The Well That Clears Itself

In the mountains of Avila, there is an old stone well that locals say has never been pumped dry. But after winter storms, the water turns cloudy with sediment — mud, leaves, the debris of a restless season. No one filters it by hand. They simply stop disturbing it. They wait. Given stillness, the sediment sinks of its own weight, and the water returns to its original clarity.

Thomas Merton once observed that we cannot manufacture our own purity. We can only stop muddying the waters. When Peter writes, "Be holy, because I am holy," he is not issuing a command to strain harder. He is calling us back to our deepest identity — the image of God already dwelling at the center of our being, obscured but never destroyed.

This is what centering prayer teaches. We sit. We release the swirling thoughts, the compulsive reaching, the need to perform our goodness. We surrender the word — maranatha, perhaps, or simply holy — and let it carry us beneath the turbulence. In that descent, we discover what John of the Cross called the nada — the holy nothing where God alone remains.

Holiness is not something we build. It is something we uncover when we finally stop thrashing.

This week, give God ten minutes of your complete stillness. Not to earn anything. Simply to let what is already clear rise to the surface.