There is Already Here

Welcome to this conversation

To Get to the Other Side, Episode 11 (aired 9/3): There is already here. Still answering, "busy" to the, "how's it going" question? What if COVID helped us re-member a story of "ENOUGH" in our lives? What if it reminded us to rest? Here Mike Rusert shares about the ancient practice of sabbath, and challenges you to create a practice of your own to rest into presence, joy, gratitude, and even justice.

Mike Rusert is a Thinker/Speaker/Entrepreneur curating community with Intertwine out of Northeast Minneapolis. He says: I think the most radical, creative, and necessary action humans can take on today is listening. I create Intertwine with others because I want to learn to listen, and I can’t do that alone.

Voices Shared

Thomas Merton (1915-1968, American Trappist monk). Read his words in the way of Lectio divina, an ancient Christian practice of listening to a text with the ears of our soul allowing wise words and silence to converse with the depths of our hearts and bodies.  It’s simple: Read slowly, listen for a word or phrase from the text or that the text draws out for you, let yourself simply be held by the silence.

To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone with everything, is to succumb to the violence of our times. Some of us need to discover that we will not begin to live more fully until we have the courage to do and see and taste and experience much less than usual... There are times when in order to keep ourselves in existence at all we simply have to sit back for a while and do nothing. And for a person who has let himself be drawn completely out of himself by his activity, nothing is more difficult than to sit still and rest, doing nothing at all. The very act of resting is the hardest and most courageous act a person can perform.

The Exodus story of the Hebrew people who were slaves under the rule of the Egyptian pharaoh, and about how Miriam and Aaron and Moses worked with this mysterious divine power to liberate the people. 

• “Same amount of bricks but no straw…” “the violence of our times…”

• “Remember the Sabbath” - the natural pattern of activity and rest

The stories of weeds and seeds

• For me, weeds have become a reminder of the enough that surrounds and fills my life. A world of “enough” is a biodiverse world.

• Rowen White calls out the biodiversity that wishes to reveal itself if we allow it….and  this time of pandemic as an opportunity to collectively look at what isn’t working and making a turn towards seedtime – towards the rhythm of the enough already present. 

• Living within and perpetuating stories of scarcity is the violence of our time. If we don’t allow time for rest, we miss out on the enough that is already here. If we don’t allow the earth to rest – if we don’t allow rest for the bodies and other beings that the system of “never enough” is destroying – we miss out on the enough of community, of biodiversity, of love.

Practice

Rest is not a luxury. Rest is revolution. Rest is compassion. Rest is the deep wisdom already present within us. Rest is a window that helps us see the other side is already here. We have enough. We are enough. We get to live a story of enough, and healing comes as we allow ourselves and others to inhabit that story.

No one-size-fits-all here. There are many ways to experiment with and carve out time for rest. It is helpful to set a particular amount of time, honor certain practices of not doing, prioritize presence over projects. Let others help you.

Homework Practice: Start experimenting with a new pattern! Carve out time to rest. Set a particular amount of time, name what you will not do, prioritize presence over projects. Tell a trusted someone about your experiment