Practices of Being
By Mike Hotz, Spiritual Director
Many people depend on refilling their tanks during the summer months. We work at breakneck speeds most of the year, waiting, and praying, that we will be able to slow down during the summer months to go from doing, doing, doing to just being. To go from human doings to human beings. I think this is accentuated for those in caring and helping professions where the weight we bear is often others’ mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Soul and identity work with others brings a kind of weariness that is unique. Add to this a natural academic rhythm to our calendars, and we have created the perfect recipe for disappointment and regret about our inability to shift gears from doing to being.
Our institutions, denominations, organizations, and our sense of self-preservation all advocate for setting good boundaries and practicing self-care. Yet, we often find ourselves struggling to do the very thing that could breathe life back into us. We discuss the importance of healthy choices, but are we truly living them, or do we fall into the fallacy of the work hard/play hard mentality that causes us to live at unhealthy maximums?
As we find ourselves in the fourth week of June, it's a good time to pause and reflect. Have you managed to slow down, or are you already feeling the summer slipping away, dreading the 4th of July holiday? Are you aware of the upcoming need to gear up in mid-August, and does the thought weigh on you? I understand, and I'm here with you in this shared experience.
Now, I probably can’t say anything revelatory in a short post that will resolve this tension and magically transform your lived experience. But if you’ve read this far, let me share with you two practices and a poem that have become meaningful in creating moments of pause to just be for me.
The practices are related to my Christian tradition of baptism. When I’m feeling anxious and tired from doing, I find a quiet place or room, bringing a pitcher of water and a basin of some sort. After some silence, I pour the water from a height into the basin so I can hear the water filling it, speaking or thinking the phrase, “This is my child in whom I’m pleased.” This phrase reminds me that my existence, not just my doing, pleases my Creator. For me, water symbolizes renewal and life, and the sound it makes as it fills the basin causes a bodily release of tension and a restoration of calm. I’ll then sit for as long as it takes for the water to return to stillness.
The second practice I have adopted is related and involves a simple flat blue glass marble that I keep in my pocket. When my fingers touch it, I’m reminded again and again that it is not only my doing that pleases my Creator, it’s my being. I am a beloved child. And since the marble accompanies me everywhere I go, I find myself reaching for it and even taking pictures of it at times of significance as a gentle reminder.
Finally, I’ve resonated for years with Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese.” In fact, I’ve resonated so deeply that I had the image of a Celtic goose tattooed on my arm as a constant reminder.
As you enter this fourth week of June, I invite you to immerse yourself in Mary Oliver’s poem and maybe adopt one of these practices for yourself as you navigate the balance between doing and being.
