Day 12: Rest
Solstice Journey
Day 12: December 15
After a couple of days of reflecting on the light, I want to return to the shelter of darkness and the possibility of rest. Although we may not be able to truly hibernate like the bear, we can make space for winter rest and for sleep.
My personal sleep switch is darkness – when it gets dark, I start to get tired and I want to rest. So these days it is not uncommon for my wife and I to look at each other at 8:00 pm wondering whether it is too early to go to turn in for the night.
I have been reading a new book by Katherine May called Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. It was written prior to the pandemic, but just the title makes me exhale as we head into this particular winter. May talks about sleep in the book.
And winter sleeps are the best. I like my duvet thick and my bedroom cold so that I have a chill to snuggle against. Unlike those terrible thrashing summer nights when the room is always too close to allow that final descent into oblivion, the cool winter nights afford me deep sleep and long-magical dreams. When I wake in the night, the dark seems more profound and velvety than usual, almost infinite. Winter is a season that invites me to rest well and feel restored, when I am allowed to retreat and be quietly separate.
Like May, I sleep best in a cool room, and I love a heavy blanket. She has an interesting description of historic connections between the darkness of winter and sleep. In earlier times, when artificial light did not illuminate the long winter night, people tended to sleep in two parts. The first sleep and second sleep were each for some hours. In between there was a period of wakefulness that was once known as “the watch.” This period of wakefulness was not a time of the anxiety often associated with sleep troubles, but rather a time of reflection.
Can we befriend the darkness in this way? Can we welcome the rest that darkness allows, as well as the space for quiet contemplation? I wonder when I wake in the night whether I could receive the wakeful space as a gift. Rather than flipping back and forth in frustration and worry over the consequence of my wakefulness, could I relax into it?
May continues:
Sleep is not a dead space, but a doorway to a different kind of consciousness – one that is reflective and restorative, full of tangential thought and unexpected insights. In winter, we are invited into a particular mode of sleep: not a regimented eight hours, but a slow, ambulatory process in which waking thoughts merge with dreams, and space is made in the blackest hours to repair the fragmented narratives of our days.
Yet we are pushing away this innate skill we have for digesting the difficult parts of life. My own midnight terrors vanish when I turn insomnia into a watch: a claimed sacred space in which I have nothing to do but contemplate. Here, I am offered a place in between, like finding a hidden door, the stuff of dreams...
For today’s practice, I invite you to make space for sleep. The new moon will offer us the gift of a dark night. Can you consciously prepare for your sleep tonight? Spend a few minutes getting things set up for your rest sometime before bedtime. It might include a well-made bed, warm socks, a cup of tea, or a hot bath. Separate yourself from your screen for a while before sleep. If you can, go to sleep when your body says it’s time, even if it is only 8 pm. And should you find yourself with a “watch” in the night, let it be a sacred space.