Turning to Prepare for the Journey into the Unknown

Every day, every year circles around the silent turning of cycles and rhythms.

This is no longer the hopeful two week sprint cycling back to the known. This is a challenging expedition into unchartered terrain.

I continue to downshift. Yesterday as the new “Stay At Home” order went into effect, I realized the need to adjust my “life retraction” schedule. Do I still need an alarm to wake me up at 5 AM? I decided no. I’ll honor my body’s inner clock and my need for rest.

When I was experiencing upheavals and uncertainty while my mother was under hospice care in 2015-2017, I discovered some tips for a household retraction (in the book, Home Comforts by Cheryl Mendelson) and saw how her advice also applied to a life retraction during that time. The “life retraction” advice seems helpful now.

• Ensure there is an end to what your routine calls for in a day or week. You are the one who sets the limits.
• Recognize the importance of setting plausible and explicit goals so you know when you are done with tasks in the day.
• Set up structure that includes transition time so you can receive a sense of satisfaction, completion, and repose in your days.
• Ensure each day has end points.
• Decide what ordinary, daily level of functioning you want. There ought to be a word for this level, but there isn’t. Whatever words you use, you need to create end points that will let you say to yourself, “Finished!”
• Another trap to avoid is that of inflexible standards and unrealistic expectations.
• You need different goals for ordinary times and times of illness, stress, company, new babies, long working hours, or other interruptions of your home routine.
• When you fall below your ordinary standards, a backup plan can help prevent the fall from turning into a freefall. Planning how you will engage in a retraction at such times and return to ordinary standards when the crisis is past keeps you in control. The goal during these hard times is to adhere, more or less, to some workable routine.
• When you cannot have everything, establish priorities.

Float on the tides of a deeper time

All the generations before ours (each one) have taken a journey into the unknown. They have given us their wisdom and knowledge, and planted seeds throughout the course of time. This is part of the exploration: to know when to pause and listen to a deeper time.

From Sabbath – Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives:

“Ritual calls us back to center, back to the breath, a short meditation, a chant, a mantra. With each candle, song, and prayer we are tossed from the anchor of habitual concern, and rest in the rhythm of eternity, enormous sweeps of time that bear us up, in the divine inhale and exhale. We lean, as in the traditional gospel hymn, “safe and secure from all alarms; leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms.”

Wayne Muller also writes:

… “When I stop to pray, I feel my body release, disengage slightly from the rush of activity and progress, and float on the tides of a deeper time, tides that have borne up the lives of all who have prayed through eternity.”

…We must be willing to fall into life’s rhythm, even if only to pause for a word of thanks before a meal. The liturgical year grants us this pearl of great price: You are not going anywhere. Millions have done this before you, and millions will do it after you are gone. When you drink this cup, light this candle, recite this prayer, there is sacredness and magic in it. It is a gift for you, to help you remember who you are, and to whom you belong. Come, and take your rest.”