Celebrating and thoughts on resting

 

Jamie, Jordan, and Sophie

It’s a big anniversary in the cottage tonight. Twelve years ago today Jordan, Jacob, and I along with all the Frisco Alters—Jamie, Mel, Maddie, and Eden—went to Safari Kennels outside McKinney to look at labradoodle pups. The labradoodles, only six weeks and too young to take from their mom, were sleepy and a bit disappointing, but the kennel owner said

Maddie and Sophie

she had one eight-week-old bordoodle (border collie/poodle) left. Sophie came charging into the room, full of love and kisses and curiosity and mischief and just plain joy in life. She was a wild puppy and still has her wild moments, but she has brought all of us so much love and laughter. I’m so glad you’re ours, sweet girl. After a close call this winter, she seems pretty feisty for an “elderly” lady. Makes the two of us old ladies together.

On our way home

Everyone is back where they belong. Jacob, home from two weeks at camp in Colorado, which he said was awesome, and Jordan, home from several days in Key Largo at the home of the parents of one of her good friends. It’s good to have them home and be in our routine, although Christian and I (and the dogs) survived nicely. Christian went over and above as a caretaker. I have mixed thoughts on caretaking but will save them for another time, because once again this morning’s sermon is on my mind.

Last week, Reverend Renee Hoke talked about the Sabbath and gave us one practice word for the week, “Delight.” We should delight in God’s presence in our lives, on the Sabbath and throughout the week. It involves, she said, detaching from the world around us, from the need to take control. Her example? One was watching a hummng bird feed.

This week, the word was “Rest,” from the commandments and word that on the seventh day God rested. Rev. Hoke pointed out that rest is not just sleeping. There are those moments during the day when we all need to unplug from what’s going on around us and in our lives. I am not good at unplugging, and that is sometimes a worry to me. My mind is always restless. I don’t for instance, watch TV or listen to podcasts because I need the visual to keep my mind focused. I’ve been known to scroll through emails while listening to something on the phone, and those “live chats” online with their excruciating slowness are painful for me. A colleague once said to me, “Your motor is always running too fast.” I chastise myself for this, feeling it’s a character deficiency that I can’t, say, meditate for half an hour and keep my thoughts focused. Rev. Hoke talked about retreats she attended where that was expected, and she stressed that it is hard work. I’m still working on it, still working on focused prayer.

But there is one way I can “rest.” When I was a kid, my family had a cabin, really rustic, on a high dune in Indiana, at the very foot of Lake Michigan. I liked nothing better than to watch a storm come roaring down that lake, stirring up the lake into ferocious whitecaps. There was one spot, halfway up the dune, a small outcropping, where I would go and sit, my arm around the wild collie mix we had then. At sunset, if I looked at just the right spot across the lake to the west, I could see the sun going down behind the buildings of Chicago, which looked like dots or at best toothpicks. For most of my adult life, when I needed to unplug, that is where I went in my mind. Today, I may also go to the rocking chair at the edge of the water by the tiny lake/large pond at Colin’s house. But going to those places in my mind is the closest I come to unplugging.

Lately though I’ve been thinking about another aspect to rest—and that’s my daily nap. I do my best thinking, especially about planning what I’m writing, when I nap. I frequently lie down with a specific problem in my head, and when I wake, I have an idea of the path forward. Sometimes it takes a few days, but it eventually works out. And I find that I write scenes in my head several times before I commit them to the computer—same with a lot of blogs.

Authors often talk about writing only as far ahead as you can see in the headlights. E, L. Doctorow is credited with saying, ““Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” This weekend, the headlights gave out on me on the current Irene story, and I was stymied, but tonight after resting on it more than once, I think I see the road again. Yep, rest is not only curative but creative.

 

How about you? Do you have a special safe spot where your mind can go, even if your body can’t follow? Do you find rest creative or curative? Can you unplug?