What do we ourselves mean when we’ve come back from a camping trip, or from a reunion of old friends, or from a silent retreat and say to our family and colleagues at work: “I feel restored!” It’s that feeling of rest, renewal, resilience and rootedness that feeds our generative capacity to create and innovate, our reservoir of good will toward others, and our innate gifts for healing.
Our society historically took off the Sabbath once a week for restoration, and the Jubilee Year once in seven for even a deeper experience of restoration. As I understand it, you were not allowed to do physical work, except for tasks like planting trees or carrying a canoe to water to take an elder out onto a lake.
Oh, does our society need to invest more time in such “trivial pursuits”…Owning smart phones have duped most of us into believing that we must be “on call” and available to co-workers nearly every waking hour of the day. We ourselves are over-worked yet under-(re)storied! How then, can we ever truly gain the capacity to restore the world? Do anything you can to disengage from– rather than rage at— the machine! Consider restfulness a higher calling than restlessness.
Re-story your life with parables that sanction your participation in restful play, small acts of restoring wildflowers to your home ground, or contemplative practice.
As I once heard Richard Baker Roshi and David Steindl-Rast say: “Walk as slowly as you can down the busiest boulevard in New York…That is what a peace march is!”
Brother Coyote, OEF
