Rhythms of Life
Since the beginning of September, my life has fallen into a reassuring rhythm. Call it routine if you want – I remember years ago my friend struggling with me doing my food shopping at the same time on the same day every week, because ‘Where’s the spontaneity in that?’ – but I have discovered that routine works for me. I like having fixed points in the week, to know what each days looks like, to not have to think every morning ‘So what am I going to do today?’ Routine allows me to save my thinking for more creative and emotionally demanding tasks.
Anyway, this is more than routine. It is a rhythm that I feel deep within me – it’s like a tide of energy that comes and goes throughout the week. Monday always feels like a fresh start and this is the best day for cracking through a to do list. Tuesday is very active. Wednesday is simple – yoga and work. I tend to potter more on a Thursday and Friday, slow down a little, see a friend, do a little housework, do some more creative writing…….Saturday is work and collapsing on the sofa in the evening to watch a film. Sunday is really slow – a run, church, a jigsaw with Rita….and that’s about it. It works. There is a reassuring balance.
And then there is a monthly cycle of mood swings and energy levels, particularly for women, that we would do well to consider and make allowances for…..enough said on that, for now.
It’s the same with the year as a whole. I feel this in my psyche. I could say I have Seasonal Affective Disorder, but I think it is completely natural for all inhabitants of Northern Europe to sense a seasonal shift in mood and energy and that we should all be aware of it and make allowances for it. I know that for some, SAD is extremely debilitating and that as with depression , one of the biggest issues is being misunderstood and feeling judged by others. I remember hearing (on QI, I think – so it must be true) about a village that would literally hibernate every winter – how sensible, I thought! Hibernating animals have the right idea – life is harder in the winter and the dark. I do tend to go with the flow and as the mornings get darker, I get up later. I do not try to keep going at the same pace all year round. My creative output is more prolific in the summer months. I have more inspiration and plan bigger events from May to September. And inversely, from October onwards, my bed becomes my favourite place; my list of TV viewing grows longer; I crave cake and hot chocolate and log fires. I feel more lethargic, more paranoid and more tearful. And now that I admit to this and adjust my life accordingly and accept this within myself, then this shift inside me has become more manageable and I despise myself less.
It ‘s not about giving into it and lounging around stuffing my face with Jaffa Cakes all the time – I’m still embracing exercise and all that I know is good for me – but I’m not beating myself up about feeling more tired and needing more sleep (actually I am, why do I say that? It comes so naturally, I don’t even notice I am doing it and just yesterday, I threw all my toys out of the pram and said I would have to give up something like running or writing or work just to survive!). And of course, the wonderful thing about this rhythm is that seasons are just that – seasons – and none of them last forever. My favourite Dr Who episode is ‘Halfway out of the Dark’, the 2010 Christmas Special. I love that phrase and for me, January always feels like the start of climbing out of the hole, the gradual movement toward the light.
And then there are the festivals – Easter and Christmas (and Halloween for many), and the regular Bank Holidays too. Every Bank Holiday feels different – the August Bank Holiday has a different feel to the May Bank Holiday and families soon imperceptibly build in their own traditions to these days. Commercialism has hijacked the festivals, but they are still ours to make them into what we want them to be and not what we are told they have to be on TV adverts. Since I found a way to relax about Christmas a little by realising that is comes around every year and not every Christmas has to be 100% perfect every year – you get another chance in 12 months time! – it has helped me not to dread the build up towards Christmas quite so much. It’s not fair on the likes of me, having the biggest organisational and emotional event of the year at the time when my energy and mental and emotional reserves are at their lowest, after all. So my expectations have dropped (some would say my standards) and I do my best with who I am, the winter version of me. Is this making sense to anyone out there?
Anyway, God understood. He understood the importance of routines and rhythms for his people.
Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest, and so that the slave born in your household and the foreigner living among you may be refreshed. Exodus 23:12
Taking a break from work matters. Being refreshed matters. However we do it and whenever we do it, we are all human and we all need it.
God takes this a step further and applies to to the land too, establishing a seven yearly cycle.
For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, but during the seventh year let the land lie unploughed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what is left. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove. Exodus 23:10-11
This is the idea behind set aside, allowing a field time to lie fallow and recover in order to yield a greater crop the following year. How times have changed in this age of intensive farming and aggressive pesticides and fertilisers!
Three annual festivals are then established – the Feast of Unleavened Bread (to remember the Passover and the escape from Egypt); the Feast of Harvest (what has happened to the Harvest Festival these days?); and the Feast of Ingathering.
Celebrate. That’s what the Bible said. Celebrate the Feast of….. Celebration is good and God-given. There are rules about when and how to do it right but it is above all a celebration. Turning up before God to celebrate – just as in Halloween and All Saints Day, we celebrate the victory of good over evil; in Christmas, we celebrate God breaking through into history in human form; in Easter, we celebrate new hope and life.These festivals are all about joining together and turning up before God to remember and be thankful and to celebrate.
I find Christmas hard for a whole host of reasons. But now I try not to moan about any of it. I look for the joy and the opportunities to celebrate. I try not to compare or to stress or to have unrealistic expectations. I try to keep it simple. I do not try to please everyone. So our Christmas this year will not be perfect but hopefully, it will be relaxed and fun. We will join together and turn up before God and remember and be thankful and celebrate. I hope you will too.
