Awaken.

Over the course of the last 45 years or so, I’ve often had the privilege of being able to step back from the work of my life and rest. Sometimes this has lasted weeks, as I’ve healed and recovered from mental health catastrophes, and other times it only takes a few minutes of laying down to realize something important anew. To awaken (or, re-awaken) to life with a fresh perspective, new energy, and renewed strength.

To rest is to invite darkness, stillness, and inaction, even if for a short while. It is to breathe. And also, by extension, it is to invite awakening. At times it is necessary to shut out life. However, it is also necessary to use one’s perception to see new things, or things one hadn’t noticed before. To awaken is to notice, to discern, to clarify the story, and to get organized. To learn things one didn’t know before, and, when necessary, to see that there are darker sides to life as well.

We, in the United States, have the great luxury to, for the most part, choose what we let in and what we shut out. Often, we may refuse to consider another point of view, labeling it too different or extreme to still be “good,” or worth our time, relationship, or community. We also appear more divided and fearful by the day.

Refusing to look at, see, hear, and recognize one another is not helping the matter.

Would we prefer being right in our own isolated eyes over being in community with others who have valuable perspectives? Would we prefer despair over consideration, discussion, argument, anger, or even rage? IF the truth – the whole truth – is to upset us, then let us be upset. Let us rest, when necessary, but also let us refuse to look away when reality is difficult, uncomfortable, or not how we would have liked it to have been. Let us face it with our eyes and ears open and let us perceive as large a picture as we have capacity. Let us not isolate ourselves, shutting out the other in despair for or hatred of their point of view.

Let us invite and welcome the light of knowledge and the truth of what is, and what is needed – ourselves and each-other along with it.