It had been a busy Monday morning. I managed to do the week’s wash, put dinner in the crockpot, vacuum the bedroom, pay some bills, write a blog post, answer my emails, send some texts and clean up an accumulated pile of stuff. I even cleaned out the slow drain in my bathroom sink.

Before I went on to an afternoon project (writing this post), I decided to just sit and look out the window. I wanted to notice what had changed recently. I wanted to watch the squirrels run along the fence. I wanted to see the patterns the sun and shadows made on the ground. I wanted to be grateful for the luxury of just going nowhere and doing nothing in the middle of the day.

The inspiration for my going nowhere in the middle of the day was travel writer, Pico Iyer. He has written a little book, The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere. Iyer has spent his entire life traveling the world and sharing his adventures with his readers. Now at the age of 68, he treasures more and more those minutes, hours, days and weeks of going nowhere. He writes, “At some point, all the horizontal trips in the world stop compensating for the need to go deep, into somewhere challenging and unexpected; movement makes the most sense when it is grounded in stillness.”

Lent is the perfect time to being this practice of going nowhere. I only have to stop, sit down, take a deep breath, and sink into stillness. What will I find? Who knows? A deep insight? A moment of clarity? Just a restful moment in a busy day?

Won’t you join me in going nowhere? A six-week Lenten guide, Paths to Belonging, will be available starting Ash Wednesday, February 18 in paper form (you can pick up a copy at 7171 N. Pennsylvania St, Indianapolis) and on this website. The guide provides daily prompts to encourage a meaningful experience, dates for special Open Labyrinth Walk events, and reading recommendations. One of those recommendations is the Pico Iyer book mentioned above.

Watch Iyer's TEDtalk on stillness: