learning rest

We're learning to rest. Yes we are. That's not the same as the natural function of sleeping, so you have to learn it. It's not automatic, and even less so these days in this world and culture. It's also not escapism. It isn't Candy Crush-ing, Netflix-watching, or facebook-scrolling withdrawal from reality we're practicing. We're learning to rest, to be rest-ored; or to be re-stored, having the most valuable depleted stock on our shelves replenished.

Seriously. We're learning. It's important enough a lesson that we are finally willing to practice it and carve out entire days for it, grasp it, cling onto it; like something of life depends on it.

Some days have looked like us going nowhere, seeing no one, turning nothing but music on and a lamp at dusk. It has looked like sleeping-in, books read and games played, like braided hair and whispered dreams, like prayers uttered and worries put off. It has meant a post-it note left out so that distracting thoughts of to-dos can be thrown down in a drive-by fashion and left for later, out-of-sight-out-of-mind for at least This Day. It's entailed nearly effortless foods so that even meals require little labor. It's meant late-night emptying of the sink and straightening of the living room Yesterday so Today the spaces are inviting and wooing us towards rest.

Everyday that we attempt rest means we willfully stay in Today, don't stew over Yesterday or borrow from Tomorrow. We're resting. We're learning how.

Sometimes the rest keeps us locked in and the world locked out. But sometimes we find it on the outside of our doors. It looks like secret spots and flowing water. It's hidden in shoals and slides made of slippery rock and imaginary miniature worlds built of moss and stone.

In or out, we're learning to rest. In and out, we rest.

We're learning.