Mtr Mary Trainor

Why are you sleeping…

Dear friend,

As we emerge more and more from pandemic restrictions and slowly return to normal, I’ve found that  some of us—me included—find “normal” exhausting.

I spent more than a year primarily in the company of a dog and a cat. Confined to home, I developed erratic habits of work, eating, and sleeping. I worked at all hours, ate whatever and whenever, took myriad little naps as suited. I ordered a desk calendar just to help keep track of the days. Thank God for the Bell & Tower publishing schedule that kept me anchored in real time.

Now back in the office, I find “normal” to have its own issues.

***

In our Gospel lesson today from Luke, we are very far into Jesus’ journey. He knows what is coming and, as was his habit throughout, he went to the Mount of Olives to pray. His disciples went with him, but fell asleep.

I have encountered this passage many times, yet this time I found something new—-and valuable. After praying, he found the disciples “sleeping because of grief.” Not sleeping because of boredom. Not sleeping because they’d been up a long time. Sleeping because of grief.

***

I’ve always been quick to judge these men as weaker, less committed, maybe even cognitively challenged because there was so much they didn’t understand, or stubbornly refused to learn, preferring the familiar. While some of that may be true, what is also true is they have journeyed with Jesus, mile for mile. They are exhausted, discouraged, and now grieving the expected loss of the familiar and of their friend and rabbi. Why wouldn’t they be sleeping?

***

The pandemic year was instructive at many levels, and I think of it as an illustration of what can happen to us when overwhelmed by unrelenting challenges.

Christian historian and researcher Diana Butler Bass said the pandemic was not a year off, it was not a lengthy sabbath. Rather, its constancy threw many of us into temporal dislocation, being unable to locate ourselves in time, or day of the week, or month. She spoke about her own experience of missing two appointments in the same day.

One of the treatments for temporal dislocation? Pick one day of a seven-day week and break pattern. Do something different. Sounds a lot like sabbath, where we rest from the daily grind, let go of some emotional overload, discover renewed spiritual vitality.

***

That’s all harder to do while the battle is raging, the pandemic mounting, the soldiers coming. But rest will find a way as it did earlier for an exhausted Jesus when he laid his head upon a pillow in a boat while a storm descended.

Mtr Mary