He leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul.

“He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul.” (Psalm 23:2, emphasis mine). This verse has been resonating in my mind today as I’ve been meandering around the beautiful grounds of Conoy Creek Hideaway, a hidden treasure of a place where I’ve been taking a much-needed weekend retreat.

Usually I’m not much for hiking, but here I’ve surprised myself by wanting to explore the smattering of trails on the 33-acre property. And while every path is beautiful, I keep finding myself drawn to the creek, lulled by the gentle and constant rush of water against rocks and shore as it tumbles on its way downstream. I have always found moving water to be a source of comfort and peace – from the crashing rhythms of ocean waves to the steady motion of the Great Susquehanna, they still my soul.

That has remained true for me here. I have spent blissfully unmeasured time sitting by or walking along the Conoy Creek, allowing it to sooth my soul and awaken joy within me again. I can always tell when I am happy because songs bubble up inside of me, often worship songs, and it feels like my heart is singing. My heart has been singing today.

Usually the part in Psalm 23 about laying down in green pastures seems very figurative, but here – where there literally are green pastures – I have found myself dancing in them, doing cartwheels, practicing yoga, and yes, laying down with my arms spread wide and my face to the sun. This is what the Psalmist is speaking of; these are the things that restore my soul.

With my brief retreat coming to a close, I found myself asking God: “Why can’t every day be like this? Why can’t my life be just an extended retreat?” I don’t know if it was God or just my own thoughts responding, but the answer that came to mind was: “I still have work for you to do.” We retreat from our busy lives so that we can be restored, renewed, replenished; and so that we can return, to the work and to the people we have committed ourselves to. I don’t truly want to live in a hut in the woods forever – but as a break from all of the demands of the real world, it is tempting.

So my next question, then, is how can I take this experience of deep rest and restoration with me? How does Sabbath translate back in the real world? The book I’ve been reading – “The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath” – speaks to this, saying:

The lie the taskmasters want you to swallow is that you cannot rest until your work’s all done, and done better than you’re currently doing it. But the truth is, the work’s never done, and never done quite right. It’s always more than you can finish and less than you had hoped for.

The rest of God…it’s a sheer gift. It’s a stop-work order in the midst of work that’s never complete, never polished. Sabbath is not the break we’re allotted at the tail end of completing all our tasks and chores, the fulfillment of all our obligations. It’s the rest that we take smack-tab in the middle of them, without apology, without guilt, and for no better reason than God told us we could.

What an important truth, and what a difficult challenge for me – one who always works through lunch, stays late and carries around a running to-do list in my head. I have fallen into this lie, believing that only when the endless pile of work is done to my satisfaction, then I can rest. That never actually happens because there is always something else, always something more – and my rest comes only when I am so exhausted that I have no choice but to stop. Rest borne of exhaustion is clearly needed, and better than no rest at all – but what would it look like to build in pockets of rest throughout my days and weeks so that I would not have to reach that point?

Observing the rhythms I’ve fallen into just during my brief time here, I’ve been keeping a running list of the life-giving things that I want to incorporate more of into my daily life: dancing, yoga, taking walks, reading, napping, blogging, doing nothing.

This last one is interesting, because when I am at home I very rarely do nothing – if I’m not doing stuff around the house or writing a paper for class or a lesson for Sunday School, I’m watching an episode of something to try and chill out. “Doing nothing” feels like a waste of time when I am surrounded by an endless amount of things I could do; but here, removed from all of that, doing nothing is incredibly refreshing. Just letting my thoughts wander is a luxury I almost never have, except at the beach – someplace where I more easily give myself permission to “do nothing”.

In the movie “Eat, Pray, Love,” one of my absolute favorites, there’s a scene (which you can view here) in which Elizabeth Gilbert is taught in Italy the phrase “dolce far niente”; the sweetness of doing nothing. Her Italian comrades rail on Americans as knowing only entertainment and not pleasure: “You work too hard, you get burnt out, then you come home and spend the whole weekend in your pajamas in front of the TV!” That’s strikingly accurate – we know how to entertain ourselves to no end, but we do not know how to embrace the pleasure of doing nothing; we do not know how to rest.

This retreat has afforded me a rare opportunity to withdraw and practice Sabbath apart from the demands of my normal life. Now as I return home, I take with me the important challenge of practicing Sabbath in the midst of all those demands; of making space to do nothing when there are many things that need to be done. I am exceedingly grateful for my quiet hut in the woods, for the calming waters that have soothed my soul here. As I followed Conoy Creek to the Susquehanna on my drive home, it felt like an assurance – that this little creek feeds into the mighty river, and wherever I go there will always be calming waters for me to draw solace from, so long as I am attentively looking for the Source.

Quiet waters :)