spiritual studies: sleep— as invitation to spiritual practice
Author Lauren Winner was asked how we as followers of Jesus can be more counterculture. Her answer? “Get more sleep.”
She reasoned, “a night of good sleep—a week, or month, or year of good sleep—testifies to a countercultural embrace of sleep (that) bears witness to values higher than ‘the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desire for other things”.
Three thousand years before, Solomon had similar sentiment: “In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat, for he gives to those he loves… sleep.” Psalm 127:2
Each day is a vow to the basic truth of what you rely on for life itself, yourself or the divine. An unexamined reliance on only what we can do and fix in a day, is vain or empty in the end.
A third of our life is spent sleeping, how can we reframe this significant daily time? Here are a few thoughts toward this end.
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We can practice changing how we rise. As one of my old teachers, David Roper, reminds me, when we awaken to begin our work, we rise to join him in a creative work in progress, for ‘he does not slumber nor sleep.’ Psalm 121:4. It is a good day when I rise with this participatory awareness, rather than the limited reality and solitary pursuit that everything depends on what I can do in a day, my performance and pressure dominating my thoughts.
When Jacobawoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it!”—Genesis 28:16
Consider wakefulness, having a new meaning, particularly when we wake unto awareness of God’s true indwelling reality rather than distance. The alternative usually is sleepwalking in our ego-centered self-referenced brains and way of being.
Wake up from your sleep, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. —Eph.5:14
Begin to find joy in what really matters. So that when you wake in the morning, you can't help unfold your hands to the heavens, and though you grieve and though you wonder, though the world is ugly, it is beautiful-- and though time moves on, and the planet spins, a blur, its moments are holy. And you can slow and you can wake and you can trust and you can find the joy you're aching for , joy paying attention to all the moments with your whispered offering of thanks. Because this is how you begin to spend your one life well-- receiving each moment for what it really is: holy, ordinary, amazing grace. A gift. —Ann Voskamp
Another example of a morning prayer: Good morning, I love you. I know you love me as a beloved son/daughter. What are you up to today? I want to be part of it.
And instead of the snooze button, consider Rumi’s wakeful alternative awareness than our phone feed:
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want. Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill Where two worlds touch.
The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep.
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Sleep can be seen as a gift and as prayer. It is an invitation to finally turn from toiling and trying to reverse entropy on every side during a given day, and finally, even if unconsciously, pray. Yes, why not call it actual prayer- a giving over of my effort and concerns to drift off.
Hear Wendell Berry on this point:
The body in the invisible
Familiar room accepts the gift
Of sleep, and for a while is still;
Instead of will, it lives by drift
In the great night that gathers up
The earth and sky. Slackened, unbent,
Unwanting, without fear or hope,
The body rests beyond intent.
Sleep is the prayer the body prays,
Breathing in unthought faith the Breath
That through our worried-wearied days
Preserves our rest, and is our truth.
(from -A Timbered Choir, V 1990 pg. 121 )
God puts his children to sleep so HE can get their work done. “Sleep is God's contrivance for giving us the help he cannot get into us when we are awake,” said George MacDonald.
God invented sleep. And it’s interesting that He knocked Adam unconscious in order to do his ultimate and arguably highest creative act —creation of woman.
Sleep is a gift to relinquish and release frenetic pace, false identities, fatigue and fear. Perhaps what had seemed “dead time” is actually a period of gestation.
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Sleep also represents death, a type of 'waiting period' from which God and Jesus will reawaken us to the bright morning light of eternal life. –- Kathleen Norris, from Quotidian Mysteries. Behold I tell you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye... the dead shall be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. (Paul, to Corinthian followers, I Cor. 15:51)
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Sleep is a belief in the resurrection, that the sun will come up; that life will begin again in the morning. The world will not stop telling us we’ll miss something, a score, an update, some information, amusement. Sleep is cessation of preoccupations, trusting another day comes and we are sustained.
O Lord, how my adversaries have increased! Many are rising up against me . Many are saying of my soul, “There is no deliverance for him in God.” But You, O Lord, are a shield about me…I lay down and slept; I awoke, for the Lord sustains me. I will not [now] be afraid of ten thousands of people who have set themselves against me round about. —-psalm 3: 5-6
