Today was a real Sabbath.
We finally got our first significant snowfall for the year, in the form of a huge winter snow that cancelled church services, and left us home with nothing to do on a Sunday.
It could have gone either way. Often, when all the kids are home on weekends, the noise and fighting increase. With no structure to their day other than quiet time, they can end up engaging in attention-seeking behaviors with both their siblings and their parents.
Today was different.
I found out about this lovely book by Jack Kornfield in the list of resources that was provided to us after my retreat. I got a library copy, then ended up getting a copy to keep because the book was so good. I gave it to the Chaplain to read and kept reading my library copy, which meant I couldn’t mark up the pages like I wanted to. This is another book I want to read more than once, so I will mark up our copy on the second read.
What made this book so good?
We’ve all experienced this phenomenon in large and small parts of our lives. We know it’s unreasonable, but we expect things to keep getting better. We want the stock market to keep trending up. We want to keep earning interest on our bank account. We want to keep getting better at our jobs. We want to improve our weaknesses, hone our parenting skills. We want to stay connected to friends. We want them to stay connected to us. We want our romantic relationships to flourish. We want our spiritual lives to be rich and rewarding.
Yet sometimes we won’t be measuring up in a category or two. And the people who care about us will ask, “How are you doing?” But what it feels like they want to hear is that you are doing great, things are getting better, everything is OK.
I’ve been hearing about gong baths for nearly a year now, and I finally got to go to one this past weekend.
I wasn’t sure what they were really about, other than that there was no soap and water involved.
After the retreat, we were given a list of resources to help with “re-entry.” One of the suggestions was to try to find ways to come back into the space we’d accessed through psychedelics in different ways – through mindfulness, meditation, dance, and other practices. One of the “other practices” listed was gong baths.
I knew there was one happening near me and so I signed myself and the Chaplain up.
Life is this simple: We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the Divine is shining through it all the time. That is not just a nice story of a fable. It is true. -Thomas Merton, quoted in After the Ecstasy, The Laundry, by Jack Kornfield
When I was in counseling last year, my counselor would give me homework.
One of my assignments was to stop all the Doing in my faith walk – the Reading, Praying, all the activity, and just rest in God’s presence.
I couldn’t do it.
I did try.
I would sit, but moments later I would be up again, to write something down, put something away, fix something that was crooked, to trim my nails, anything so that I didn’t have to be alone with my thoughts.
