Before the Words Arrive

Before the words arrive, there is always this:
a quiet settling,
a listening,
a willingness to let the day write itself.

It doesn’t begin in thought.
It begins in the body — in the moment the shoulders drop, the breath deepens, and the need to do something loosens its grip.

I’ve learned to recognise this space not as emptiness, but as readiness.

It is the place where nothing is being reached for.
Where there is no performance, no shaping, no attempt to be coherent or useful.
Just presence, resting in itself.

From here, words don’t demand attention.
They arrive when they’re ready — or they don’t arrive at all.
And either is fine.

There was a time when I believed writing required effort:
discipline, structure, momentum.
A sense of forward motion, a plan.

Now I know better.

The truest work begins when the plan dissolves.
When the body is allowed to lead and the mind follows — not to control, but to witness.

This is not passivity.
It is discernment.

There is an intelligence that lives beneath thought — slower, quieter, infinitely more precise.
When I listen from there, what emerges carries a different quality.
It doesn’t persuade.
It doesn’t explain.
It doesn’t ask to be agreed with.

It simply is.

Some days, this space gives rise to paragraphs.
Other days, only to a single line — or a feeling that needs no language at all.

I no longer measure the value of the work by what appears on the page.
I measure it by whether I remained present while it happened.

If something arrives, I welcome it.
If nothing does, I trust that silence was the offering.

This, too, is writing.

Not as production.
Not as output.
But as a quiet companionship with the moment —
where the words are allowed to come last.

—

Saint Parousia