.adventures in sitting.

This weekend I have done more sitting than in recent memory.

Sitting alone.
Outdoors.
Indoors.
In a hammock.
Under an arbor
On a back porch

With nothing but a glass or mug of something bittersweet in one hand paired with like memories in the other.

It's easy to sit with your work, with your laptop, with your to-do list, with your phone, with your foot bobbing up and down.  But to sit still, with no point and nowhere to be, without clinging to the modern day definition of productivity.  That is a feat.

I find sitting adventurous simply because of how little I take part in it.  And it can be more frightening than scaling a mountain because of the space it makes.  Space that can be inhabited by recollections or resistance to whatever may be around the corner. By prayer and the words we never took the time to say to ourselves or to someone who's no longer around to hear them. Here we can take stock of the hours we've spent that tick away faster than when we were kids with sticky fingers and nothing but time.

I let my phone die this weekend more than once.  And the feeling was one close to relief when the time of day on the homescreen dropped out of sight and my ringtone and the wi-fi couldn't find me.

It's amazing the amount of time I've put into being perceived in just the right light.  How many of those minutes turned to hours on social media, in the workplace, among newly made acquaintances, all spent painting a canvas with a variety of different brushes and strokes so that it would come forth as a well-rounded, educated, enlightened, and informed piece that appeals to the eye and offends no one.

Sitting doesn't allow for this.  And when your days mainly consist of creating something for everyone, it's hard to make time for that which requires nothing of you but your restless self.  It's sacred space really.  Because how hard is it for us to believe that we're worth just as much when immobile as we are when we're handing a thirsty child on the other side of the world a cup of cold water?  And all because we were called "good" a long time ago by the God who meets us in that terrifyingly unproductive space that is so foreign.

We can sit and rest in this.  Bare-faced in a hammock somewhere where our habitual, hurried ways won't find us.