Coming to the Centre
Bruce & Sue Reflect
Bruce: “You know, Sue, I was thinking this morning, everything in life seems to be pulling us outward. Emails, news, traffic, opinions… even the kettle boiling feels like it’s shouting, ‘Do something!’”
Sue: “Oh, love, I know. It’s like living in a tumble dryer. Everything spinning, nothing still.”
Bruce: “Exactly. And yet, when I stop for five minutes, it’s like my mind doesn’t know how to handle it. Just silence, and all the thoughts rush in like they’ve been waiting for that moment.”
Sue: “That’s because most of us don’t stop until life makes us. We’re terrified of stillness. But it’s only in stillness that you find the centre again.”
There’s something sacred about that word, centre.
It isn’t a spot on a map. It’s the quiet middle place of the soul, where the noise fades and Presence hums beneath everything.
The mystics called it the inner room, the heart cave, or the axis mundi, the still point where heaven and earth meet inside a human being.
It’s the place Jesus spoke of when he said, “Go into your room and close the door.”
And it’s the place most of us avoid because it’s too honest, too still, too real.
Bruce: “So, what you’re saying, Sue, is that the centre’s not out there somewhere, it’s in here?”
Sue: “Exactly. It’s the one thing we can’t find by chasing it. You don’t run to it, you return to it. It’s home, love. Always has been.”
To come to the centre is not to escape the world, but to anchor within it.
The centre doesn’t shut out the storm; it steadies you in it.
Like the still eye of a cyclone, it’s the calm that holds everything else together.
But getting there, that’s the practice.
At first, it feels impossible. The moment you sit in silence, the whole village inside you starts chattering:
“What’s for dinner?”
“Did I send that email?”
“Why did she say that thing in 2004?”
Sue: “Oh yes, the committee of the mind. They never take a day off.”
Bruce: “Mine even have subcommittees.”
Sue: “That’s alright, love. You just let them talk. Eventually, they get bored and wander off.”
That’s the real secret of centring prayer, meditation, stillness, whatever name you give it.
You don’t fight the noise; you sit beneath it.
You let the silt of thought settle until the water clears, and you start to see the bottom, the place where love lives quietly, unbothered by your latest worries.
The centre is where the false self begins to melt.
It’s not about effort, it’s about surrender.
You can’t think your way to the centre; you soften your way there.
Bruce: “So what’s it feel like when you get there?”
Sue: “Like you’ve stopped swimming upstream. Like you can finally breathe again.”
Bruce: “And how long does it last?”
Sue: “Until the next email.”
Laughs
Sue: “But that’s alright. It’s not about staying there forever. It’s about remembering the way back.”
In a world that prizes speed, noise, and certainty, coming to the centre is a quiet rebellion.
It’s how we stay human.
It’s how the soul catches its breath.
It’s how we remember that life isn’t about control, it’s about communion.
When we come to the centre, we remember that we are already held.
The striving eases.
The heart opens.
And what once felt separate begins to feel whole again.
This isn’t an escape from life; it’s the doorway into life as it really is.
The tree still stands.
The dishes still wait.
But something in us is no longer lost among them.
Bruce: “So really, the centre’s not somewhere we visit, it’s where we live from.”
Sue: “That’s it, love. Every path worth walking leads back to the same place, the still point inside, where God and soul meet in silence.”
Bruce: “Feels like I’ve been walking around it for years.”
Sue: “Haven’t we all? But that’s grace too. Even our wandering circles the truth.”
A Blessing for Returning to Centre
May you find the quiet ground beneath the noise.
May your breath lead you home.
When the world pulls you outward,
may love draw you gently inward again.
And when you finally arrive,
not in triumph, but in tenderness,
may you hear the whisper that’s been waiting all along:
“You never left.”