Can You Appreciate the Value of Stillness?

For several weeks, I've watched a goose in our neighborhood pond sit on her nest keeping her eggs warm. While her gander swam around watching guard and gathering food, the mother goose sat, and sat, and sat. In wind. In rain. In snow. In sun. At dusk.

My life went on. Days passed. Weeks passed! Maybe even more than a month. From my perspective as a human, dang, that mother goose had patience and strength. I admired her steadfastness.

She did her job. She did not doubt. She remained still.

What a blessing it was to see this beautiful example in nature of what creation can look like. While this mother goose sat still, she was creating life! Beneath her feathered body that did not move lay a handful of incubating eggs. With her stillness, mother goose warmed them and protected them from predators and the elements. Her stillness was in fact essential to the survival of her young.

Life from stillness? How can that be? To most of us indoctrinated into the modern, Western fast-moving, action-oriented way of life, the idea that no action can create something is inconceivable.

Yet nature remains forever our teacher.

Photo by Anne Kitzman/Shutterstock

The mental visual of those unseen eggs nestled safely beneath mother goose's bottom gave me hope. While we humans often have to wait and be patient with no tangible evidence that our efforts will pay off, the mother goose could reassuringly feel her gosling eggs beneath her.

What if we humans could trust that all of our patience, strength, courage, and steadfastness to our values would eventually pay off? That is the invitation of Taurus season, which is wrapping up. We are invited to trust that our slow and steady efforts to design, build, nurture, and create will have real and tangible consequences.

Can you keep going? Can you have patience? Are you able to appreciate that sometimes sitting still or going slow is exactly what you need? As long as we build in accordance with our values, we can trust that the outcomes will be desirable and joyful. They may be different than we expected, but they will align with our soul's wishes and our highest good.

Today, my walk by the pond will be different. My partner drove by this morning and informed me that the eggs had hatched, and several downy goslings were swimming behind mother goose and father gander. All that patience had finally paid off! Mother goose was in the water again. Her babies had joined the world, and the happy couple, mated for a lifetime, was swimming together again--all on the first sunny day after several days of rain. Stunning!

Photo by Serkan Mutan/Shutterstock

Life and rebirth always come. Can you trust that they will? Can you give yourself quiet and stillness when you are called to it?

As we move into Gemini season and life gets busy again, don't forget to stop and appreciate what the slowness of Taurus season has tried to teach you. Remember what you value. Plant seeds of that. Trust and nurture the dark soil. Savor the quiet. Feed the earth. Feed yourself. And let nature do her magic work inside you to bring new life to bear.