The Practice of Rest
Taking a day of rest each week invites me to connect intentionally with the Mystery. You might call the Mystery “God,” or perhaps you have another name for it. I use the word Mystery. I once read that it was the name for God before God had a name.
To take a day of rest from work is more than simply doing something other than work. Rest is an act of deep listening. It’s about how I offer my attention to the day. As rest unfolds, it becomes a quiet conversation between my own questions about how I belong in this life and the Mystery infused within this living world. Taking a full day and night to rest is an intentional act. It is a declaration: I am fully capable of choosing many other things to do with this day, and I choose to rest.
True rest is difficult for many of us in this society. We are deeply productivity-minded. We are conditioned to move quickly and to measure our worth by output. Slowing down and listening to our bodies and our inner lives can feel threatening. Instead, we build walls to keep deeper truths from interfering with the life we are trying to force into existence. These walls take many forms: staying busy, worrying, scrolling, or watching television. They may be alcohol or drugs. Sometimes they are dogma, the need for control, or anger.
When I slow down, unkind voices arise within. These are voices that work against self-love and acceptance. They carry shame about the twenty pounds I “should” lose, grief over betrayal, fear of abandonment. I don’t have to listen very hard for them. Their presence reveals something essential: being alone with ourselves is not something we have been trained to value—or even tolerate.
Perhaps this discomfort points to a deeper truth. Many of us do not actually know ourselves very well. Or the version of ourselves we know is shaped by years of judgment and self-rejection, making solitude feel unsafe.
Practicing rest exposes this quickly. When I cease “doing,” as in meditation, my attention is almost immediately hijacked by thoughts. If I believed rest required competence or mastery, I might abandon it altogether and start another project. Ideas, in fact, are one of my greatest obstacles to rest. Also, feeling like I should “make the most of free time”. Another is remembering my long list of unfinished house projects, which triggers shame fueled by the fantasy that somewhere there exists a man who would never leave a task undone. Through rest, I come face to face with how difficult it is to simply be.
And yet, an intentional day of rest also initiates a different movement. It invites my attention toward gratitude.
I begin to sense what is moving beneath the surface of my life. What desires are quietly waiting beneath the busy activity of my days? In the stillness, where action ceases and listening begins, I can practice becoming larger and more loving than the unkind voices. I can practice trusting the Mystery. I can allow myself to notice how my longing to belong to my own life draws me toward gratitude for the smallest graces: a vine growing in the sun, a sleeping animal, the breeze at dawn.
Life is an ever-deepening journey toward knowing oneself. The more I come to know myself, the more I am asked to trust the Mystery enough to live what has been revealed. And the more I trust this life, the clearer my path becomes.
Rest is both the means by which I listen to what is alive beneath the surface and the practice that sustains me on the journey.