I Stood Outside For Twenty Minutes

You carried your coat instead of wearing it, and you have not done that since October.

You noticed it about halfway down the road. Your arm was full and you were warm and you had not thought about being cold once since you left the house, and there was something almost startling about it, the way you notice a noise stopping.

And then you stood outside for twenty minutes when you did not need to.

You got to where you were going and you stood at the end of the path in the sun with your face slightly up, and you stayed there, and you could not have told anybody what you were doing.

That was the best twenty minutes you have had in months.

And here is what happened at about minute four, which is why this article exists.

A thought arrived and it said: this will not last.

Not dramatically. It was practical, almost helpful in tone. It reminded you that the weather turns back, that there is the thing next month, that the situation at home is exactly where it was on Thursday, and that standing in the sun does not change any of it.

And you stayed anyway, which I want you to notice, because you nearly did not.

You have been braced for a long time. That is the honest description of the last year: a person leaning slightly forward, ready for the next hard thing, because the last several have arrived without much warning and being ready felt like the only useful posture available.

And a person who is braced cannot receive anything. Relief arrives and gets processed as a gap between events rather than as a good thing, and the whole of it goes past.

So this article is about the twenty minutes, and I am going to be careful with them.

I am not going to tell you the warm day is a reward.

Not for anything you did, and not because of anything you prayed. And I am not going to tell you it means the hard stretch is finishing, because I do not know that, and hanging a promise on a day in April is how a good day gets ruined by the following Tuesday.

It is a warm day. It is genuinely good. That is all of it and it is enough.

The winter is past, the rain is over and gone

There is a line in the Song of Solomon that reports the turn of a season, and its plainness is the whole of it.

For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. (Song of Solomon 2:11, King James Version)

The winter is past. The rain is over and gone.

That is an observation. Somebody has looked out and noticed that the weather has changed, and says so.

And notice what is not attached to it.

There is no reason given. Nobody is told the winter ended because of anything they did, or that it is a reward, or that it signals something about what happens next. There is no lesson extracted from it and no promise built on it.

It is a person looking at a changed sky and saying: look, the winter is past.

The verses around it are all like that: figs and vines and the voice of birds. It is a list of good things being noticed by somebody who is simply looking at them, and the whole passage is one long act of receiving what is in front of a person without doing anything else to it.

That is a spiritual act, and we are extremely bad at it.

We can pray about hardship. We can endure. What almost nobody can do is stand in a good half hour and let it be a good half hour without immediately putting it in relation to something else, and this verse does exactly that and thinks nothing of it.

So when you stood at the end of that path with your face up, you were doing the thing this passage does. And the thought at minute four was trying to stop you.

Standing in something good and simply receiving it is what the written word does here, and gladness has never once had to be accounted for. Song of Solomon 2:11 notices the winter is past and attaches no reason to it at all, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody standing at the end of a path with her face up.

Bracing is not preparation

Here is the practical half, and it is about the posture you have been holding.

Being braced does not make the next thing easier.

That is the belief underneath the last year, and it is worth saying out loud because it has never been examined. Somewhere you concluded that if you stay slightly tense, slightly ready, never fully settled, then when the next hard thing arrives it will not knock you over.

It does not work that way. When the next thing comes, it comes with its own weight, and you will meet it with whatever you have at that moment. Bracing beforehand does not add anything to the reserves. It spends them.

And the spending is not free. A person who has been braced for a year is more tired, not more ready, and arrives at the next difficulty with less than they would have had if they had rested in between.

So the twenty minutes are not a lapse in vigilance. They are the only part of that day that put anything back.

And here is what the thought at minute four was actually doing, because it presented itself as realism.

It was not information. You already knew the weather turns and that the thing next month is still there. It told you nothing. What it did was remove you from the twenty minutes and put you back in the month, which is where you have been living, and it dressed that up as being sensible.

Realism is not the same as refusing good things. It is realistic that the weather turns back. It is also realistic that today is warm, and only one of those two facts is currently happening.

Bracing spends what you have rather than adding to it, and standing in the sun has never once been a lapse in vigilance. The written word notices the good thing and does not put it in relation to anything, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with somebody who has been leaning forward for a year.

Go out and do nothing in it

So here is the assignment, and the doing nothing is not a figure of speech.

Go outside on the first warm day and stay there for ten minutes doing nothing.

The next one. It might be tomorrow.

Outside, ten minutes, and nothing in your hands. Not a walk with a destination, not a job in the yard, not a call you may as well take while you are out there. Stand or sit, in the sun, doing nothing.

And here is the actual instruction, which is what to do when the thought comes.

It will come, at about minute four, in the same reasonable voice. It will remind you of the month, the situation, the weather turning.

Do not argue with it. Arguing keeps you in a conversation about the month.

Say, silently or out loud: this is happening now. And then go back to standing there.

That is all. Not a technique and not a battle. One sentence that returns you to the ten minutes, as many times as it takes, and it might take four.

And do not use the time. Do not pray through your list, do not plan, do not sort out the thing in your head while your body stands in the sun. Those are all ways of being productive in a good ten minutes, and they take the ten minutes away just as completely as the thought does.

Receive it. That is the whole assignment and it is harder than it sounds for somebody who has been braced for a year.

You are able to stay in ten minutes that are happening now, and a good thing has never once needed to be used for something. Song of Solomon 2:11 receives the turn of the season without extracting one thing from it, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody standing outside doing nothing at all.