Rest Rest Wherever You Are

Much needed, this time to rest in the midst of every day existence.

It’s not easy to be at ease. Current unrest and discord and being ill-at-ease seems easier. Life includes death, loss, and the grief that comes with it.

Sometimes, it seems to me... as though we're surrounded by a thousand ferocious hungry lions poised to pounce, ready to eat us all alive. Who else sees them? Anyone?

I’ll be the first to raise my hand if you’re taking an informal survey: "Who’s finding it harder to rest when it feels like the world is on fire and the lions look like they’re starving hungry?"

Walking, To Rest

Most days, I walk through the woods awhile--looking for rest among tree friends and nurse logs and birds and creatures. No two walks alike. Rest looks and feels different on different kinds of days and at different times of day. Sometimes I find rest, other times rest seems to find me.

These walks consistently bring me some kind of rest. It comes through the soles of my feet where it settles in my soul.

While out on a walk one day... I notice rest in the charred remains of a blackened tree trunk, with a hole in the shape of a teardrop.

In silence, alone, I’m looking through this watery window to wide open sky that makes me want to cry. Go ahead, I think. Cry me a river and rest along its banks. Perhaps this Grieving Tree and I both stood through lightning’s fire, each of us holding on to rest by our fingernails.

I stand there a while, to rest. I'm not alone any longer. I am with my burned out tree friend and a teary-eyed sky to notice and name what grief lives in the here and now. I give a name to this new friend, calling it what it's become to me now: “My Grieving Tree."

Moving on to finish my walk, I am complete. rested. "Sweet, sweet rest. Perhaps you’ll stay with me a while? I’d like that very much."

Other Meandering Thoughts On Rest And Resting

Perhaps, rest naturally comes more to some than to others… Perhaps there are those who more easily rested in the womb. (While pregnant with each of our oldest four, I'm remembering that a few seemed to be more at ease inside of me than did their siblings).

Or, perhaps, I wonder, whether there are some wombs intuitively knowing how to rest inside their humans. These become liquid caves where it's easy to breathe underwater--their tiny baby embryos gently floating or twirling or tumbling this way and that, with no particular places to go or people to see.

Whether its the teeny tiny babes inside or the wombs themselves... I want to hear the lullabies they're singing as they rock themselves to sleep. No sheep needed for counting.

Then again--perhaps, there are some whose genes seem designed for comfort and ease. While another’s genes wrap around them a bit more snugly--not quite so comfortable–making it harder to rest, the way that too tight jeans so often do, of course.

Perhaps, too, rest lives in some words and phrases more than it belongs in others. “Pay attention,” I think to myself. Listen to tones, to languages and phrasing and wonder and words. Which make it easier to rest?

What might happen if there is no end to where we might find rest? To infinity and beyond!

Perhaps rest is always available, infinitely. It's relentlessly rooting for you and I to rest.

Perhaps rest is perfectly content to simply BE where it is.

Perhaps rest exists in the here and the now. It is what it is and that is that. Whether in light of day or dark of night, Rest rests.

Perhaps rest is omnipresent. It dwells in cities and towns, in the mountains and valleys and woods. It lives in breath and wind and sea and sky and a hug and the voice of our beloveds.

Oh so patiently, rest waits for us to notice. In stillness or in chaos, rest is here. It sits or it swirls around us until it settles into a moment of beauty that catches our eye.

Dear Reader,

As much as we seek to rest, I imagine that rest may be seeking us, too.

I used to miss a plethora of opportunities to rest. They were right there in front of me and beside me and around me, hidden in plain sight, while I kept busy looking for the "right" moments or "best" ways to rest, once I found more time.

I'm paying attention to when I’m at ease for a moment, content to be with rest where it may be found and found and found some more.

Some days I get more rest, some less. I notice--I am getting better and better at resting. I practice resting throughout each day, even the longer days packed quite packed full.

I experiment with what (or what doesn't) offer me rest, with what a short or longer rest might look like day to day, moment to moment. I listen and tune in to what I need or want.

What if you pause here or there, long enough to notice you're resting? "Ah, here you are, Rest. Thank you for being here."

Sometimes a quick resting pause will do, seconds or minutes. Enough short pauses in your day may add up to a whole lot of rest. Sometimes.

Pause long enough for rest to let its dust settle into the soft spaces of your soul. If you can, rest a bit longer, too. Let Rest's fairy dust gather a bit inside of you, long enough to notice you're resting and rested.

Sidenote. Great news, too! The kind of resting dust that settles into your soul isn't at all like the kind of dust that makes you sneeze.

What rest is here for you today?

Rest, in peace.