If You Quit Thinking For One Hour
*Friends, I have been sick this week and so do not have a practice for you but will return with one soon.
If You Quit Thinking For One Hour, by Rumi
If you quit thinking for one hour
what will happen?
If you plunge like a fish
into love's ocean
what will happen?
You came down from the heavens.
The high angel adores you and still,
you feel like a poor wretch.
If you remember who you are,
what will you become?This is one of my favorite poems to read this time of year. Just as the calendar turns to face the new and impossibly blank squares of another year, I hear all of the messages telling me, you aren’t yet enough. Maybe that’s not the exact message, but it seems to me to be the underlying one in every promised “new you” beginning, every enticing food and exercise program, every New Year sale for every item I didn’t get to purchase myself during the holidays. The message I’m aware of is this: you don’t have enough, you aren’t enough, let’s add some fuel to the fire of your lack.
Yet, every single spiritual tradition I value reminds me that this fire need not burn unchecked, that one more diet, exercise routine, or new pair of boots will not make me more whole than I am. You either, friend. Apparently, we are beloved and whole from the start. Or, as Rumi writes, “The high angel adores you.”
So, inspired by a writing prompt from Isolation Journals, instead of just reading this poem, I pondered the questions it asks: what if I quit thinking for a bit of time? What if I plunge into love’s ocean? What will I become if I remember who I am?
The question was answered for me on New Year’s Day as I hiked with a group of friends and my family up a long mountain trail, snow falling upon us. Had I known it was going to snow, I would not have chosen to hike. But I didn’t, so it was that I stood in the center of bare trees while silent snowflakes like twinkling stars fell from the sky and landed on my head and around my feet. I felt my legs like strong pillars hold me grounded and steady in the earth as I gazed out across the mountaintop. I listened to the sound of my companions laughing amidst the backdrop of first silence, then a waterfall. And I thought, this is what it feels like to dive into love’s ocean.
If I quit thinking for one hour I may forget to spin stories for the future, predictions that move my heart away from the moment as it actually is. I might breathe into the sparkling eyes of my companions and let time land soft as snowflakes.
It is far too easy to ruminate on all the ways I feel like a “poor wretch.” Yet, this mountain moment reminded me of who we all are.
I’ve been rereading a lovely book called 29 Gifts: How a Month of Giving Can Change Your Life, by Cami Walker. Walker was diagnosed with MS in her early 30’s, just after getting married and returning from her honeymoon. In a world of pain and losing her many abilities, she became addicted to pain killers and fell into a deep depression. She saw no hope for her future and spent her days feeling sorry for herself and projecting her anger at the situation at her new husband and mother.
Then an old friend, Mbali Creazzo, a woman who called herself a medicine woman, suggested that Walker’s healing would begin if she followed an unusual prescription: Creazzo instructed her to give away 29 gifts in 29 days, and to follow a couple of rules. She should journal about what she’d given each day. The gifts could be anything she knew needed to be given or wanted to offer—a hug, a phone call, words of encouragement, physical objects, acts of service, but one of the days she should give away something she felt she was lacking in. And if she missed a day she should release the energy that she’d built so far and begin again.
It sounded ridiculous at the time, but at the end of her rope, Walker decided to give it a try. Of this wild experiment, Walker writes in her Epilogue, “Today marks my 365th consecutive day of giving. I am in the midst of my thirteenth 29-day giving cycle. My life looks completely different today than it did one year ago. I wish I could say that giving 29 gifts cured my multiple sclerosis, but that would be dishonest. I still live with the effects of this disease, but the difference is that I cope a lot better…One of the biggest differences I see in my life today is that people tell me they love me several times a day and I tell them I love them, too. One year ago, I was in too much pain to allow love to be part of the picture.”
Walker’s life didn’t become perfect and her disease didn’t go away, but her suffering in it all lessened so significantly that her whole world turned around.
So often, the feeling of lack, the feeling of not-enoughness spills like a terrible sludge all over my life. The ruminations that I’ve lost physical abilities, that I can’t afford things I want to do or have, that I’m somehow left out of the good stuff of life and friendships. The stewing turns me in on myself so that truly I become the “poor wretch.”
I started the 29 gifts project during the 12 days of Christmas, giving sometimes a text of encouragement, other days a cup of tea, or hug to my daughter. Each night, I’ve journaled what I’ve given and how it felt. The best part of it all, the part that’s unfolded as I reflect and write, is realizing not just what I was able to give, but to look back on all I received through the day. Every single day I have been given far more than I gave.
Then it is again, as if I’m back in the center of the mountain, snowflakes falling like stars over me, feet in the earth, laughter in my ears. I quit thinking and remember as I write who I truly am. And with that I can imagine exactly who I might become.
May this start to 2024 give you moments in which you stop thinking for a bit, friends. May you plunge into love’s ocean and for even a moment, may you remember who you are, and imagine in that knowing who you might become.
I write this week’s mailer in honor of the life a beautiful friend, Ana Maddox, a longtime yoga student friend, who died at the end of December. Ana spent the more than five years she lived with metastatic cancer giving abundantly every chance she could. She was a generous, devoted, and joyful woman with a huge heart and smile. One of the ways she gave was to a foundation close to her heart, Brooke’s House in Hagerstown, MD, which gives shelter, therapy, and job training to girls recovering from addiction. May God bless Ana’s spirit and may we all be led to give abundantly with each day we receive.
Thank you for sharing how 29 days of giving works. And encouraging us to give it a try in our own lives! Your reflection was just the “gift” I needed in this New Year.