Beginning Again: The Gift of Rest and Renewal

Returning after Nine Months Absence

Peace By Design is back.  I am back. It is good to write those words.  I stopped writing this blog in March 2009.  I did not know If I would ever write again.  I only knew I was bone-tired and could not go on.    I no longer knew what peace was or how to achieve it.  How dare I write about it from that weary place?

Where have I been last nine months? Good question!  I worked at my job as a psychiatric nurse but the rest of my life was up for re-invention.  Not working actively at peace, and specifically, not writing, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.  The critical voices in my head shrieked  that I should be writing now! As if I, single-handedly, could save the planet with my writing.  Could it be that resting was more important than writing? And so - - I rested.  I slept late.  I dawdled and dithered away my days.  I took long walks on trails in the woods.  I meditated.  I took a poetry class.  I learned to dance Zydeco!  I cooked healthy meals for myself.  I read and watched lots of movies.  My house never looked so clean.

Learning How to Play!

Then something mysterious began to happen. I laughed more.  I began to like my job .   One of my core beliefs about peace has long been that true peace arises, not from the absence of war, but from the presence of joy.  If peace is an interval between wars, then humankind is always waiting for the next war to break out and people never know what true safety feel like.  But if we are truly secure, then people will laugh, dance, play, sing, eat and celebrate life.  Joy will break out and humans will delight in life.  If joy were ever-present, who would jeopardize that wonderful state for the grief and losses of war?

Would Creativity Every Return?

One of the books I read during my time off was Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert . This book struck a chord with me, as it has with so many millions of other readers.  I realized that I was living out, on a miniature scale, the same kind of retreat that Elizabeth Gilbert had pursued across Italy, India and in Bali.  It was enormously reassuring to me to know that there was something universal about this inward quest.   When a tide goes out, leaving the beach high and dry, the water will eventually come back in.  I had to trust that eventually my passion for peace would return and I would write again.  Listening to Stefan Sagmeister speak on TED talks about the power of time off and the sabbatical was also very inspiring to me.

A Surge of Energy and Excitement

Sure enough, the tide began to turn this fall, when I found myself getting  very concerned about the polarization of American politics.  I was drawn to the work of the Transpartisan Alliance and when this group came to Seattle in late October, I became involved with them.  I will be writing about this work soon.  As my sabbatical draws to a close, I find myself resting in deep peace and quiet joy.  It seems like a rich place to begin again.