Standing Still

Meredith Jordan, a professional counselor and spiritual director, has
worked for twenty-five years with adults and children helping them see new
vistas of relationships with the Mystery many people call God. In my review of
her first book, Embracing The Mystery, The Sacred Unfolding in Ordinary People
and Everyday Lives (2004), I pointed out that she does not conceive of the
relationship of God to the world in the traditional paradigm of supernatural
theism, of God, “out there” who occasionally 
intervenes in human relationships and affairs. Her spiritual journey has
led her to stand in the tradition of the mystics called panentheism, which sees
God as “the encompassing Spirit” in “whom we live and move and have our being.”
She writes, “I wrote Embracing The Mystery to inspire and encourage people of
all traditions to look at what is right in front of them, to see that the
indwelling Mystery we call God is at the tiller of our lives, guiding us from
within and without in the direction of becoming our most expansive selves…and
that the Mystery may appear as nothing like what we expect.” The forty stories,
which comprise the book, illuminate the experience of the people embracing the
Mystery in their everyday lives. The focus of her new book is to help people understand that “the
Mystery – which is by its very nature never fully knowable – appears at
different points along our spiritual trajectory in order to support us in our spiritual expansion or evolution.” In
order that we may see the Mystery in the midst of everyday life she stresses
that it is necessary to “stand still.” She explains that “standing still” is
not a spiritual practice but “a way of
being in the world that encourages us to notice that events or experiences
wait in each given moment to claim our attention and be given to their best
use.” As a way of being, standing still involves doing nothing in order to
“intentionally create an empty space into which answers to our concerns, in
their own right timing, gently unfold.” Standing still also means “to remember
that the Mystery calls us to lives that are centered in mystery, wonder, awe,
compassion, love and justice…and will lead us there, as if from an inner
compass, if we make ourselves available to be led.” When we adopt standing
still as a way of being in the world, we are open and available to be “touched
and transformed by remarkable events that so easily pass unnoticed in the
harried activities of our ordinary lives.”

Standing Still is another book of engaging, luminous and memorable
stories about people who are on their everyday spiritual journey. The author
reminds the reader to “remember the power of story to touch what might
otherwise remain untouched in us, something deep in the soul that could be
changed forever.” And she cautions readers, “Be prepared, for your life may be
shaken or upended by the simple stories

in this book.” At the end of each story, there are questions which will
help you “stand still” to see what is happening in your life right now and
experience “awe and reverence at the Mystery.”