I tend to be a doer. I’ve got a million plans and often play a little game with myself that goes something like this: how much can I get done in the shortest amount of time. But this is not always a good thing, we can lose the most essential parts of ourselves in all the incessant doing. The truth is the material things we search out or preoccupy ourselves with don’t quite feed the soul. We’re always on the lookout for what’s next but somehow we never give ourselves what it is we really need. Maybe because we don’t really know what that is. In order to find that out we have to slow down long enough to see what really matters to us.

As I was talking to one of my friends the other day about the current state of chaos in my life he suddenly said, it’s ok to stop and rest. His statement caught me off guard and I almost broke down in tears. It got me thinking, how often do we give ourselves permission to take the time we need to just be or check in with how we’re feeling and what we need? Instead of resting and regrouping we just keep doing until it becomes mindless and endless and the those things that matter most evaporate in all that unruly action. The truth is we’ve simply forgotten how to rest and replenish our soul and give ourselves what we’re really craving.

So this week I’m taking a break and and slowing down to see what comes up. I was given the gift of this poem and I’m passing it along to you. I hope it offers some insight into what’s been missing or overlooked in your life. The Holy Longing gives voice to what we’ve forgotten in the business of our day-to-day lives. It points to the things that beckon from beneath the surface of all the distractions and doing and helps us see more clearly what’s been forgotten or neglected. Often it’s the most important things that can’t easily be named.

Give yourself some time this week to just be with your life as it is. Take a break and get some well-deserved soul rest and see what’s calling to you from underneath all that doing.

The Holy Longing

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent, because the mass man will mock it right away. I praise what is truly alive, what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of the love-nights, where you were begotten, where you have begotten, a strange feeling comes over you, when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught in the obsession with darkness, and a desire for higher love-making sweeps you upwards.

Distance does not make you falter. Now, arriving in magic, flying, and finally, insane for the light, you are a butterfly and you are gone. And so long as you haven’t experienced this: to die and so to grow, you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth.

– Goethe