I've had the most bizarre sleep patterns for the past six months. It seems I
get in a mode of going to sleep in my comfy recliner about seven of an evening,
Bettyann awakens me at nine, going directly to bed and sleeping until four am.
Or, times, when upon at Bettyanns' awaking me, I find myself stimulated by a
thought and come directly to the desktop and write until one am. Go to bed and
sleep until seven, energized. Then there are those customary times where I find
myself going to bed at my customary time of ten and arising at four, fully
awake until the next night. From the concern I began researching for answers
and pleasurably found Lauren Winners'
article, entitled: Sleep Therapy, In
search of a counterculture for the common good. Although it was not her purpose to propose
answers to my direct questions of what is going on with my off-beaten sleep
patterns it has given me pause spiritually to ruminate on her theology of sleep
and the question of the ongoing, unpredictable and sometimes combustible
interaction with culture.
Winners, says: more
sleep! She carefully reasons through the
forces of culture that maybe I ought considering giving up an hour of sleep
here, or two hours there; through the my committed too schedules, the unnerving of checking my piled up e-mail and instant messages with the author expecting
instant response. I'm am just coming to the realization that this kind of thing is in it's early-taught/early learned push mode for more and more productivity. For most
of my family and younger friends; they have been aquainted with it from long ago. She proposes: "Surely one could come up
with something more other-directed, more sacrificial, less self-serving." Some
of her conclusions are: "It's not just that a countercultural embrace of
sleep bears witness to values higher than the cares of this world, the
deceitfulness of riches, and the desire for other things." "A night
of good sleep—a week, or month, or year of good sleep—also testifies to the
basic Christian story of Creation." "We are creatures, with bodies
that are finite and contingent. We are also bodies living within a culture
generally terrified of aging, uncomfortable with death, and desperate for our
accomplishments to distract us." "The unarguable demands that our bodies
make for sleep are a good reminder that we are mere creatures." And
finally: "It is God and God alone who 'neither slumbers nor sleeps.'"
On the first of the month, in celebrating Ash Wednesday, I remembered my condition with, somewhat, countercultural audacity. The
season of Lent, the forty days in which many of us Christians prepare to encounter the
events of Easter, beginning by proclaiming the humble beginnings of
creatureliness. I had a desire to have my forehead marked with a bold and ashen cross of dust but by the time I finished with all the "must do," I had spent the day. Even though there were was no ash on my head I intentionally reminded myself of the dust I
came from and the dust to which I will soon return. Laying there on my pillow, I thought again of what the ashes, from last year's burt palm branches, forming a cross really were all about. The Cross! I began recalling both my history and
future, invoking repentance. I realized in a fresh way that I was marked with His cross, I am intentionally, loudly
proclaiming I am Christ's own: a pilgrim on a journey that proclaims death and
suffering, life and resurrection all at once. This journey through Lent into
the light and darkness of Holy Week, I believe, was created for me, made in dust,
who will return to dust, committed in tracing the breath that began filling my
life at conception and continues to breath in me through laying my trophies at
His feet one day. It is the journey that
expends everything within me. To pick up the cross and follow Him is to be
reminded at every step that I am a mere creature, and He has come near my
humanity to show me what that word originally meant.
In fact, now fully walking spirtually into the vast and terrible events of Holy Week, I
recognize that I may justifiably feel like one of the original disciples, weary
with sorrow, my own eyes heavy with sleep. Current personal familial events as
well as ordinary, daily events will inevitable give cries of anguish and only
deepen this wearied exhaustion. Arguably, this innate instinct is fitting.
"To sleep, long and soundly," says Winner, "is to place our
trust not in our own strength and hard work, but in Him without Whom we labor
in vain." I know that I cannot carry all the Christ carried anymore than I
can carry sorrows I now see all around me.
Yet, where I am prone to exchange sound and trusting sleep for fretful
slumber, helpless sorrow, or apathetic fatigue, Christ emerges through His own weariness to wake me. One of the
disciples, Matthew, says that Jesus asks a question that challenges me: "Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? See, the hour is at
hand."
Father, God, I believe You are telling me these days that the journey toward
the Cross is one that is showing me and all that I come in contact with that I
and all of them are finite, fragile creatures in need of a guide, in need of
sleep, in need of One who can bear far more than we are able. I am seeing more
clearly, than ever, that the Cross will also show that to everyone one of us the
One we need does truly exist. While Your
Sons' friends slept, He stepped closer toward betrayal and agony,
going all the way to His death, so that one day He could wake us for good! Thank You for what St. Paul wrote to the
Ephesians: "Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine
on you" (Ephesians 5:14). Amen
