Rest and Recoup

Friends,

I got ahead of the Memorial Day weekend kick off to summer by taking my summer my vacation this last part of May. Our vacations for the past number of years have been visits to family, but this year we were able to take what I call a "vacate-shun" by getting away from all the medical, household, garden, and other personal and social responsibilities and cares we generally attend to for most of the rest of the year. I’m shunning them, turning them aside for a couple of weeks.

Instead we have spent the past ten days or so in Hawaii where we have succeeded in accomplishing some deep rest while enjoying a whole different ambiance from home and enjoying opportunities for adventures in Polynesian food and culture - in addition, of course, to the beauty of the tropics and the Hawaiian beaches, birds and palm trees.

The challenge for me is to be able to enjoy such lush pleasure without feeling guilty or irresponsible. I am pleased to say I have met the challenge! Although I look forward to being home again to check on the garden and the weavings of friendships and responsibility back home, I really have been able to leave them behind and shun them for a while. I have not even followed my customary cycle of emails and news. (OK, I do check in every day as a matter of habit.) But I think it is important, where possible in our lives, to be able to provide ourselves with healthy respite from our routines and cares. 

As I have truly relaxed these past days I have become aware of how much tension and worry I carry in general, and how easy to fall into additional spells of deeper concern for family, friends, our communities and the world in addition, of course, to my own challenges.

I have concluded that in spite of the various challenges I actually do want to be so fully engaged in life - all of it - and much of my sense of life fulfillment comes from the satisfaction of engagement in the all the worlds of right relationship. But I think it is also important to maintain a right relationship with our own bodies, minds and souls that are dependent on our getting sufficient rest and refreshment. May you also be so blessed.

Aloha,

Tom