Rest/Burst

This has not been a particularly restful week. My days are long again now that I’m back in rehearsal. My body will wake up for a while at 2 am, or for good around 4:30, and I’ll be at work — in one form or another from about 9am to about 8pm. There was a stressful meeting yesterday. I’m awaiting several bits of news about my future. The bills are due.

At our fire on Monday night last, the group gathered contemplated rest. Some cannot cope with the idea. Others have to structure it. Still others observed how we in the West are wired to think of rest as a lack of productivity.

For me, rest does not come easy. And when it comes, it is too easily disrupted by the anxieties of mind and body.

But it is still possible.

While all this is happening around me, it is also near time here in North Carolina to plant gardens. So I spent some of the weekend with friends planting seeds in Dixie cups. My family and I have been faithfully misting the cups — full of the promise of flowers and vegetables — over the last few days. The seeds are resting, in a way, and the work is happening invisibly in the dirt. Molecules are combining and activating. New life and renewal is on the way.

In this way, rest can look and even feel passive. Boring. Even painful.

Rest is a kind of death.

But the seeds we plant in rest are often bound to burst forth.

What are you planting and allowing to die? What might burst forth?