A week ago Tuesday, I bopped through my day, FaceTime-met someone for my new phase of work, wrapped up some loose ends around the house, got elbows-deep in a project that’d been on my list for months (which itself was only one installment in one that’s been on my mind for even longer)…
…got to the end of my day, quietly pleased,
and realized that: this is what being well — whole — fully myself feels like. Oh yeah. I knew this; I know this; I keep forgetting.
My sleep wasn’t as satisfying last night, so I’m feeling more logy today. Still, I’m working to keep that “image” (what’s the word for a proxy/memory of a whole-self experience?) nearby as I ramp up for classes beginning again on Monday. Can I, will I keep my waters of renewal flowing into the substrates of my aquifer?
Rest has been on the lips of everyone I know since well before my girls started breathing air. Rest, my faithful and devout friends remind each other, is something well-demonstrated in our texts, even affirmed by our savior (another face of his rescue?)
and yet we suck at it. Continually. Still. Knowing better, we do not do better.
I find a bitter consolation in knowing that even our ancestors seem to have been unable to follow through — despite the beauty and organic wisdom of Jubilee-times commanded for fields, for people, and for the nation,
there are zero traces that it ever happened. Surely, the thinking goes, something that unusual would have left a mark… somewhere?
That doesn’t absolve me. Or us.
It does get my systems-mind wondering, though, about the snag. If there’s something we yearn for, but don’t follow through on, there’s a snag or block in the way… the idea that “it’s just our cussedness” is actually a cop-out. (I could call it “total depravity,” and that may even be true, but wouldn’t, then, our trust in God’s free grace untie that knot? See? We’re back where we were.)
In the meantime, I’ll practice paying attention to my aquifer, and how what I intend uses those resources. And you, if you like, can read this excellent book I was assigned for my pastoral care class: Rest, by Alex Pang. It’s not as transaction/rest-to-work-more oriented as many. Or you can dive into the mystical-practical heart of Sabbath with Abraham Heschel (such delight!).
Shabbat shalom! / שַׁבָּת שָׁלוֹם