Rest is Resistance (Burnout, wk 8)

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Through the lens of the Nap Ministry's Tricia Hersey and her book "Rest is Resistance", Hayley continues our church's discussion of how to address societal burnout.

(Illustration by Kumé Pather)

Speaker Notes

Rest is Resistance (Burnout, wk 8)

Review

==500 year story visual==

Hayley, over the past two months I’ve introduced a lot of elements to this 500 year story we’ve been tracking of time speeding up, where today our default conception of the good life is a busy life…

I think it’s usually helpful for folks to hear things phrased in different ways by different people, so before we dive in on some more elements, how would you set the table for someone who hasn’t heard the first several messages in this series?

• We are offering alternative visions to the idea that productivity and busyness are the badges of a life well-lived —> because more and more this is leading to a collective society that is burned out and exhausted
• There are different ways to mark our time than busyness!
• Chronos time vs Kairos time:
  • Chronos is linear, scheduled, to do list, timekeeping, typical lens for time
  • Kairos is measured by sacred time, the inbreaking of God in moments and how we experience that, share it with community, process it, and move forward as changed people. It is deep and meaningful time.

==500 year story off==

Today

Tell us about Tricia Hersey (and her book Rest is Resistance) and how helpful it is to our discussion…

• ==Book visual==
• Tricia Hersey- artist, writer, theologian, and self appointed Nap Bishop
• started the Nap Ministry and this book is a manifesto summarizing the motivation behind the Rest is Resistance movement she leads
• She curates sacred spaces like Collecting Napping Experiences, workshops on rest, and performance art installations
• The book is a collection of personal stories and resources behind why we need to center rest in our lives and the dangers of not doing so
• Uses repetition and question asking- you could journal your way thru this book by going thru all of the questions she asks, (self examination, a challenging and a soothing message)
• Big term: grind culture = capitalism + white supremacy (maybe a bit dif of a definition than you’ve heard)

==Book visual off==

Vince → draw some connections to rest of series

• accelerated modern life → capitalism + white supremacy
• societal burnout → grind culture
• sacred time → rest
• Key for this movement and the book:
  • Centering black liberation— don’t co-opt the messaging without acknowledging the Ancestors that guided Tricia (like her dad and her grandma) and the influence of womanism, black liberation theology, and deep dives into the histories of those enslaved in the south. Rest is reparations. Rest is liberation are two of her big claims
• Sum up her mission: I’m not donating my body to grind culture and neither should you. Here is why, here is how

Vince → connect to liberation scriptures (Matthew 20 & 23, Prov 3)

• the dialectic at the heart of God (exalt the humble, humble the exalted),
• SUPER IMPORTANT to know which side you're talking about before talking
• Hersey particularly focused on the "exalt the humble" side of the dialectic

Hersey’s four sections

I. Rest

Book:

• Can’t be connected to rest in a capitalist trendy way; rest is not a luxury, it is a divine right- Hersey repeats this often.
  • When we’re in a state of burn out, maybe for some of us there is a longing for a complete escape from daily life: ( not necessarily bad)
  • But sustainable rest must come from within the community and within our realities, not at a retreat center or by buying into the latest trends (white feminism lens of trendy wellness)
  • Getting away from life, often seen as fuel to return back to productivity
• ==Quote==: “Our drive and obsession to always be in a state of “productivity” leads us to the path of exhaustion, guilt, and shame. We falsely believe we are not doing enough…The distinction that must be repeated as many times as necessary is this: We are not resting to be productive. We are resting simply because it is our divine right to do so. That is it!”

Vince → when Jesus evokes the Hebrew practice of Sabbath rest

• he says "sabbath is made for humanity, not humanity for sabbath"
• in 1st century Palestine context, the abuse was refusing to do good on the sabbath because it could be considered "work"
• in our context, I think it's the abuse of seeing rest as merely recovery to then do more work... rather than seeing rest as a separate end, in and of itself

==quote off==

• If it’s not a total removal from life— that would be inaccessible for people and rest should be accessible for all— it is a unique to you process of finding what feels restful.
  • How can rest be a daily practice?
• Isn’t just an individual endeavor, but a communal act of care (community care = self care model)
  • King’s term of : “Inescapable network of mutuality”
• Language she critiques that has stayed with me (how rest functions individually and communally): “you can’t pour from an empty cup” is off balance
  • Problematic that we use this mainly toward women, especially marginalized women who carry the burden of labor
  • Filling up your cup so that you can pour out to others doesn’t feel like true rest.
    • “I don’t want to pour any more” and breaking the cups
  • Communally- who are we expecting to “pour out” to others? Are we placing more demands for giving than resting?

