Kaile Judge - Landscapes of the Sacred - Post 2

 Resting in the World

Rest is quite interesting to me, and more so the lack of rest that people seem to have. Through my work with various mental health associations, I have learned about how important rest is and its potential benefits. In Belden Lane's, Landscapes of the Sacred, he writes a story of his busy life and how coming to a place of rest helped him. In this story, he travels to a cabin, where he often goes to look for God. He spends his days praying and looking for any signs of God's presence. He says that once he comes to terms with the fact that there are just trees around this building, "it is in this precise moment, where I [Belden] give up looking for the burning bush, that my retreat usually begins." It is not when he is active in his search for healing where he finds it, but rather lacks searching where it is found. I have found that, although being busy and searching for what life has to offer is a social normality in the world, rest has more to offer than the nonstop desire to be moving forward. Belden touches on this when he tells another story of being in the woods. He says that he was walking in the woods and came upon an opening in the trees, and this opening was "inviting" to him but had nothing amazing to offer to him. "Yet somehow it seemed at that time a good place to be still and to wait." In the stillness, an animal came to him and gave him peace and the opportunity for stillness. Because of his initial desire to wait and listen, he could still be still and experience something that he otherwise wouldn't have if he was in a constant state of movement. I believe that rest and spirituality go hand and hand. This is why meditation is a big part of Christianity, along with other religions. The genius loci is the spirit of the place where God is met, and you cannot feel and experience this spirit if you are in the place only in passing and not in stillness. As Belden says, "the faster we go..., the longer it takes to bring the mind to a stop in the presence of anything." It is important to slowly move through life, like a dance, and not a race to the end, but something graceful, beautiful, and worthwhile.