Doing those deeply unfashionable things—

slowing down, letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting—

is a radical act now, but it is essential. This is a crossroads we all know, a moment when you need to shed a skin.

If you do, you’ll expose all those painful nerve endings

and feel so raw that you’ll need to take care of yourself for a while.

If you don’t, then that skin will harden around you.

~Katherine May

when I listen to the breadth of the soul stone….

inquiry for today~ when you meet yourself where you are….

how to begin again

Artistic Afternoons: “Waste” some time coloring this afternoon. That’s right—get out your crayons or markers or colored pencils, and color in a line drawing someone else created (if you don’t have kids with coloring books on hand, you can print almost anything from the internet! Just search for “printable coloring page_____”.).

It’s pretty hard to convince ourselves that something like coloring is worth doing, isn’t it? Nothing is produced that will “do” anything. It’s not a commodity, an asset, a salable good. It is only a GOOD. Because it allows us to sink into rest in ways we might not otherwise. It taps into our childlike playfulness, allowing us to create without the internal criticism monologue (or at least, it’s hopefully turned way down in volume). We are coloring for the fun of it, for the rest it brings our minds, our souls, our bodies, to simply sit and put color on a page that was previously black and white.

So, if rest is difficult for you (or even if you think you’re pretty good at this whole rest thing!) consider taking some time to rest from whatever else is going on in your life and just color. See what comes up as you do. What do you become aware of—in your body, in your thoughts and feelings? What prayer emerges naturally as you color-as-rest?

~a.c.m,