What? Making one’s Bed at Night?!

Since I turned 60, I have developed the habit of making my bed in the evening instead of in the morning, as most human beings do. Sometimes I make my bed late in the afternoon, after using it for a short mid-afternoon nap, following a hectic, activities-filled half-day. At times I make my bed just an hour or two before sleeping. And many times just before my evening Mass. I know of no other mortal who does the same. It’s like saying your morning prayers at night. It’s a rare day when I make my bed just immediately upon rising.

While many people find making bed before sleeping totally irrational, I find in it a source of security and order. At night when I sleep on a made bed I feel I have done my day’s work, and that the rest I am about to take is earned. Together with the ritual of making sure my bed is made, I also make sure that my working desk is cleared of scattered notes, scribbled telephone numbers and names. I normally consolidate all scattered notes into one. I wish to end the day as orderly as possible even if the flow of events and activities of the day about to close was far from the ideally serene and orderly moment-by-moment living. A made bed gives me the satisfaction that, while things had not come or happened as expected, in the end everything is in order again.

Those who can afford to hire maids and housekeepers to make their beds perhaps will never be able to understand the importance of this ritual. But maybe the computer literate reader can relate a bit to this simple procedure. There is a routine in opening and closing a computer-generated menu of choices. One has to follow exactly the prescribed routine, otherwise unpleasant errors may ensue.

In the evening of life, one needs a sense of order, integrity and completeness. One has to see the day as a whole whether the agenda were finished or not. One has to clean one’s desk and make one’s bed. One should be able to say before sleeping, “The day is done, I am ready to rest.” But to rest on an unmade bed is done only by the sick who are not expected to get up and work. For most people who force themselves to work, the ritual of making bed will have a therapeutic effect. It calms the nerves. It prepares the body and soul to surrender to life’s inexorable bio-rhythm. It gives a feeling of peace and security, that one is ready to surrender one’s human faculties to the mystery of sleep that mimics death.

Normally we should say our morning prayers before vespers, and vespers before “compline” or night prayers, in that order. This is a routine that is proper to humans. But to a God who lives in the eternal present, they are all equally pleasing, no matter what time they are prayed. Just as it is never too late or too early to say our prayers, so it is also never too late or too early to make your bed.

Making one’s bed even at night has a beneficial effect on the human psyche. It makes the act of sleeping truly human, deliberate and exciting. Far from reinforcing a neurotic obsession, it removes an undefined sense of foreboding that we had not really accomplished all that we were supposed to do. It is common to be reminded of our many unfinished tasks after the limited time given to us comes to an end. In the poetic language of Robert Frost, “(I have) promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.” But putting the unfinished day in order gives one the excitement of anticipating how God would ease burdens by revealing to us in the morning how many of our worries had no bases after all! How puny we had been in forgetting that we are really Children of Abundance!

The Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner describes sleep as an act of surrendering to the forces of nature – the nature that proclaims God’s glory in its inexorability. It rehearses man’s eventual submission to death. When a person sleeps he is totally dependent on nature. He enters the world of the unconscious. The earth may quake, a fire might start, and the thief might come – all during one’s sleep. And the person who sleeps is totally powerless before such forces, natural or human. It is a total surrender. It is like dying itself.

St. Anthony the Great, writing in the third century, also describes life in terms of sleeping in an inn: “Some of those who stop in inns are given beds, while others having no beds stretch themselves on the floor and sleep as soundly as those in beds. In the morning, when night is over, all alike get up and leave the inn. It is the same with those who tread the path of this life: both those who have lived in modest circumstances, and those who had wealth and fame, leave this life like an inn, taking with them no worldly comforts or riches, but only what they have done in this life, whether it be good or bad.”

It’s good to be often reminded of death and to be ready for it, especially because it may come at a time we least expect. After all the sophisticated seminary theology I received, there is only one little prayer I say before sleeping. And I learned it not in Kindergarten but in the pre-nursery school:

“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

It is great to be a child again just before sleeping, to entrust our lives to our loving Father. “There is a time to be born and a time to die,” the Book of Ecclesiastes says. And in between these events are the many “seasons of the heart.” I have learned from making my bed at night that wherever we are in our life’s journey – whether at sunrise, noontime or sunset, it is worthwhile to be consciously aware of its end. And this awareness brings forth benefits that are literally and figuratively out of this world!

“We are rich in ideas, values, traditions and religious convictions and, properly implemented, adequate governmental laws and policies... We have the potential for abundant food supply. We just don’t know what we really have.”