Finding a Gear Between Idle and Wild

The bedroom window above my head is open. Cool air billows over me, and I hear rain but no birds. My guess is it’s 3:39 a.m.

When I turn my head to look at the faux wooden clock with the soft, red numbers, I’m only three minutes off: 3:36.

I put my left hand on my low belly and my right hand on my heart and try to keep my mind steady on my word for the year—yield—but it’s already off and running to what workout I will do, to what I will write, to what sweet bliss will course through my veins when I take my first few sips of coffee in my new cabin.

After I live into that list of things to do, here they come: Time and Quiet. Like ants, they crawl in through the cracks. Ready to bite and pinch.

This is my practice. Here. Now.

Being with.

Being still.

I bought my new cabin not as a place to live all the time, but somewhere I could retreat and rest. A forest-surrounded sanctuary filled with holy, luminous light.

It is that.

And it is a place where I am learning even more deeply the nature of my being—how it is one that needs to move or it will suffocate.

As soon as I think that, I remember preaching at a small church about 25 years ago. They didn’t have much money, so they met at a funeral home. Before our service began, I would often ask the funeral director how things were going. One day, she gave a small smile and shook her head.

“We had quite the funeral this week.”

“Oh?” I asked. “What happened?”

“We release a dove into the air at the end of our funerals, to symbolize the departed spirit going into heaven.”

“That sounds lovely.”

“It is. Usually. But this week, I had someone new doing it. He didn’t know you have to hold the bird lightly in your hands, otherwise, it can’t breathe.”

I later learned birds don’t have a diaphragm. Air gets moved into the body by muscles attached to their rib cages and sternum. That means if you hold a bird too tightly, it cannot draw new air in. It cannot live or breathe.

The funeral director continued, “When I said, ‘And now, we release a dove to symbolize Bob’s spirit returning to heaven,’ my guy opened his hands and gently tossed the bird into the sky. It dropped back to earth like a brick.”

“Oh, no!” I exclaimed.

“At least the family was okay with it.”

I haven’t thought about this story in a long time, but my spirit needed to remember it. Here. Now.

Like the bird, how often we crush the living, breathing things in our lives by holding on too tightly—with expectations, fear. With doing too much. Or too little. What if we hold things lightly as we try to find that sweet balance between doing and being?

This balance—just like physical health—is never a one-and-done. Conditions change. We change, and on we go, trying to find balance and health here, now.

And here.

And now.

So, the question then becomes, “What now? What best next step now will lead me into a vivacious, tenacious energy that manages this dance between idle and wild?”

Maybe I can take my lead from Alfred—who shifts easily from alert . . .

. . . to content.

After I wrote my Substack last week, a reader asked what I was going to name my new place. While it came with the moniker Clover Haus, the reader wondered if I might include the word “idle” in the name—since that seems to be at least one of the things I will be practicing here.

A long time ago I thought about opening a restaurant called Idlewild. A place to sit and be nourished. To taste the wild and good things and be fed.

What if that is my cabin’s new name? A reminder of who I am and what I need—what we all need? To rest and nest. To move and fly.