sacred work—exchanging life

The winter ice sits on sage bushes. It slips off the windows from the heat inside my home. Small birds dance on the bare branches of the cottonwood trees. The scent of burning resin, gathered from the ground beneath juniper trees, fills the room. It is quiet but also not. The birds still sing.

And I’m resting.

It is a practice of mine to rest. My parents worked hard their entire lives. Watching them work day and night, I made a secret vow as a child to stop and allow the peace of my father’s St. Augustine grass to feed me. I enjoyed just sitting looking out. My mother called it daydreaming. Looking back, I would say that I was meditating. The stillness and concentration of just being brought joy and deep nourishment in a world that felt crazy.

Resting in a state of awareness sustains peace. When I feel extreme emotions such as grief or anger, I take time to sit with how I feel without rationalizing or finding justification. I simply acknowledge that something is happening as I breathe through life, and the tears I shed are evidence of healing. When I feel disconnected from people around me, long walks in the woods among the trees can bring me back to the nature of life, and I’m sustained by my return to the earth. When I’m listening to music—especially my own drumming—a note, a rift, can often touch places deep inside, previously unknown to me. Yet, I can’t just decide that crying, walking in the woods, or listening to music will always be nourishing experiences that lead to a state of rest. Underneath these activities there must be a vow of peace—meaning, I must be willing to stop, take time, and acknowledge the life entrusted to me.

A vow for peace is as grand as any other vow, and although it feels almost impossible, this commitment to peace has moved many in this world. There have been long cycles of accomplishments and new visions over the years. And there have been frayed nerves, bouts of stress, times of weariness, pain, and hopelessness. Peace workers, I suspect, find it challenging to balance the enormous number of hours of activism work with the need to be nourished. The peace that is not “worked,” but surfaces in stopping and resting, is one of vast possibilities.

Once, I’d just returned to California from New Mexico feeling tired and out of sorts. I complained of not being able to get to the zendo and felt my practice was not where it ought to be. The teacher looked at me with much caring and said, “You don’t believe that resting is part of your practice.” There was a long pause. If I made resting a part of my practice then the deep nourishment that comes from following the path of dharma would be available to me. A nourished life is one in which I care for myself so that I can engage a spiritual life without exhaustion.

Experiencing peace need not be an arduous journey of endless work but rather a moment-by-moment effort of resting in order to engage in loving intimacy with others. In this way, a deeply nourished life can take the direction of liberation by which production (labor) is not the measure of our worth. A vow to rest is a vow for peace.

With a vow for peace that includes rest, we can sustain our alignment with the regeneration of the earth. Like Earth, life must regenerate itself within us and around us. We are Earth, wrapped with a cloak of skin, muscles, and bones to protect us, and sent here without reason. We were sent to be sent. We arrived to arrive. We were passed on for a purpose that can only reveal itself in how we live and not in what we decide is our purpose.

We are given a life to sustain. What would it be like to sustain our lives in the way we seek to sustain the planet? What would it look like to have an interrelationship among us that led to rest and nourishment for all, not just certain segments of our society? What if we looked at our level of energy in relationship to our capacity to continue the lineage of all life? Can leisure lead to awakening?

We are born. Along the way we discover that our sacred work is to share life among all living beings. We need energy to do this. Without energy, awakening is not possible. Peace is not possible. Without an exchange of life force between us we remain clueless and allow fear of each other to destroy us.

The sacred exchange of life, not only between human beings, not only in giving birth, but in giving life to life, requires a state of awareness that comes with rest and the nourishment of our bodies. And yet life belongs to no one. We don’t receive it as if someone had handed it to us. Many say our mothers and fathers gave us life. But this isn’t true. The continuation of life, the giving and receiving, is a sacred act that comes through you as it came through your parents.

My words rest in the winter sun that melts the ice on the dirt road out front. The day is moving on, yet I’m still steeped in the mystery of what I’m exploring here.

Four-legged, winged ones, creepy crawlers, and those who swim beneath the sea, easily transmit their life energy to one another without effort, and in the end they sustain their collectivity and purpose. They seem able to sustain life in alignment with Earth. When we don’t have the energy or lack the concern to exchange life with each other, life feels stagnant in the sea of things that is the world. The flow of peace is submerged.

Like ice melts and makes drinking water for tiny birds, we need to develop the capacity to hold each other. It’s the state of belovedness. This state is ancient and has little to do with whom we’ll marry or create a family with. Belovedness is an unbounded way of living. We arrive as beloveds. The newborn arrives filled with love, even before falling asleep in the arms of another. And the guardians of that child respond (or not) to the love the baby brings. The baby arrives in the state of belovedness and gives us an experience of love. It’s the parents who’ll learn about love through the infant. The baby gifts its love to us whether we’re ready or not. We came ready. Rest in that.

No tea today. My room smells of New Mexico piñon coffee brewing in the kitchen. The quiet in the vast landscape of dried grasses brings a smile. Soon, I’ll drink coffee sweetened with a little coconut sugar and listen to the quiet.