Stampeding Herd

When I go for long spells without drinking enough water, say weeks, I lose some of my thirst instinct. My body doesn’t ask for much water.

When I drink plenty of fluids for weeks, then decrease fluids for a day, I become thirsty. My body asks for more, “Hey, what’s up?”

I wonder, is it possible for us to become so unaccustomed to feeding our inward selves, that we no longer crave spiritual nourishment? When I say inward selves, I mean, as my son used to say, “the part of me that is me." The soul, spirit, heart, intellect, all of those and whatever you want to call it. Anything but that hypnotized part of us that doesn’t think, but attaches itself to the mindless herd, that is addicted to intensive ‘doing’ in order to please, to get along, and to be seen as productive.

Nourishment for the inner being consists, for me, of following my intellectual and spiritual curiosity and contemplating what I discover. Lots of contemplation. It also consists of calm, pensive observation as I proceed along this journey. Intentionally simplifying my life has given me the space and time I need to nourish not only my own soul, but the souls of others who cross my path, most especially my family. How can we grow spiritually if we do not feed the soul, or taste the feedings when they come from the hand of God? How can we offer encouragement to others, if we have an empty pitcher from which to pour?

When I encounter people who run all day long, run fast and hard, skimming over the day at breakneck speed with the goal being to list off all the stuff they did, for the seeming purpose of personal validation, or for gold stars on some abstract, socially-acceptable chart, I shake my head in puzzlement. When do they nourish their inner selves? How can they observe God’s lessons when life is a blur? There is no time. They complain of exhaustion, of literally falling into bed drained every night, only to rise again in the morning to begin this insane racing through their next day. Day after day. Week after week, all the way to year after year. They seem satisfied with this overload of doing, often showcasing their list of checked-off activities for the day. It feels like a productive life to them, a full and rich life. It is a ruse.

“Where does the time go? It just FLIES by!”

No, it doesn’t fly by. It is simply...unnoticed...in the mad dash.

I know a woman who felt the need to schedule each and every moment of her children’s lives, with activities meant to give them the best encounters of all that life has to offer: music, sports, literature, art, church activities, language, social interaction, and more. Every day of Christmas, Spring, and Summer vacation had something planned. Her intentions were twofold. First, she wanted the children to have every advantage she could give them to succeed as adults. Second, she was terrified should they become bored. “What will I do if they are underfoot, and bored!”

This gal ran fast as a mom. She grabbed a wrist of each toddler and dragged them swiftly across the long buffet table of life for 18 years, so swiftly in fact, that the poor kids, off their feet, yanked horizontally from one end of the feast to the other, could manage to snag only a bit of knowledge here, and tad of spiritual nourishment there. She has no idea what may actually have been ingested.

Now adults, these same 'kids' are dazed. Just confused and unable to process what the heck it all means. Without a solid inner base, they simply panic, looking for someone to tell them what to do. Without consistent moral or practical guidance, no attentive mommy or daddy time, just a childhood of rushing and having stuff crammed into their minds, their energy drained through forced activities, these kids have found that their raising consisted of supermarket samples. No time to dream, to observe, to play in the garden, to process the easy and hard experiences of childhood, no parental insights or wisdom explaining the stuff of life, no time to just....be. The space in them meant for moral understanding, healthy curiosity, budding wisdom, and fresh-scrubbed energy has been vacuumed, and left hollow. They are starting from scratch. Their parents can barely recall the years the kids were home - it went by like THAT.

It’s not the tyranny of the urgent. It’s the propaganda of the herd, a thoughtless, stampeding herd. We are not meant to close our minds and hearts and flat out sprint through life. Children and adults alike require stillness, for it is there that nourishment bubbles up, and is gently shared. It doesn't help others for us to lose ourselves.

To feed the soul is to strengthen clarity, and grow wisdom. To starve it is to deafen the instinct to want to truly know, making it easy to believe the propaganda of the herd. Because without inner nourishing, the only voice that is heard, is the herd's.