For weeks now, I have felt like an embodiment of a giant crop circle. I have felt as if I am stand ing in the center of a giant field, arms spread straight out, twirling in a mad circle, clearing every obstacle in my path until what remains is a perfectly round clearing, visible from thousands of miles above. As my yoga teacher quipped, when I shared this metaphor with her, "What message is revealed?"
What message, indeed?
What message, indeed?
With focus and rapidity, I have been clearing activities, tasks, and people right and left. I have been working simply off instinct, off an inner knowing. I have some things that I have been deeply involved in for years and that I have LOVED and over the last few weeks I have quit them suddenly with only the most minimal notice. Next on the chopping block? Individual therapy.
I have a most profound craving for quiet, for stillness. In yoga, the image that keeps reemerging is of picking up my head and taking it off and setting it aside for a while: no more thinking, no more processing. Suddenly, words are just too much. And, I love words--my profession demands words--but in every form I am craving release: release from reading, thinking, and even talking. I want a capital b-r-e-a-k, BREAK.
Breaks, of course, don't simply come from quitting. It's so easy to quit ABC only to fill it back up with XYZ. True breaks, the best kinds of breaks I have experienced, come from setting an intention of rest, of a sabbath, of a sabbatical.
Alongside all of this quitting, I have had a deep yearning to install a hammock in my apartment. The kind that sags in the middle so that I am nestled and cocooned into the hammock--suspended, weightless.
I have a most profound craving for quiet, for stillness. In yoga, the image that keeps reemerging is of picking up my head and taking it off and setting it aside for a while: no more thinking, no more processing. Suddenly, words are just too much. And, I love words--my profession demands words--but in every form I am craving release: release from reading, thinking, and even talking. I want a capital b-r-e-a-k, BREAK.
Breaks, of course, don't simply come from quitting. It's so easy to quit ABC only to fill it back up with XYZ. True breaks, the best kinds of breaks I have experienced, come from setting an intention of rest, of a sabbath, of a sabbatical.
Alongside all of this quitting, I have had a deep yearning to install a hammock in my apartment. The kind that sags in the middle so that I am nestled and cocooned into the hammock--suspended, weightless.
This image, I have come to realize, is my image of the relationship to God that I am yearning for right now. I just want to trust that I am held. I just want to surrender to a deep rest knowing that I am protected and cared for. I want to lay on God's chest listening to the deep thump-thump-thump of his or heart beat, and sleep the sleep of a slumbering babe--unconcerned, unselfconscious, relaxed, restful, and deeply secure.
Q = Quiet. Q = Quaker. Q = Query. Q = Quest.
I am reminded of that old Quaker bumper sticker: "In case of emergency, please be quiet".
So, my intention for this time, which is not a few hours rest or a weekend sabbath, but rather is a full on sabbatical, is to seek out "the peace that is always already available". To me, this means both seeking out intentional quiet and also bringing quiet and stillness into my busy, well-connected lively life of dearly beloved ones and work and daily obligations. It's not a cloistering or a cutting off, but rather it's seeking to live daily in the intentional presence of the divine.
I am reminded of that old Quaker bumper sticker: "In case of emergency, please be quiet".
So, my intention for this time, which is not a few hours rest or a weekend sabbath, but rather is a full on sabbatical, is to seek out "the peace that is always already available". To me, this means both seeking out intentional quiet and also bringing quiet and stillness into my busy, well-connected lively life of dearly beloved ones and work and daily obligations. It's not a cloistering or a cutting off, but rather it's seeking to live daily in the intentional presence of the divine.
Q is for Quiet.
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