Holding Hannah.
Friends and fellow travelers,
How are you doing in the middle of this heat wave? As you might have noticed there have been some weeks without a midweek blessing. I felt exhausted. It felt like the tension which had build up over the year of political and health crisis hit me with a hammer and left me looking for words. I searched for them by walking the gardens of our new home, cuddling with our baby daughter some more (who proudly announces that she is NOT a baby anymore) and retreating into planning a new year of Cloister Seminars.
I came across this photo from 2 years ago. It felt fitting for what I was experiencing. Exhaustion after a storm, like after having been cut open to deliver our child. But it was a healthy exhaustion. An important call for resting and retreating. Back then I was in pain from a severe carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands from the last months of pregnancy and it made it hard to hold my child and almost impossible to dress myself or close a button.
And still, I was in an odd place of peace and calm. The sacred time of support my husband granted me for the first 40 days after delivering our precious baby daughter was a deeply needed shelter for my recovering body and soul. I stayed in our upstairs sleeping room with that little bundle of new life almost the entire time.
I cannot remember a more wholesome time in my life.
I think part of it was that I myself allowed myself to rest. I gave myself permission to rejuvenate and to take the time needed before going the next step.
As being pregnant gets heavy and burdensome on the last stretch giving birth requires our all and thus needs time for healing and rest, too.
Therefore birthing is such a powerful metaphor for our spiritual journey. We sometimes forget that birthing a new project, a sacred insight, a holy anticipation of a next step, can come with much hope paired with exhaustion from the struggle.
Therefore the scripture reminds us that everything has its time: the singing and the crying, the waking and the resting, the building of new things and the tearing down of the old.
The Benedictines have this wisdom engrained in their day to day schedules, where the active life mingles with the contemplative life, and the work hours are met by the same amount of hours of retreating, praying and resting.
So where are you on your journey?
Are you in need of some rest from an exhausting project? Are you walking through an illness calling you more than before to rest and retreat? Did you finish the school year or another grant application, or just another week of projects for the family, only to realize how tired you are? Are you juggling work and family care and do not know where to find the precious hours for rest? Are you doing too many things at the same time or even suffering a spiritual overload of wanting to do too many good things at the same time??
Or may be you are the happy traveler filled with new energy looking forward to some rejuvenating summer time?
Where ever you are, I wish you the wisdom and possibility to find time for both: waking and resting.
Here is my blessing for you
When the exhaustion of a year
filled with anxiety and concern
new hope and old sorrows
has washed over you
like an unexpected wave
welcome it at the door step
like an old friend
bringing wisdom:
it is ok to not do
it is ok to not be perfect
it is ok to take time
it is ok to not know the next step
as the little baby child
sleeps from waking to waking
we can allow ourselves to be
without a plan for all and every thing.
we can lean into the divine motherly embrace
and rest there for as long as we need.
Every task, every burden, every thing,
All has its time.
all
has
time.
You have time.
time to take
for what you need
the most.
May Divine wisdom guide you
and hold you
and bring you home.
With peace and Blessings from my heart to yours, Almut with Chuck and little one :-)