One practice which I find very useful in helping me stay mindful is to draw my attention to the importance of the times between times. Every day we have innumerable transition times, between the more formal or defined activities that take place. We can be tempted to see these moments as wasted, as having little value while we are anxious for the next thing to happen. For example, we can be waiting for a client who is late or for a meeting to start, waiting for someone to come back from the Post Office, waiting at the airport for a delayed flight or stuck at unexpected traffic works.
The suggestion is to see these moments as invitations to stop and drop into ourselves before the next activity begins. In other words to create space between activities. The word I use to remind me to do this comes from the Christian monastic tradition, the word statio, meaning the practice of pausing between activities.
This latin word originally came from the Roman Army and meant a state of readiness or alertness. The soldiers were fully aware because of possible danger. Therefore they stood on watch, waiting. In the early Christian community, it became associated with a period of fasting in preparation for something important, the pause to prepare a space for what was to come. They compared their fasting to the guard duty of soldiers, seeing their actions as something to be approached with a similar seriousness and alertness of purpose.
Over the centuries this practicve evolved in the monastic communities to mean that we pause and remind ourselves beofre we start new activities. In other words, we create gaps between different activities or different parts of the day. Before we go into a meeting, or as we ring the elevator bell, we pause and form our intention to be aware. Or, for example, when we get home in the evening after work, we pause before entering our house or our apartment. We draw attention to the fact that we are chaging rhythms, from work to home, and we become conscious that we are about to come into contact with those whom we share this space. We wish to be fully present to them so we leave behind, as much as possible, the unfinished work of the workplace in order to be atttentive to them.
It is the time between times. It is a cure for the revolving door mentality that is common in a culture that runs on wheels.The practice of statio is meant to center us and make us conscious of what we’re about to do . . . Statio is the desire to do consciously
what I might otherwise do mechanically. Statio is the virtue of presence.
We have learned well in our time to go through life nonstop. Now it is time to learn to collect ourselves from time to time so that God can touch us in the most hectic of moments. Statio is the monastic practice that sets out to get our attention before life goes by in one great blur …
Joan Chitchester, Wisdom distilled from the Daily
