I’m continuing my COVID supplement to The Book of Waking Up. If you’d like to support this project, signup for my Substack.

13. Getting Out of Our Heads; Getting Into Practice

On another Zoom conference, this time with my publisher, the head honcho spoke of his own pandemic-age experience. “In this moment, I need the timeless stories of the healing Jesus more than ever,” he said, then added, “so do the people.”

Within hours, I was on the phone with a therapist. She’d been neck-deep her clients’ anxiety, human housefires who’d had COVID gasoline dumped in their brains. Everyone was on edge--financially, maritally, pornographically, alcoholically, whateverly. In the middle of all of it, she needed something familiar. She carried that need into Holy Week, but for whatever reason, her church uttered nary a word about the resurrection story of Jesus. Instead, they leaned into something more innovative, more creative. (These are her words, not mine.)

Over the weekend, I mulled the words of the publisher and therapist. When Monday rolled around, I sent an email to the head honcho, shared the conversation with the therapist, then wrote: “We need the thick stories that steel our souls. I need them, too.” Hours later, he sent his agreement and added a facet to the gem, which I paraphrase as follows:

It’s time to get out of our heads and into the timeless stories.

If ever we needed to get out of our heads and into (or embody) the timeless stories of the Scriptures, it’s in the middle of this God-awful pandemic. If ever there was a time to hope, pray, and believe in resurrection, it’s now.

And this brings me back to my more Benedictine friend, the one I wrote about Friday who created a rule of life anchored in prayer. I’ve considered his rule over the last several days, the ways he engages the age-old story no less than 3 times a day, the way he steeps himself in prayer, meditation, and spiritual reading. Doesn’t this kind of embodiment keep him awake to the Divine Love operating in the world around him? What’s more, doesn’t it allow him to be an instrument in the hands of Divine Love?

Embodiment, we need it more than ever in these monotonous lock-down days. So, I’ve set out to create my own rule of life, a way to be in touch with the ancient resurrection story. My hope: To get out of my head and into the story. How? Come back tomorrow when I’ll share a new personal rhythm for waking.

To be continued…

Join me tomorrow (and for the foreseeable future) as I continue my Pandemic Supplement to The Book of Waking Up. And if you haven’t grabbed a copy of The Book of Waking Up: Experiencing the Divine Love that Reorders a Life, grab a copy. And yes, Amazon has slowed down book shipments, so considering purchasing it from Bookish, Fort Smith or grabbing a digital copy for Kindle or Nook.