Can you feel it?

What a beautiful day to sit outside and watch the hawks soar in their circle dance.  It was a magnificent experience, as was the weather.  It is hard to have a care on a day like today.  I feel myself slowing down - even though my schedule screeched to a halt days ago, it has taken me a while to catch up and stop - almost.  I'm not yet completely stopped, but I have definitely slowed down...enough to see the hawks in their sacred dance and an unnamed smallest bird hoping from branch to branch (again and again) in a tall pine tree.  I noticed new life on the rose bushes, and new weeds in the garden.  My breath is a little bit deeper, and naps come quite easily to me after a little while of activity.  I've stopped fighting all these things - perhaps that is why I am slowing down.  Finally.

William McNamara, OCD, one of my favorite modern Christian mystics, has long written about the importance of "holy leisure" in the development of the soul.  In Wild and Robust, he compares and contrasts a life focused on the Protestant Work Ethic of work, work, and more good work with the expansiveness and creativity that can be achieved when one "wastes time" luxuriating in God's presence - in contemplative awareness.  I admit that in the past when I've read the many references McNamara makes to Holy Leisure, I usually skimmed over them and looked for more interesting information.  You'd think by now I'd learn that what I choose to skip over usually is my best teacher.  And so today I relaxed into the soaring of the hawks - and of God embodied in creation.  Instead of making my prayer time a series of petitions offered in the most proper of formats, my prayer today was wordless, and would have been soundless except for a deep sigh as I relaxed back into the soaring wings of God.

Holy leisure - do you allow yourself to relax - to play - to pray wordlessly in God's presence?  Or are you always busy attempting many things - many good things? Are you carrying the ever-present Realm of God on your shoulders, or allowing it to sweep you up in its dance?  It is a little scary to think about letting go of how we've always done things, but just look at the beauty of this freedom dance...can you feel the music? 

I will write again Sunday evening after I spend a bit more time resting with God (and returning to work on Sunday).  In the meantime -

Let yourself feel the music, if only for a moment, and be free...

Sigh,
Kim