Rest As a Kind of Prayer

It’s getting to be cabin fever time after a long stretch of cold, windy, snowy weather. When every particle of our body longs for spring, it takes discipline to honor the lessons and gifts of winter. As Christine Valters Paintner says in her poem How to Pray:

Remind your body how it says yes
to blossom, fruit, release, and rest,
each its own kind of prayer.

Spring, summer, and autumn are active seasons of planting, growing, and harvesting. Winter, on the other hand, calls us to contemplation, rest, and quietude. It invites us to the prayer of incubation — that fallowness required for seeds and dreams to germinate and grow.

Most of us feel something is amiss if we are not busy. We judge the quality of our life by how much we accomplish. We feel guilty if we take naps, daydream, or read a novel. The only time we slow down is when illness forces us to do so. And yet, given a fair chance, our body, mind and spirit say “yes” to fewer hours of daylight, to rest, to silence.

In the busyness of spring, which is right around the corner, we likely will long for a little bit of time to ourselves. Why not savor it now, when winter offers it to us with snowy breath, whistling winds, and the promise of long, dark nights?