Vince → Going back to the liberating God,

• Pragmatically, God is giving rest to those traditionally expected to “pour out” (and maybe the pragmatics are different for someone like me, a white male)
• But, ideally, God is helping us imagine a vision of community where we use different metaphors than “being poured out"
• Again I think of this call for a church community like ours to keep sacred time alongside the pace and demands of modern life -- it is something done by a community together so there is no heavy burden on anyone as an individual
• That doesn't mean there's no responsibility or investment… if everyone considers sacred time or sabbath or rest as so optional that we don't prioritize it, then nothing can happen and the result will be certain folks feeling burdened
• But communal commitment to sacred time feels so different from grind culture's demand to produce

Storytelling

• Find it really helpful that rest isn’t cookie-cutter and not this lofty, impossible ideal in some far off future, stress on accessibility of rest
  • Reading this book has helped me question what I can be doing to experience rest more in my life as it is right now
• My current rest practices: (encourage you to think of what rest practices you have or would like to lean into)
  • Walks, especially by the water
  • deleting social media/ taking more social media breaks (really big thing that Hersey talks about. Being addicted to scrolling keeps us exhausted and limited in our thinking)
  • Embracing less, and having those moments be so much richer
    • Used to have a lot more anticipatory anxiety before things or even just introverted dred. Now that there are less opportunities to be social or on my own, so much more excited about them. Doing less actually feels more fulfilling because I can enjoy it

Vince → My in-law’s Soup Sunday

• a communal experience of rest & sacred time
• a model of alt timekeeping against the speed of modern life and grind culture
• every Sunday they're in town, they host an open invite meal
• and that is SO great for me and my family on Sundays because I'm tired; it's my longest work day
• no pressure to be nice or fancy or perfectly clean home
• the beauty is they're not the least bit worried about that
• they trust people want connection not nice or fancy stuff
• the time feels so full and heavy in the best way, not easily eroded (it is not light time that is easily blow away off of our calendar, it’s got heft; it's not moving; we prioritize it)
• Part of the reason they do this so naturally is that they did in fact experience time differently for over a decade of their life living outside of the modern west and grind culture
• NOW, back inside a context ruled by modern grind culture, they are invaluable teachers to our church
• Soup Sunday at the Montgomery’s is something happening most weeks of the year here in our community -- keeping sacred time for people in BLC's orbit --
• I want to highlight it as example par excellence of our communal addressing of societal burnout

II. Dream

Book:

• Wisdom dormant in our minds and bodies because we are so exhausted,
  • And dreaming/ day dreaming becomes a portal to access that wisdom, and gives us an opportunity to not be grounded in physical realities
• Hersey talks a lot about DreamSpace
  • Especially regarding her ancestors being robbed of their DreamSpace- robbing of time, self worth, connection, true rest- because they were treated like machines
  • Dreaming disturbs this collective experience under capitalism
  • Both sleeping deeply enough to dream at night and making enough space for silence during the day to daydream and wonder
• Dreams that people have at the Collective Napping Experiences (hosts with the Nap Ministry); People would wake up crying because of the rest but also because of what they encountered in their dreams
• Encouragement: Don’t downplay dreaming and daydreaming
  • Dreaming is the centerpiece of liberation: How do we dream ourselves free?

Vince → called vs burdened to react… or one of the prayer practices we talked about over the summer was the contemplative practice of "getting behind the waterfall" to let wisdom emerge instead of react urgently -- which feels related to this... I'll try to find the link and drop in Discord

==Quote==: “We can’t continue to attempt to dream up new ways of being while still supporting systems of domination. We can’t simply talk about the hopes of a world centered in justice while we continue to exhaust ourselves and each other and remain in allegiance with grind culture.”

