Rest as a Practice of Resistance and Freedom
December 14, 2021
“The systems make us hard. Rest keeps us tender. There is power in our collective rest and care. ”
As another defiant, unprecedented year draws to a close, I must confess that as a Black woman, leader, mother, and Oaklander, I struggled initially to pen this final post of 2021.
I have not been feeling easeful or reflective. I have not yearned for stillness. Instead, I’m feeling activated and indignant at the continuous violence, disregard, weaponization and injustice unfolding at all levels of public systems. I’m dismayed by the acts of desperation and indifference to human suffering I am witnessing in my city, and in communities across our country - the result of neglectful and depraved systems. I’m incensed by the mega-funded conservative campaign to protect Whiteness and its associated myths of supremacy and feigned benevolence currently being waged to maintain control of public education as a tool of mass conformity and compliance. I’m horrified by the relitigation of reproductive justice in the courts in 2021 - each of these an active threat to attaining a multiracial, pluralistic democracy.
“Something has to be done about the way in which this world is set up.”
I feared that an invitation to rest in these precarious times would feel hollow, disingenuous, insufficient. Worried that the suggestion of rest, self and community care would be woefully inadequate to meet the unrelenting demands of this time.
Then I recalled my grandmother’s wisdom whenever I dared to articulate my fears, concerns or worry out loud to her, “Say your prayers and go to bed Chile. Do not fret. What is yours to do and become will be revealed.”
My grandmother was a stern woman rooted in unshakable faith. In her spiritual practice, prayer was a conversation with the Divine for answers and shifts in one’s conscious awareness - which came only in the still places of your mind and body. This ancestral knowing flowed easily from my grandmother’s tongue, a cross-generational understanding that surrendering to rest and conscious intention makes something else available, a spiritual wisdom to be embodied. It is in these moments of revelation that one’s creativity, courage, and imagination is ignited and expands.
We all deserve refuge - a tender place to lay down our burdens, reconnect with ourselves, and renew our sense of agency and purpose.
This year brought heightened stress and uncertainty, a sustained global health pandemic with evolving variations, snatching away our hope for a time that no longer requires physical distance from one another. This year also represented a most virulent and divisive political landscape wherein the commitment to public service and human dignity has been overshadowed by greed, personal power, and an utter disregard for human life and the earth which sustains us all. We are currently witnessing direct attacks in our schools, erupting in an anti-equity backlash effort the likes of which we have not seen in over 50 years.
This is not a drill. The sirens are sounding, warning us that our collective humanity is at stake. Our work to get free and co-design loving, just and equitable systems is a protracted struggle. Corretta Scott King reminded us that “struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.” We would be well served to understand that the current attempts to erode hard-earned civil rights and efforts to stoke racial resentment is actually a calculated response to progress toward justice.
What we choose to be, do, resist, proclaim, and demand right now matters. Hanging in the balance of these overt attacks is our shared future, our possibility to manifest the beloved community.
I know it sounds counterintuitive, but we need to rest now. Rest and reflection can fuel the kind of leadership that is required of us. Rest makes it possible to see more than pain and injustice; rest expands our view, enabling us to notice historic victories in the midst of battle, to see the power and effectiveness of multi-racial, cross-generational coalition building for shared values and public goods. It helps us behold how quickly people can mobilize when the structures fall away - that it is in fact possible to redesign our structures for equity! Rest and reflection help us notice that we are not alone in the work - that the struggle for freedom is not an individual pursuit but one born out of collective consciousness and action. Rest brings a needed perspective that even when it is dark, the sun is always in the sky.
Rest is medicine, it allows for physical, mental and spiritual regeneration, it restores us and makes us whole.
Rest is reparations, an act of freedom and willful resistance.
Rest fosters reflection, opportunities to pause and reflect - to reconnect with our power.
Rest requires nothing beyond surrender and is available to us all the time. As the brilliant founder of The Nap Ministry, Tricia Hersey said, “If you are not resting, you will not make it. And I need you to make it.” In our efforts to restore our commitment, to prepare and maintain our individual and collective sense of efficacy and hope - we must gather ourselves and rest. Lean into the soft, joyful, contemplative places inside. Listen so that the light of truth can be revealed. Remember joy, laughter, song, silence. Be peace. Be love. Be still.
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”