season of stillness

I have had life-long aspirations of being a serene sort of person who sails through life with coiffed hair and manicured nails.  That image is several city blocks away from the agitation in which I spend too many of my days.  One of the appeals of Advent is the focus on waiting.  Serenely, not with twitchiness.  Perhaps by increments, my inner being is approaching calm--or what will pass for calm within me.  Perhaps there will come a time when I don't levitate over the moron in front of me in line who wants to pay with exact change.  There may come a day when I'm not a homicidal driver.

Here's hoping!  I know there's an up side to my impatience and highly-wound energy; I get a lot accomplished and put together amazing concerts/programs.  Guess this is a bit like wishing for straight hair.

Found this gorgeous quote while soaking in the tub--again from Wayne Muller's book How, Then, Shall We Live?

"If we are clear and present, if we are quiet and centered, then others may be nourished simply by our lack of agitation."

He then inserts this inspiring Yeats quote:  We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us, that they may see their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even a fiercer, life because of our quiet.