In our 24/7/365 world, where there is always more to be done, where we’re connected globally and aware of terrors, disasters, and troubles beyond our neighborhoods, where many struggle to sleep even when they’re exhausted, and many struggle to find anything smile-worthy in a day, and many of us have even forgotten how to dance freely and gladly, it can take an enormous effort to stop. However difficult it is for us now, human beings apparently have struggled with stopping for millennia. In the effort to survive and get by, we have a tendency to lose what we don’t nurture and repeatedly, what we lose when we’re stressed, exhausted, and suppressed or oppressed is what nourishes our hearts, what opens our minds, and what makes life sweet and worthy. Every religious tradition calls us to patterns of rest and involves ritual life that invites us to awe, repentance, and surprising joy. Chapter 23 of Leviticus names those times of sacred observance and festivals for the Jewish people, teaching how and when to make some space for awe, repentance, and delight.
One of the odd things about being so focused on work and survival is that to enter the spaces of wonder, seeking forgiveness, and happiness we may very well need to create, curate, cultivate, and explore practices that, as we receive them, may feel like unyielding rules. I find it interesting when I observe myself chafing at the practices of holy rest. Turning my attention away from that pile of work to do back to wisdom, reverence, making amends, and generous, regenerative laughter and love might seem easy to do. Some days that is so, and sometimes I have a chance to laugh at how stressed I am as I keep wanting to skip over the practice of observing life’s spaciousness and blessings. When I can enter the grace of sacred time and the practices to ensure I’m noticing violets blooming and the scent of rain-soaked air and this amazing person next to me I can find more spaciousness in every day. But it takes this daily spiritual practice, this weekly setting aside of a day of reverence and rest, these seasons of repentance and seasons of delight and thanksgiving to remind me, retune me, and reconnect me with life’s blessings.
I am a person of the culture and world I live in, which is rushed, focused on efficiency, and sharply, grindingly competitive. I am also a person of this sacred world in which I live, which is full of beauty, love, wonder, wisdom, and the chance in each moment to bring more blessings for this world into being. Tending a love-soaked and generously compassionate way of life means also setting down the troubles I carry, the worries I fuss through, the work of ordinary nights and ordinary days, and dwell a bit in the green pastures by cool waters, noticing this abundant cup of being served every day, that is just a song, a prayer, a meditative breath away from the bustle and hustle.
My hope and prayer for each and all of us is that we can practice attending reverence daily, weekly, and in our sacred seasons, in our beautiful diversity, with our different spiritual languages and rituals, our differing understandings of what times to observe and how to observe them. And as we do so, may we find surprising joy, more generosity and courage for repentance and making amends, and more delight and blessings to share with shouts of gladness and songs of love.
