On rest.

Rest is the conversation between what we love to do and how we love to be.                                – David Whyte

I saw my first red and gold leaves this week, even as the tomatoes are still leaping off the vines and the splashing is still loud in the lake beyond the woods. The coming turn of season has me thinking about the differences between rest and vacation, and how we jumble the two together sometimes.

Rest can be a minute or a month. It restores us, brings us back to an essential state of clarity and presence.

Vacation, in contrast, can sometimes be the opposite. We might find ourselves rushing for flights, tossing and turning in unfamiliar beds, preoccupied with guidebooks or dinner reservations or who brought the sunscreen. We might catch up on the news or read a poignant novel that plunge us into despair instead of peace.

Whyte continues,

To rest is to give up on worrying and fretting and the sense that there is something wrong with the world unless we are there to put it right…. Rested, we are ready for the world but not held hostage by it, rested we care again for the right things and the right people in the right way.

I’m heading off on a little vacation during these waning days of summer, but more than that, I am heading towards some rest.

Dear friends, whether for a week or an hour or the space of a single breath, in the midst of tumult and busyness and chaos this week, I wish you rest.

 * I’ve just put together our Summer Reading List, which features this new favorite from Whyte, amongst others.  You can find it here. 

Honeybee Summer Reading List 2019