==quote off==

Storytelling: dreaming new things vs. walking around like burned out zombies (or in allegiance with grind culture)

• Visited the Slave Haven Underground Railroad Museum in Memphis on a trip in college
• One picture that stood out among many— picture of a ship with swirling waters and souls leaving the water from bodies that were tossed over board
• The museum guide told us something that has stayed with me- the route of the slave ships actually changed the swimming patterns of sharks in that area
  • The sharks still swim the same paths today
  • Profound literal consequence
  • Should force us to as— how are we swimming the same paths? Knowingly and unknowingly?
  • How can we dream new paths to swim that aren’t treating bodies as machines, that aren’t treating people as less than human? How do we disrupt the well-worn, violent path?

III. Resist

Book:

• The time is up for any shallow wellness work that doesnt speak about dismantling the systems that are making us unwell **
  • This is the issue with trendy wellness- not that some people don’t experience rejuvenation, it can be really good for some people. But that some people is the key piece- often the focus is on personal wellness and isn’t accessible to everyone. Doesn’t address the systems that are draining and using bodies to the point of exhaustion
  • Underlying and centering work of countering white supremacy is the backbone of the rest movement
    • Grind culture isn’t just another buzz word. It’s the collaboration between white supremacy and capitalism
  • The piece that can get left behind by folks who try to co-opt her work

• Resistance is in our bodies
  • Sick when we’re too busy, too burnt out
  • Slowing down to listen to our bodies; this is embodied work; She emphasizes that our bodies hold wisdom and are divine and encourages us to listen to our bodies
• Resistance is also clearly a collective work:
• Longstanding history of a politics of refusal
• Uses the stories of the American Maroons as a model and guide for resistance (Slavery’s Exiles: the Story of American Maroons)
• Not runaways, but people who simply never accepted the role of enslavement nor allowed plantations to be home
  • Left plantations or leapt of slave ships as they pulled to the shore and set up own communities in caves and deep woods in the south
• Lived in what she calls a Third Space: a temporary place of joy and freedom, claiming autonomy and sovereignty in a violent system - You can’t have me
• Quote: The way they created their own world within an oppressive one to test out their freedom and regain autonomy reminds me of the spiritual and metaphysical ways we must reimagine and shape-shift our way to intentional rest
• Can’t afford to wait for those in Power to make room for rest or re-work systems so rest is the priority. Not going to happen (it doesn’t make money)
  • If we do have authority or set the tone for others (workplace, family etc.) how do we prioritize rest for other people?

Imagine

Book:

• Imagination is a liberation tool to see and craft the world we want to see
• In the same way we discredit dreaming, we can right off imagination of as childish
  • We have to reimagine the ways we heal from burn out and the ways we resist grind culture. See what isn’t there AND see it as a present possibility, not just a future hope
• Key Q she asks: How would our justice work look different if all involved were not sleep-deprived?
• White supremacy and capitalism didn’t just magically happen- they were imagined and put into place
  • We too have a right to reimagine our world and test new possibilities
  • “There is a possibility of transmuting trauma to power”
• People often ask for quick tips of how to rest more
  • Funny because its so counter to how slow this work is— this is a long view deprogramming of systems we are deeply entrenched in
  • Prioritizing rest and imagination can’t be a quick to-do list
  • Quick and instant do not honor our complexities as humans
  • Takes imagination to invent new ways of doing things
  • “Our resting now opens a portal for a rested future”

Rest as a resurrection. Rest in order to wake up to something new, not to give back to the very systems draining us. And that something new has to be reimagined

Personal:

• Reject urgency- leave space for self, and not demand urgency from others
• Leave time to imagine what could be (prophetic work and daily work)
• One of my biggest realizations from reading: Imagination at the center is a counter to busyness at the center. Imagination and curiosity as guides instead of productivity

Ending / Prayer: blessing on pg 40-41 (part of invocation for napping experiences)

This is an invitation for weary souls to rest

This is a resistance

This is a protest

This is a counternarratice to the lie that we all aren’t doing enough

We are enough

This is a counternarrative to the lie that our worth is tied to the grind of capitalism and the lie of white supremacy

You are enough simply by being alive

Thank you for living

Thank you for resisting

Thank you for creating

Thank you for dreaming

Thank you for resting

We believe that our healing can visit us while we are napping

While we are resting

While we are sleeping

While we are slowing down

We believe that rest provides a dream and visioning space

To invent

To create

To heal

To imagine

This is what resistance looks like

Won’t you come?

This is a resistance

This is a protest.