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For this season and series, reflecting on Cole Arthur Riley’s book This Here Flesh, there was a secondary source I was using that had suggested scripture and some prayers and had grouped some of the themes together that we used on Sunday morning. That resource by Pastor Katie, did not group rest and memory together; she used several more weeks to cover the book. I wondered if I put rest and memory together because subconsciously I thought of them as passive experiences.
Rage and lament and fear have an energy about them. Even repair in the context of forgiveness and reparation has movement. Rest and memory rest in memory at their very surface seem more like a pause, a stillness, passive.
But rest is not passive for someone with anxiety. And remembering is not passive for someone whose memory is starting to fade.
And rest is not easy. We live in a time and a culture where priority is work, where hustling is an ideal, and the rest is seen as lazy and not working towards your goals and a waste of time. And I know some of you aren’t working the grind anymore, but who hasn’t said or heard someone say that in retirement they are just as busy if not more busy than they ever were before.
Maybe you know someone who has said that they, or you, can sleep when they’re dead and then worked themselves into that reality. When I was working at a restaurant we were told “if you can lean, you can clean;” and in some in households that is the ideal and the expectation for others, for themselves, and for children. Do you have nothing to do? Have you done your homework? Why don’t you clean your room? You could do all these things outside. We are not well taught on what it is to rest.
And all of that assume those talking about rest have the luxury and privilege to do so! That rest to have that as an option, that retirement is something that can be afforded, and maybe working 8 hours and sleeping 8 hours and leisure 8 hours could be one’s life. And yet, there are those who seem to have to work 40 hours in a day just to make ends meet. There is a justice issue here, questions we should ask. Are our lives for work, or is our work supposed to make it possible for us to live and live well and abundantly? I would say the latter.
Cole writes, “There is a reason you can’t bring yourself to close the laptop, to walk away from your work, to close your eyes. How terrifying might rest appear to a woman who is working three jobs to pay her rest? To those who fear homelessness or hunger or punishment if they do not produce for these toxic systems? We belong to a society that claims ownership over our bodies, that across generations has used our bodies for its own ends. Our petitions for rest cannot be grounded in self-help wellness talks that don’t recognize this reality.” p 155 Black Liturgies
And I think the fear can be clear–how will I eat or keep a roof over my family’s head. It might also be a bit more insidious for those with resources. If I take a break, a vacation, will my boss be mad? Will they realize they don’t actually need me? If I do just enough, or just what is actually required and no more, if I don’t do 3 people’s jobs, will they find someone else? What if…
Our lives and our bodies become part of the grind. There’s a reason why so many nurses and teachers leave their chosen professions–not just companies but the whole profession–There is a grind that doesn’t care about rest or wellbeing and abundance.
Cole writes, “I have to believe that if we didn’t need to protect ourselves, we wouldn’t be prone to avoiding rest.” p. 152
And fear and protection, those are weapons of the empire that keep us afraid and separated from each other.
Tricia Hersey of the Nap Ministry invites us: to ask: “What does it serve me to navigate life by myself? The lie of individualism keeps us separated, isolated, exhausted, and disconnected. Without collaborating in rest and care, we will not make it. We need one another in order to make it. Be curious about the ways you can connect and care with others while on your rest journey.” –Rest Deck
Without each other, perhaps we would not remember to rest, we would question our value and worthiness to rest, we would teach our young people that always moving and doing is more important than rhythms of work and rest and play.
When we rest, and when we sleep, we regenerate. “Our cells begin a sacred rhythm of repair and release. And when we wake, we are more whole, less inflamed, more aware. And, of course, we sleep, that we might dream.” p. 153
And in that dreaming, we might, together imagine a future of wellness and abundance for all. And we might imagine ways to live that out together.
Community, connection, collaboration is vital to our rest.
It is vital to our care of each other.
It is vital to our memory.
Memory is stories. Some stories that we experienced ourselves, and some that were passed down to us, and some that live in our bones… even if it is generations old and we don’t know the words of the story.
And, stories are meant to be told, shared, stewarded. How many stories of those without power have been lost because they weren’t told, and how many were saved down generations around fires and kitchen tables?
I think that often we hold onto memories as if they are our own, as if they only live in us and only ours to care for. What if we imagined memory differently? What if we imagined it as something we share, we hold collectively, we steward together?
In our bible story, Samuel erected a large stone so would remember God had protected them. Stones were raised in reminders often in the scriptures and it would be commanded, requested, that when you walk by and your children ask why those stones are there, you tell them the story–the story of how God protected the people, the story of reconciliation, the story of meeting God in a place. In that way, while it might have been you who raised the stone, it’s your children’s story, and their children’s, and their children’s. And every generation tells the story when they walk by the stones.
They become artifacts.
Cole writes, “For those of us who are trying to carry all our memories on our own and pass them clumsily from one to another, we must learn to create our own artifacts, sacred items of story and existence that have once been denied to us.
An artifact is a little piece of defiance. To say, I was here. I existed, and this thing happened, whether you believe it or not.” p 178
Of course, like our memories, sometimes it happens that we hold on to the artifact, collect so many of them, one for each memory. Sometimes we fail to tell the story that is connected to them. It is our artifact and does not hold the story that we pass on.
But when we pass on a memory, when we share a story, when we have an artifact and as we pass by we tell the story to our children and grandchildren, so often that they will be able to tell the story to their own grandchildren. When we tell stories to each other, that this family of Christ can be stewards of memory together, collective memory, then that collective memory cares for each other, reminds each other, tells the story no matter.
Cole tells a story:
“When my friend’s father, who has Alzheimer’s, forgets a face or loses his place in time, I have always found it so tender that my friend does not immediately correct him. Sometimes, he’ll just stay with his father in whatever memory he is able to occupy. This is solidarity. Other times he’ll choose one or two details to bring into focus at a time: You’re a good dad. You make the best French toast. Memory is fragile. It requires a delicate touch, a tenderness.
“Even those of us who are not prone to forgetting need this. Sometimes, it is only in the hands of another that a memory can be fully encounter. All of a sudden it is not from the front of the car that you see but the street from the back side window. The memory expands past two dimensions.
“This is the beauty of collective memory.” p 174
I think we could go back to the invitation that Tricia invited us to with a little difference: Be curious about the ways you can connect, care, and collaborate with others on your memory journey.
How can we be stewards for each other, care for each other, support rest, hold stories, raise stones of remembrance, tell and hear stories?
Maybe then, rest is active and memory is energy, and both require each other.