The Practice of Rest
WN.02 \\ 05.06-12.24
Welcome to the second installment of Weeknotes - an off-the-cuff review of efforts, insights, and whatevers in the last few days. I think these will come out on the weeks that don’t have a curation or exploration - that makes sense to me? Anyhoo.
This week’s resonances include:
sprint cycles and rest weeks
cultivating a receptive life
notebooks as a receptacle of reception
Several years ago I encountered the practice of work sprints, which appear to have come out of the tech work and Agile principles/scrum frameworks. The essential components of a sprint are
a laser-focus on a clear-cut goal
with defined, concrete outcomes
accomplished within a short period of time.
I have, over the last few years, incorporated this practice into my yearly rhythm, scheduling a five-week cycle of actions oriented toward production and results, and a sixth week oriented toward rest, review, and refocus.
I love having this practice in my ecosystem.1 For one, it’s just helpful to know that I’ve built in moments of pause across the year that allow divergence and non-schedules. For another, it’s a necessary reminder that my efforts, though good, are insufficient for my full flourishing. I cannot physically or existentially work hard enough, long enough, efficiently enough, or brilliantly enough without something eventually going haywire or shorting out.2 I must also have periods where my only posture, my only option is to receive.
In his most recent book on the church in a secular age, Andy Root engages with Byung-Chul Han’s exploration of the vita contemplativa and the vita activa: the contemplative life and the active life.3 We know the vita activa very well, in the language of production, efficiency, and optimization. We’re aware of the vita contemplativa in the proliferation of meditation practices, spiritual retreats, and psychoactive trips.
Root discusses the long-standing tension between these two paths: the toggling between action and contemplation, between doing and withdrawing. Root observes that this tension will always boil over, because the vita activa will always colonize the vita contemplativa. We will always trend toward optimizing our rest. Root proposes adding a third path: the vita receptiva, that is, cultivating the posture and attitude of reception.
In a historical moment when we move at frenetic, ever-increasing speeds, conceiving of, let alone cultivating, the posture of receiving the world feels impossible. We build machines to serve us, and then pathologize ourselves for failing to imitate our own creations. If the soul and mind move at “three miles an hour,”4 perhaps the only way we can receive anything is to pause, to allow ourselves to attend to, and resonate with, what exists around us. The vita receptiva draws the contemplative life and the active life into itself, in a weirdly alchemical move.
Rest weeks remind me that in order to receive, I must place myself—through schedule, intention, and practice—into a posture and mindset of readiness, of expectation. It’s not that I avoid this posture during the other five weeks of the cycle, but the week serves to remind me that there exist other reasons for living than producing “value.” Such as laughter-filled, hope-oriented conversations with friends (you know who you are).5
One way in which I’m cultivating receptivity is through notebooks. Yes, the humble notebook. I’m reviving my practice of having a notebook and pen always at hand: by the bed, in my purse, at my desk. In fact, I’ve got three at my desk, each serving a specific purpose.6
It’s good to recapture a way of thinking and creating that existed for hundreds of years before the computer, and it actually does give my mind a rest to slow down to a speed at which I can actually pay attention. I’m trying to retrain myself to appreciate the random thoughts and constant percolation as “creating,” and as necessary precursors to those moments of putting words onto paper (or typing pixels onto the screen).
Here’s to rest and receptivity! How’s your week gone?
Shalom,
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I have the luxury of not having other calendars or rhythms to consider, but it’s still possible to adapt this practice to your own schedule, I think. Lengthen or shorten the cycles as needed!
👆🏼👆🏼literally me.
The Church in an Age of Secular Mysticisms, Andrew Root
Traveling at the Speed of the Soul, Nick Hunt
Though I do sometimes find myself confused about which thought to put in which notebook.