Thinker - Contemplation in the Woods Out Back
As the seasons become less recognizable and more nuanced, it feels even more crucial to follow their lead and adhere to their lessons while we still can. It’s less about remembering the weather and more about the flow, the pattern, and the creative tempo. Noticing the intricacy of the seasons wherever you live is akin to tapping into a well of details, subject matter, and lessons that might otherwise go overlooked. Jacqueline Suskin (A Year In Practice: Seasonal Rituals and Prompts to Awaken Cycles of Creative Expression)
How could our world be if we allowed the ground of our lives to experience the fallowness of fields at rest in winter?
Yes, we’re almost a full month into this 24th year of the century. The date, 1-24, feels auspicious as I finally settle in to write much later in the day than is my usual routine. This is the first of 12 24th days of this 24th year.
A quick search online offers up a variety of positives for the number 24: deep connection with family and relationships; harmony, balance, and good fortune; a strong sense of responsibility, compassion, and nurturing nature; empathic. But I digress …
Rest. Rest. Rest. Winter is the season of rest. Nature rests in winter and this year I’m exploring how to more closely align my life with the season, a season with almost two months ahead of us before we burst into spring. So say our calendars even if our bodies have long since forgotten.
This year I’m asking my body to listen and to remember. I’m exploring and experimenting with the question of what deep rest means to me and, since this body wasn’t built for the deep rest of bear’s hibernation, what it can look like as I engage in the activities of maintaining life and interacting in the world.
I’m learning and discovering that sleep and stillness, while important, are only elements of rest. With intention and mindfulness of how I’m BEing I can invoke a state of rest as I walk in the woods out back and even as I move about engaging the daily ‘to do’ activities of life maintenance. I’m discovering that how I’m BEing as I move about determines whether the activity is restorative and restful or drains energy. Simple mindfulness and choice can call forth rest in the midst of movement.
The flow of each day varies, seemingly in response to the intention of deep rest and operating with few plans, appointments, or commitments other than to the rest itself. Morning time habits and routines, generally slow, are much slower, elongating time between waking and the morning walk or breaking fast. Slower too is the pace of and attention to activity as I hold this intention for rest and self-care, seeming to call forth a deeper level of awareness and care in almost all that I do.
It gives me pause to wonder and dream. Wonder how our world might be if we listened to the voice of Nature and Her rhythms. Wonder how our world could be if we allowed the ground of our lives to experience the fallowness of fields at rest in winter? Wonder what we might discover if we learned to truly rest and reflect? Dream that the Winter Solstice is a celebration welcoming the season of rest and return to the true meaning of the season’s holy days, honoring that which is true for one another? Dream what could be possible if we rested together, laying down our weapons of war and of words?
To BE quiet. To listen.
What might we hear from the deep voice of our souls? Might we find ways to unwind the wound-up wounds that divide us? Could we heal? Would we dare be such a threat to the corporatocracy of wars (those of weapons and those of words) that thrives on sustaining our unrest, our dis-ease?
This time of rest and pulling back from the world calls forth such musing. Not to find ‘the’ answers, but to wonder and to call forth possibility and to imagine the creation of a world where harmony prevails. Harmony with self. Harmony with others. Harmony with home, Mother Earth. Harmony with the flow of the cosmos. Harmony within. Harmony without.
Rest. Pure rest. Could it be a simple solution to the chaos and discord of our world?
Mountains at Rest in the Clouds