complicated.

I was baptized into a tradition, but I no longer walk within its walls. Yet I cannot deny that when I sit in stillness, something sacred hums beneath the silence. Call it spirit, call it being, call it what you will—I only know it feels larger than me, and yet somehow utterly intimate.

Tagore once wrote, “The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.” (Stray Birds).

I read that line not as an instruction but as a revelation. Stillness reveals abundance where I thought there was only scarcity. It slows the frantic ticking of time into something I can hold.

It is the same sensation I feel when watching the last light of sunset disappear, or when hearing a child laugh with complete abandon, or when holding the hand of someone in pain. These are not religious events. But they are holy ones.

To find the still point is to brush against that holiness. To remember that life is more than headlines, more than arguments, more than fear.

Lessons From the Classics

I return often to Rilke and Tagore, not as authorities but as companions. They seem to have wrestled with the same noise in different form. Rilke carried solitude like a lantern in a darkened century. Tagore wrote silence into song in a land crushed by empire.

Their witness reassures me. Chaos is not new. The world has always been turning too fast. And yet, across time and culture, the answer has echoed the same: return to the center. Seek the still point.

A Word to the Reader

Maybe your days are filled with meetings and deadlines. Maybe you’re caring for children, or aging parents, or both. Maybe the news cycle is the last thing you have energy for, but it presses in anyway.

I know that feeling. I’ve lived it. And I’m not here to hand you another obligation. I’m here to remind you of something you already know: you have a still point inside you. It is waiting.

It doesn’t require incense or mountains or hours of your day. It requires only a pause, a breath, a willingness to open the hand and catch the rain that is already falling.

Closing Reflection

The world will keep turning. Faster, louder, harsher. But you are not condemned to spin with it.

There is a still point in every life—a place where presence is born, where solitude is not loneliness, where silence is not emptiness. A place where you remember that you are more than what the world demands.

I return there as often as I can. Not perfectly, not always gracefully. But enough to know this: stillness is not escape. It is the foundation of everything that matters.

Stillness is not luxury. It is resistance. It is survival. And it is how we reclaim our humanity from a world intent on scattering it.

So when the noise rises, when chaos threatens to scatter you, try this: breathe once, slowly. Listen for the silence beneath the sound. And know, beyond doubt, that the still point is yours.

Dino’s Homilies and Poetry Site

Further Reading: