Resetting

I was reminded recently at church that rest is an act of worship. That I must remember Mama Angelou’s words that the world will keep going even if I stop to breathe. That it is in these moments that I pause to take in the beauty of the world.

I recently went to Alaska for a long weekend with a close friend of mine. I had been longing to leave the Bay for something other than a work trip, and I wanted to spend time in nature to have it remind me of God’s infinite wonders–that I am but one vessel on this earth in all its many splendors and mysteries. To be reminded in the words of Terry Tempest Williams, “I return to the wilderness to remember what I have forgotten, that the world can be wholesome and beautiful, that the harmony and integrity of ecosystems at peace is a mirror to what we have lost.”

What I had lost.

I had forgotten why I had stopped reading the news in the morning and had tried to just enjoy the sunrise and the noise of the city coming alive again at dawn. I wasn’t drinking enough water. I was spiraling into deep media-driven holes. And I temporarily forgot how to climb out. But I owe it to myself to take breaks from that which tries to cripple me and harden my heart. I know the evils of the world, but they are not of me. I do not wish to recreate them from my own hands.

As a black woman, I not only feel the weight of struggles on my shoulder, I also feel as though I have inherited legacies of the pain of striving for survival. But amidst that are also legacies of joy, of overcoming, of making new ways of nothing. And much of that is through a relationship with the land. The knowledge that when we begin again we ask our feet to find new soil to form new footprints in.

It is always the right time for resetting. It is always the right time to regain that which has been lost.