TRUSTING THE RHYTHM

I've been sitting on the couch for a couple of weeks. The sun pours through my big windows directly onto my seeking face. I squint, but I don't move. I read and sit and think and pray and sit and soak in the sun.

On Sunday nights, I make my list for the week, as usual. The next Sunday, it's not much changed, because I don't do anything. I sit on the couch and occasionally worry about it, wondering if I should care. I don't care. I am wrapped in some numbing air that forbids movement, action.

I wonder if this is a new form of depression, this inaction, this ennui. But I am not sad. I am not anything. I am just sitting.

And then I am done. This morning, I cleaned the refrigerator, the stove, two bathrooms, the microwave, the clothes, and even the grills on the stove hood. All before 9 a.m.

Sometimes we just need to sit. We need to be and not do. I feel guilty about the not doing, because I am tainted by a world where productivity is the mark of success and worthiness. Just to be is somehow suspect. And yet, it is all. I AM, He said.

Interestingly, as I reviewed the week Sunday night, I noticed that I had actually accomplished quite a few tasks on my list. Not by trying or planning or even consciously doing. But somehow, they got done. Just by being.

It's 9:45 a.m. now. And I'm going to sit on the couch.