Category: Environmental Awareness

The Gift of Sleep

Sleep

A day with the Earth.  No other voice. 

And now, in the last hour, her presence grows stronger.  Instead of fading into darkness, the Earth makes herself felt deep within me.  In what meditation calls ‘the still centre’, the hollow just below the navel, I feel filled and fulfilled.

Earth’s stillness becomes my stillness.  Her silence, my calm thought. 

Natural as a mother’s young who nudge toward the safe place she creates, sleep will follow.

 

The above words write themselves, after I spend a day alone and never switch on the news in any sound form.

In the current pandemic, many of us have trouble finding sleep.   Fear escalates and speeds away rest, bringing nightmares instead.  It seems as though we can’t help it.   Yet, after working in communications for many years, what I’ve found is that we can choose not to hear many of the voices who cause fear.

‘News’ is not the equivalent of truth, but something manufactured, designed to keep us as listeners, helpless in the face of what is presented as insurmountable.   Radio and TV announcers are trained to put the kind of urgency and emphasis into their delivery which heightens our fear and dependence on them.

When I quit the communications business after fifteen years, the first thing I did was to cut myself off from TV and radio.  What we hear has a direct line to the brain, one that I don’t want to offer to sources I have learned not to trust.  The Internet has now shown that the advent of fake news even taints the word as text, with many news and social media feeds being heavily biased.  More and more, silence becomes the cleanest option for sleep hygiene.   If we need updates, local health announcements on email are more specific to our individual health and lack artificial drama.  Even these, I allow to access my thoughts in a sparing and controlled way.  For example, I avoid news reports at times when my sub-conscience is most vulnerable, such as when I first wake up, or in the hours leading to bedtime.

I’m not suggesting that we all bury our heads in the sand.   But in our news-saturated time, most of us do the opposite: we let ourselves become defenseless in the presence of those who seek to profit by launching more and more fears into our psyche.

If there is only one message I can give to those who share this pandemic situation with me, it is: let’s be more selective about what allow into our minds.  No one should rob us of the rest that renews.

We sit patiently and allow muddy thoughts to clear.                                                                        Life then lives itself in us.                                                                                                                                                              –quote adapted by William Martin from the Tao te Ching                                                                                                                                                                                   

After Christmas:  Let Boxing Day be different

 

My mind is not noisy with desires…

And my heart has satisfied its longing.                                Psalm 131

 

As I write this, deep snow has settled on the evening of December 25th.  The Christmas shopping ritual has just ended.  On my car radio, among the tinny carols, I hear Van Morrison repeat a phrase from Poetic Champions Compose: non-attachment, non-attachment.

For those of us like me, who overspent again this year, and felt retail’s hollow afterthought where our spirit should have been, the song rings like an anthem for 2017.  Non-attachment is currently best known as a Zen way of thinking about the world without clinging to it, nor to our position in it.  Yet the above Psalm, quoted by Muslim, Jewish and Christian holy men, reveals that the idea of non-attachment continues in many other spiritual traditions.

As I quietly step in, brush off the snow and hang up my coat, I find solace in the silence.  Perhaps it’s not too late to find a new path for the holidays.  I live five minutes from a supermall, and the thought of returning there for Boxing Day shopping tomorrow sickens me.  So does the thought of plowing through all the excess food and gifted goodies in my kitchen.

Boxing Day is so named because, for hundreds of years, those who had plenty would distribute their extra food and clothes to the poor.  The idea of using this day for the prosperous to accumulate yet more, is relatively recent, a nightmare invented by retailers.

As I turn off the tree lights for the night, a thought comes to me.  My local YMCA is collecting food for local shelters and the town food bank. I remember that late on Christmas Eve, I noticed that, though we are one of the wealthiest communities in the country, the box was only half-full. Tomorrow afternoon, Dec. 26, is the time scheduled for the box to be sent out.  I can still make a difference!

I shrug off the fatigue I’ve been feeling from a day of too much food, too many gifts, and swing into action.  I find a large box of my own, and fill it with tinned soups, stews and all my extra boxed cookies and chocolate.  A clear recycling bag enables me to add the clothing I’ve received but don’t need.

I have a new plan for tomorrow now.  I’m going to bypass the mall, drop off my donation, and offer to help distribute to the needy.  As William Blake, the poetic conscience of the early Industrial Age, wrote:

“ You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough.”