Richard Rohr says it better than I ever could:
The Need for Silence
We don’t know how to take joy in simple things anymore because, frankly, we are sated. You and I have had so much thrown at us! Unless we choose to deliberately under-stimulate ourselves, I don’t think we can reasonably talk about spirituality. We don’t really taste, suffer, enjoy, feel the images that come our way. Westerners have a mania for experience. Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” For us it is “I experience, therefore I am.” But I’m pretty much convinced experiences don’t change people; realization does. I think of all the powerful experiences that I’ve had. But only when I taste my experiences enough so they become realizations, do I change. That takes time and space. Put time and space together and you have a new definition of silence. We’ve got to create some kind of space so our images can become realizations. Unless we choose silence, I don’t think a lot of this is going to happen. I don’t think we’re going to become willing people. We become, instead, willful people, trying to make the world fit our needs. Will triumphs instead of the Spirit. Silence alone is spacious enough to allow Spirit and to let go of will-fullness. Silence makes us willing instead of willful.
from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction, Richard Rohr
So why am I so afraid of stopping, really honoring Shabbos? I don't like to admit it, but with Rohr's definition above, I am far more willful than willing, trying to find clever ways to fit more into less. For those reasons (primarily that my soul desires to be willing) I am dedicating the next year of my life to better understanding resistance to having Shabbos be as close and familiar to me as the space between in-and out breaths.
I'll keep you 'posted! In the meantime...I'd love to hear your experiences, frustrations, hopes and desires around 'stopping'. Maria's blog postings are very potent around these issues, too.
Beth
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About Beth Patterson
The Virtual Tea House website became 'word-ripe' when, over a cup of jasmine green, I realized that the web has an expanding part to play in the communal aspects of spiritual growth.
One of my favorite hats, among several is: initiated firekeeper in the Sacred Fire Community. Hosting a monthly community fire circle, I'm being taught that the simple act of sitting around a fire with the intent of holding open-hearted space makes for some soulful community!
With a master's degree in religion, my career spans 20 years in end of life care and I currently work in the field of child abuse intervention and advocacy.
Here in beautiful Central Oregon, my spiritual homes of the high desert and the mountains are both in proximity. And for good measure, four hours away is Grandmother Ocean and the stunning Oregon Coast.
I'm making decent progress on the goal set by my mother early on: she taught us that the goal of humanity should be to become ever-more eccentric, i.e. more fully human.
Entering the 'forest-dweller' phase of life, I am honored to host the Virtual Tea House for all who wish to explore how our lives are enriched and made new a thousand times each day by the spirituality we embody. Exploring this engagement together is the purpose of the Virtual Tea House.
Welcome! Let's have a cup of virtual tea together and share what brings us joy, what we are being taught by life, how we are leaning into the Big Questions posed to us each day in sometimes 'distressing disguises'.