Rest

Today the world stopped. At least my corner of the world stopped. At 11:45am the power went out and and for 1.5 hours the world stopped spinning, at least that's how it seemed to me.

And it felt like heaven. 

For the first 1/2 hour I went through the usual routine of trying to discover why the power was out. Was it a breaker, was it just our house? I talked to a neighbor, using our landlord's phone since ours is cordless. She hadn't noticed, but when I told her she realized she had no power either. I called the hydro company and got the recorded message that unleashed my hour of bliss. "There is a broad scope power outage for the South western portion of Winnipeg. Crews have been dispatched and we have no estimated time for the completion of repairs", they said.  Or something like that, anyway.

Hmmm...

What to do? During that first 1/2 hour I had realized that I could not use the internet, I could not use my phone, I could not use my microwave, I could not work on the broth that I was cooking or the chili I had just started, I could not mark papers (had to access the internet for that), and I could not even drive my car since the garage door requires electricity. And I had no idea when I would be able to do any of those things again. I was completely alone and I had nothing to do. 

So I curled up in my bed and picked up a book and I read. And I read. And I read. That's it. 

For one hour I thought of absolutely nothing but the story. I heard no noise beyond the settling of the house. I felt no pull beyond the scope of the narrative in my hands, which was fascinating, by the way.

For one hour I was a child again. Even better, since there was no possibility of anyone calling me to come for lunch or clean out the dishwasher, or do my homework. I was free. 

Absolutely free.

And it felt great. 

But I didn't realize what had really happened until the power came back on. For the first while it was okay. I allowed myself the space to finish reading my book, but after that I set it down and returned to the tasks I had been doing prior to the 11:45 power down. 

And it was awful. It still feels awful.  

I didn't realize that for an hour I actually slipped into the precious space called "rest". Not the kind of rest where I flop in front of the tv too exhausted to actually do all the things on the to-do list. Not the kind of rest where I engage in another activity, placing other commitments on the back-burner. Not even the kind of rest that comes from a Sabbath-keeping commitment. It was the kind of rest where one slips into holy space. It was the kind of rest that the core of my being longs for, that is part of my very DNA and that I have not experienced in a very long time. So long, I can't even remember.

And I didn't realize how sacred it was until it was gone. Until the phone started to ring with 1-800 numbers. Till the broth was boiling while the meat was browning, and the marking of papers loomed, and deadlines again sprung into my consciousness. 

I didn't realize how long it had been since I experienced total silence inside and out. How long it had been since my brain focused entirely on one thing; laying aside the clamoring voices of this noisy demanding world and all its tasks. 

And honestly, all I feel now is disoriented. 

What does it mean when something as central to life as rest puts me into a complete tailspin? What does it mean when silence, and focus, and attentiveness is actually disorienting, rather than re-orienting? 

My body knows which state of being it prefers. It knows instinctively where it wants to reside. I do not feel at home in meaningless chaos. I do not feel at home in the world of multi-tasking and frantic unconscious movement from one task to another. My body has spoken to me loudly and clearly today.

I know that it isn't possible to live one's entire life in the state of rest that I experienced for one precious hour. But I wonder what it means to carry that rest with me into my everyday life. I wonder what it might look like to live in a space where full and complete rest is familiar and rejuvenating, rather than foreign and disorienting. 

Sometimes I'm frustrated by my current state of unemployment. There are days it feels like a curse. Alicia and I have talked about our first 6 months in Winnipeg being a self-supported sabbatical. A time to re-orient ourselves to our new surroundings. A time to settle. A time to pay attention. Perhaps it is also a time to discover what it really means to rest.