Friday, August 17, 2012

making Sunday

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The Rom, the Bedouin, and various plains tribes of American Indians are all sometimes called "nomadic" -- meaning that they pick up and move on at a moment's notice: No place is 'the place;' every place is 'the place.'

Once, in an America where Christianity had gained a foothold, Sundays were an enforced day of rest. Shops were closed and the commerce and movement of the week ground to a halt. It was a day of rest, reflection and propriety under a mantle of religious agreement. These days, of course, Walmart is always open, whether up the street or in the mind.

The social agreements of rest and effort are what they are, good, bad or indifferent, but I think that finding a space for rest a reflection is a good idea ... not because anyone else says so, but because without it, things become blurry and unclear, hurried without any grounded sense of the foundations of hurry.

A time when the walls between courage and cowardice, tenderness and icy intent, laughter and tears, winning and losing, smart and dumb, success and failure ... just a time when the tent walls can come down and something like the 'big picture' can emerge from the shadows.

Time to move on, time to rest; time to rest, time to move on; tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock....

Expecting others to create a day of rest is not so much the point. Expecting others to choose the place in which to pitch a tent or from which to decamp ... well, maybe it's OK as a disciplined and fabricated starting point, but, as hard as it may be, I think individuals will need to do this for themselves... set aside meaning and importance and just rest. Set aside tents and travel. Let the tents and walls dissolve of their own accord. Straighten things out without straining to straighten things out. Stop creating and enjoy creating.

A place of light where things are light and smooth and unsegmented.

It's just Sunday, after all.

Even when it's Friday.
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