Good Morning Digital Neighbors, ADD Irregulars and Visitors of the WSN!
It was a good night rest with just the normal amount of disturbances from my body and my new found friends, the braces. Among my many companions in this new adventure in being Tom, David Whyte has become a source of deep reflection and perspective. Prayer, laughter and reflection about the unfolding of my days keep me rooted in the here and now and not emotionally projected too much into the future. While it is a good thing to anticipate and prepare for the day unfolding before you, it is often a wishful thing to forecast beyond that day the joys or dooms that may never be realized. Anyway without too much further babbling from myself, let's see what David wants to share with us about rest.

REST

Rest is the conversation between what we love to do and how we love to be. Rest is the essence of giving and receiving; an act of remembering, imaginatively and intellectually, but also psychologically and physically. To rest is to give up on the already exhausted will as the prime motivator of endeavour, with its endless outward need to reward itself through established goals. To rest is to give up on worrying and fretting, and the sense that there is something wrong with the world unless we are there to put it right; to rest is to fall back, literally or figuratively, from outer targets and shift the goal not to an inner, static bull’s eye, an imagined state of perfect stillness, but to an inner state of natural exchange.

The template of rest is the natural exchange of the body breathing, the autonomic giving and receiving that forms the basis and the measure of life itself. We are rested when we are a living exchange between what lies inside and what lies outside, when we are an intriguing conversation between the potential that lies in our imagination and the possibilities for making that internal image real in the world; we are rested when we let things alone and let ourselves alone, to do what we do best, breathe as the body intended us to breathe, to walk as we were meant to walk, to live with the rhythm of a house and a home, giving and taking through cooking and cleaning. When we give and take in an easy, foundational way, we are closest to the authentic self, and closest to that authentic self when we are most rested. To rest is not self-indulgent; to rest is to prepare to give the best of ourselves, and to perhaps, most importantly, arrive at a place where we are able to understand what we have already been given.

In the first state of rest is the sense of stopping, of giving up on what we have been doing or how we have been being. In the second is the sense of slowly coming home, the physical journey into the body’s uncoerced and unbullied self, as if trying to remember the way or even the destination itself. In the third state is a sense of healing and self-forgiveness and of arrival. In the fourth state, deep in the primal exchange of the breath, is the give and the take, the blessing and the being blessed, and the ability to delight in both. The fifth stage is a sense of absolute readiness and presence, a delight in and an anticipation of the world and all its forms; a sense of being the meeting itself between inner and outer, and that receiving and responding occur in one spontaneous movement.

A deep experience of rest is the template of perfection in the human imagination, a perspective from which we are able to perceive the outer specific forms of our work and our relationships whilst being nourished by the shared foundational gift of the breath itself. From this perspective we can be rested while putting together an elaborate meal for an arriving crowd, whilst climbing the highest mountain or sitting at home surrounded by the chaos of a loving family.

Rested, we are ready for the world but not held hostage by it; rested, we care again for the right things and the right people in the right way. In rest we re-establish the goals that make us more generous, more courageous, more of an invitation, someone we want to remember, and someone others would want to remember too.

A few highlights that make rest such an enriching experience in an integrated and thoughtful life.

Rest is the conversation between what we love to do and how we love to be.

The conversation between doing, which fills our days, and being, knowing who we are. Rest allows us to keep both in fruitful balance and engaged living. So much of a life is a conversation, which ultimate involves good listening rather than endless talking. Conversation, which means I am attentive to what you have to say in the hopes that you also care about what I have to say. Conversation is about connection, understanding, questioning and appreciating and less about convincing, judging or condemning. Our broken wills are attracted to those last two like bees to honey. There are times to judge and condemn, especially attitudes and behaviors, but we invite their bearers to repentance and conversion.

When we give and take in an easy, foundational way, we are closest to the authentic self, and closest to that authentic self when we are most rested. To rest is not self-indulgent; to rest is to prepare to give the best of ourselves, and to perhaps, most importantly, arrive at a place where we are able to understand what we have already been given.

Rest prepares us to give the best of ourselves; to God, to neighbor, perhaps even to the stranger. Too often we are tempted to think of rest as self-indulgent, as being lazy, which is often seen as a great failing. When you are lazy you are not contributing your portion, carrying your weight or carrying out your responsibilities. But there is a discernible difference between being lazy and neglectful or being rested and accepting of limitations.

Rested, we are ready for the world but not held hostage by it; rested, we care again for the right things and the right people in the right way. In rest we re-establish the goals that make us more generous, more courageous, more of an invitation, someone we want to remember, and someone others would want to remember too.

This is gold - I hope you have experienced this truth. I have. Ready for the world but not held hostage by it. Ready, now rested, we are to give ourselves more completely to the day ahead of us and the path beyond us.

A winding path - Mount Rainier