There’s a wonderful John O’Donohue poem, A Blessing For One Who Is Exhuasted, that includes the maxim “Be excessively gentle with yourself.” There are days when that is the only mantra which will sustain me. In a world that values productivity so highly that we have to justify spiritual practices by describing their health effects, it is a relief to hear O’Donohue’s invitation to enjoy the “joy that dwells far within slow time.” And yet …
And yet, sometimes an injured place needs to be exercised. This is true for things like tendonitis. Often that inflammation will not get resolved by rest alone. There also has to be some activity. The trick, and it really is tricky, is to find the sweet spot where recovery can happen without inflaming the situation all over again. Restorative time, sabbath time, can be like that too. Some days all that is needed are a set of pajamas and the DoorDash app. Other days are restorative because of the juice we squeeze out of them.
Friday afternoon found me in the Rocky Mountain National Park. Normally I will go up first thing in the morning, but I had a conversation with my spiritual director scheduled for 10:00. Those conversations are great because we don’t know where we are going with them, and we don’t need to know. We just have to be on the way. But it kept me from getting underway until after lunch. I thought I would try a trail at lower altitude with the idea that it might have less ice and less vertical fluctuation.
As it turns out, there was some vertical fluctuation. There was also some ice. I don’t know why I thought it would be any different, since we are talking about the Rocky Mountains in February. Still, even with the late start and knowing that I had a potluck to go to later in the evening, my heart soared when I crested the climb into Estes Park and saw the peaks in front of me. It never seems to fail.
Aspen trees are notable for the fact that they are rhizomatic, growing from an interconnected root system that allows aspens to be mutually sustaining. What happens in one part of the grove can have effects across the whole grove. Our psyches are the same. We may think that we can build partitions between work and leisure, between the office and the house. The truth, however, is that a search for adventure and a curiosity about the world around us are attitudes that, when they are cultivated in one area of our lives, carry over to the other parts of our lives.
I reached a point in my hike where I could have turned around. I probably should have turned around. Instead, I decided to see what was over the next ridge. What I found was a rugged granite face, basking in the rays of a descending sun. Getting to the trail at the bottom of that ridge proved to be somewhat treacherous, but even that effort yielded the discovery of a path that would be fun to share with a friend. By the time I was done, I was late for the potluck. It didn’t matter; there was plenty of food. And at least for this day, as I was drained, I was also filled.