Napping as Spiritual Practice

I’m at the Ranch at the Benedictine Experience week. At our first session we participants were asked to share our hopes for the week, and as each person talked, the theme that kept on keeping on was “rest and renewal.” The first evening we were promised a short version of Compline so that we could all go to bed early and get a good night’s sleep. And, the next evening Fr. Robert Hale’s meditation focused on the spiritual benefits of sleep!

That got me thinking about a dear friend, Mary Eunice Oliver who was perhaps the most action oriented Christian I’ve known. She’d marched with King, demonstrated in countless places, been arrested, spoken the truth to power many many times. On the side she’d raised four sons to adulthood and been a loving wife to her husband. Her secret? She had an abiding faith AND she took a nap every afternoon. Of at least an hour, I think it was two. Amazing. I didn’t know her when her boys were young, don’t know how she made that nap happen, but in the years I knew her she never missed her nap. Napping kept her grounded.

Scripture has lots of sleep references—from Adam’s sleep during the creation of Eve, to Jacob’s sleep broken when he awoke to discover “God is in this place and I did not know it”—to poor Samson’s snoozing that led to his loss of the Lord’s power and his locks. One of the psalms (44) rails against God who is apparently napping, “Rouse yourself, why do you sleep, O Lord?” which reminds us of the time Jesus was napping in the boat when the storm came up and the disciples made a similar cry. Proverbs not surprisingly takes a both/and approach to sleep sometimes approving it and other times sounding like the mother of a teenager, “How long will you lie there, O lazybones?” (Proverbs 6.9). In Matthew we remember Joseph’s dream telling him to take Mary as his wife, and of course, the disciples who kept falling asleep in the Garden when Jesus had asked them to stay up with him. In the Book of Acts (Acts 20.9)there is the story of the young man sitting in the window while Paul went on and on; he falls asleep and out of the window, thunk! Paul  redeems himself by raising the poor fellow up.

So it’s a bit of a mixture this scriptural picture of sleep. In our ordinary days, we can sleep our lives away and sometimes sleep to avoid living, and sometimes we’re awake, but really asleep. All of that is true. But many of us I suspect take to our hearts that beautiful line from Psalm 3 “I lie down and sleep, I awake again for the Lord sustains me.” And that is where we find the essence of sleep as spiritual practice.  If we nap or go to sleep giving ourselves over to the One who sustains us; acknowledging that in fact the world can exist without our direction and input, then we have taken a small but important step toward Sabbath. Sabbath is that part of the on-going creation narrative when we do our part by letting go and relaxing into. By resting, by simply being, nodding off-- we acknowledge that we are not in charge.

As Fr. Robert pointed out sleep is something you can’t just make happen. Instead you have to receive the gift of it. You can prepare yourself to receive it, but by willing it you really can’t make it happen (it’s kind of like love that way, I guess). That’s another aspect of taking a nap or going to sleep at night as spiritual practice. There are things you can do to be a better recipient of the grace of sleep, but it is a grace. Many of us need practice in the art of receiving.

There is a giving in order to receive. It is said that giving ourselves over to sleep is an important way we practice giving ourselves over to life and to death as well. That closing of our eyes and drifting off is vital to our spiritual selves. Fear can keep us awake, or waken us from sleep—so can an over-active mind that refuses to let go. The unclenching of our hands, relaxing our shoulders, our backs, and of course our thoughts is not always easy to do in our face-paced world. Not easy to do when we have people to worry about, lists of unaccomplished tasks, brilliant thoughts to remember, etc etc. Many of us actually suffer from sleep deprivation.

According to Lawrence Epstein writing in Newsweek, “Adults typically need seven to nine hours of sleep each night to feel fully rested and function at their best. However, Americans are getting less sleep than they did in the past. A 2005 National Sleep Foundation poll found that Americans averaged 6.9 hours of sleep per night, which represents a drop of about two hours per night since the 19th century, one hour per night over the past 50 years, and about 15 to 25 minutes per night just since 2001.” Sleep deprivation results in high blood pressure, heart disease and obesity.

Oh, good grief. One more thing to add to the list of life’s dangers to be avoided. I simply MUST get more sleep. . .

NOT. Sleep is a gift to be received. All we can do is dispose ourselves to receive it. And an important step in that is simply acknowledging that I do not run the world. I am not in charge. I can entrust myself to sleep and to the creator who still goes on creating while I am dozing. Sleep as spiritual practice not only results in physical health but also in spiritual health.

So, happy zzzzz’s. (And if you do lie awake at night, here’s something to ponder: God took a rest on the seventh day. Let your imagination savor that for a bit. God’s resting as part and parcel of God’s creating.)