In the spirit of returning to the simple, I spent a week at home.
The usual fall weekend family getaway to Minneapolis or Rapid City or Sherwood was set aside for a staycation. I cleaned a few closets, baked bread, read books, remembered how to exercise, and took extra walks. I made an impressive Bloody Mary bar for my husband and discovered “The Good Place” on Netflix.
It was a very good time.
I also took my oldest kiddo to the DMV where they let him loose with a license.
It was mostly a good time.
When none of that was going on, I rested. Have you stopped to notice you require copious amounts of rest these days? Sit still for a moment and notice the compounding worries and questions that are now part of your daily life in Covid-19 times. Never before did those worries occupy your mind. Now, they do. Judging by the number of cases in our country, those loitering worries are not going away soon.
And yet, those worries do not define you nor do they get to take over your life. You are beloved child of God, free from the greatest worries about your forgiveness and salvation, and free to receive Christ’s love and utterly free to give it to your neighbor.
Channel your inner Marie Kondo and part ways with a worry. Name one worry and dare yourself to let it go. Bid that worry farewell and let God worry about it instead of you. God is remarkably good, always good, at shouldering your worries. Then do a profoundly simple thing you need so much of right now: Rest.
My cell phone is sleeping. It is turned off and tucked into a drawer until noon, and shortly after will resume its nap until this evening. I’ve been a real crabbypants lately, made worse by checking the proliferating number of COVID-19 cases in our county.
Checking the cases makes me slightly anxious. Feeling slightly anxious leads to feeling slightly more anxious. Feeling slightly more anxious makes me crabby at a lack of cooperation by fellow citizens of Dickinson to wear masks in public. Crabby about masks makes me crabby at people. And too much crabbiness is not very pastoral.
Which is why this is a Sabbath Day for my cell phone and me. Because I have been a crabbypants.
I need a break from my own reactions to this season of America’s history in real time. A break from defensive feelings that keep bubbling up in me: judgement, anger, disappointment.
Today, I am not a defender. I’ll choose to be a dreamer. Dreaming is easier when my cell phone is napping and my amygdala isn’t on edge.
And 2020 could use more dreamers and fewer defenders.
Thank you for welcoming me into your palace of greenery, where I lived as a hermit for four short days. Thank you for whispering words of greeting in the breeze through the oak leaves. Thank you for fresh air with the hint of campfire that I breathed so deeply each day, along with all the creatures who live in your palace.
I met the twitching chipmunk who dug in the leaves and darted away so quickly I could not see which direction he went. I met an otter who was swimming underneath the boardwalk to proudly bring home tall grass for his family. (And I’m sorry I scared him with my giggle, but he was so adorable I couldn’t stop myself.) I met a gray squirrel who would win any and every dance contest that involved standing still the longest, frozen in position. He looked stuffed, but I’m glad he wasn’t. I encountered deer who looked long and hard at me and then agreed to move off the walking trail and let me by, only when I disappointed them with the news I had nothing to give them. (I did assure them “Bambi” is one of my top five favorite movies.)
Thank you, The Woods, for welcoming me as a guest in your palace. And thank you, The Woods, for sharing the same Creator, and sharing the same need for one another.
I drove away and escaped all the way to northern Minnesota. Not far south of where I parked my car is the home where my family lived before moving to Dickinson. I waved to Tulip Street as I got out of my car at Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth) Hermitage for my four-day adventure as a hermit.
To some extent, we have all been hermits since March. Maybe you have hardly left your house since March. Or maybe you yearn to be a hermit, pandemic or not, because it’s just your style. That’s cool, too.
A friend told me about Pacem in Terris last year and reported how much solitude he enjoyed and how renewed he felt at the end of his stay. This introvert cannot get enough solitude! I love it like Linus loves his blanket. I reserved a few days in May, but because of the pandemic, rescheduled in June after the hermitage could open up again.
I’d never been a hermit. I have heard of them, but never been one. I know some of the stories of saints who lived as hermits, and then there was Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and that guy in Maine who was recently a hermit for decades before he was discovered. I didn’t have decades, only a few days. Plus, I would miss my coffee creamer after too long. Oh, and my family.
This hermitage is a series of 14 small cabins, each with a twin bed, rocking chair, big picture window, and screened in porch. There is no electricity, bathroom, or running water in the cabin. It was a throw-back to my summers at Camp Metigoshe, although instead of “outhouses”, the hermitage offers “spiffy biffies”! (It actually was quite spiffy, I must say.)
I began my silent retreat on Wednesday afternoon, speaking only a soft and self-conscious “hello” to fellow hermits on the path. I walked and walked under old families of burr oaks that folded together above me like hands ready to pray. (I learned not to walk too fast, or you scare the other hermits.) I prayed and prayed beneath canopies of sugar maples, and on a boardwalk along a lake. I asked God questions, asked for forgiveness for this too-hurried life, and recited Scripture and learned new Scripture.
But mostly I listened to the silence.
Time to listen is hard to come by in daily life, as you well know. There is always time to make noise, but less time to listen. For there to be listening, someone has to stop talking and there is always talking. People talking, cell phones talking, traffic talking, news talking.
In a book that remains in the hermitage, I read, “There is no solitude without silence. True, silence is sometimes the absence of speech – but it is always the act of listening…when we are filled with ourselves, we leave silence behind.” (Poustinia p. 6-7)
I am often too filled with myself to be silent and listen. Too filled with my responsibilities to make plans, care for others, and go and go and go. This is how my life is designed to be, but it is not sustainable without solitude. Going and going means running and running from true, meaningful life. Meaningful life requires escaping from the going and doing. It may be for days, or it may be only for moments in your backyard, on a walk, or wherever you feel most at peace.
Sitting in silence lets you listen to the God who is trying to catch you from your running to renew your spirit.
Last week I escaped. I got in my car early Wednesday morning before anyone but our puppy was awake and I drove until the afternoon. I drove away, which can be at the right time, an incredibly lovely thing to get to do. To drive out of my neighborhood, onto the interstate, a few hundred miles, then out of the state can be tiny gifts of freedom, one after another.
I had planned this escape for nearly a year and it landed at precisely the time I needed to escape. These months of pandemic, quarantine, racial honesty and tension, kids at home and needing to be here, there, and everywhere had worn me down.
What do you do when you know you need to escape? Out of the state or just out of the house? Away from the people whom you love so much so that you can renew your strength to love them even more.
In my experience, men tend to be a bit freer to make these escapes. Outdoor sports and weekends with the guys simply seem more acceptable, maybe even more encouraged than a woman’s escape. That is not true in every household, but it is true in many.
So as I tell you with renewed freedom and life that I escaped, I say this with awareness and a twinge of guilt that I had the chance to drive away. Away from people at home needing food, encouragement, refereeing, structure, and so many things from me at most minutes of the day. Away from work with its weird pandemic intensity. I escaped and I was free for four entire days.
I’m going to keep you in suspense about where I went in hopes that you will think about your own need to escape. Escaping does not make you a bad parent or spouse or pastor. It makes you a restored, renewed, whole, and more at peace child of God.
I could escape because I have family members who love me, a spouse who understands when I need to drive away, and co-workers who support me. And women, I know these are luxuries that do not abound. I escaped with gratitude and returned with gratitude, but mostly I returned more aware of who I am, beloved child of the generous God who shows up in the silence. The one who gives me the signal to escape that I often miss but this time did not.
Lisa Lewton 