Rest – the gateway to a new life perspective

As the G20 meets in London there is one thing that they will not want to hear.
The first step on the journey toward a life more in tune with the earth may be to find rest.

Peter Whybrow describes American society, and those cultures that have been influenced by it, as exhibiting clear signs of what psychologists call mania. Adventurousness people have been hyped up by a fast moving, instant reward culture, so that we are hooked into a manic excitement. In response our personal and corporate lives have taken on a cyclical pattern where manic phases alternate with depression, boom follows bust, the bubbles burst and people live for the next hit. His analysis is powerful and convincing. What he describes is raping the earth, weakening our capacity for empathy and causing inner turmoil. And our world leaders are, even today, falling over themselves to give us more of it. (Peter Whybrow – American Mania – when more is not enough)

Wendell Berry may be a prophet for our time. He saw that an industrial mentality is radically different from a mentality that is in touch with the land. Ellen Davis, ( Scripture, Culture and Agriculture,) shows how much of the original biblical tradition drew from an ‘agrarian’ mentality. These people knew about the land. And God taught them through it.

Take the idea of rest for example. They knew that fields need rest. A fallow year allows a rich biodiversity to re-establish itself in monocropped land, for nutrients to accumulate and beneficial organisms to proliferate. It was good for the land to be rested.

And so also it was good for the humans and the whole culture to rest. Through rest the human soul would be refreshed, creativity re-emerge, relationships be strengthened. Most of all the human would find space to reflect on how they were living and on their relationship with the divine. It may be unconventional to suggest it but the idea of Sabbath may have actually be drawn from the fallow year. See the close apposition of these ideas in Exodus 23 v 10 and 11 for example.

Today we need to stop and find rest. Only that way will we find the inspiration, creative energy and vision to remake our world.

Rest is the first of six key themes explored in The Dream that inspired the Bible

Your comments.

I find it incredibly hard to find the a happy medium between “complete rest” (i.e. sleeping all day, doing nothing with my time, etc.) and “complete activity” (ONLY sleeping at night, having no moment where there is no activity, etc.).

Does anyone else find the same? How can I find the middle way?