Welcome to The Rest Step

We are tired, deeply so. Here we explore "rest" as a state of being, not something to “do” (nap! meditate! etc.). It's the opposite of consumerism. It's what our world needs.

On a kayak at the Vashon Artist Residency, 2023

When the soul is about to die, it cries so loudly to be healed that you fall to your knees. It calls in a language you can hardly understand. Like a mother who doesn’t yet know what her newborn baby’s cries mean, you’ll try anything to feed the soul when it calls like that, to hold it and rock it until it takes your breast and is nourished, no longer abandoned, by your life on this earth.

I wrote those words around 30 years ago — years in which I’ve written hundreds if not thousands of times in my journal, “I’m so exhausted.” All that time, on the surface I’ve been relentlessly high-achieving and high-energy, something people often remark upon. Their assessments aren’t wrong: I do have a lot of energy, I’m grateful for so much, and I often love what I do. But that’s never been the whole story.

We are tired, deeply so. We rush, we force ourselves to do things, our minds are often frenetic, we have no time. We’re constantly berating ourselves. Outside us is a cacophony: images, words, messages, injunctions, real news, fake news, things to fear, things to get, bells, beeps, roars. We buy and buy and buy in attempts to help us navigate this chaos or find security within it. Ships churn across the world’s oceans, airplanes slice the skies, trucks barrel down asphalt, all spewing fossil fuel to bring half-toxic gizmos to fill giant stores with stuff we don’t need, stuff that clutters our spaces, wastes our money and stresses us out further. We work and work and work for fewer rewards. We never, ever feel “caught up.” We’re never enough. We feel — I feel — overwhelmed. Lost.

Our souls are indeed dying.

There’s something profoundly wrong in our world today, at least in so-called “civilization.” Our practices are decimating ourselves and our only home, the earth. We’re killing each other, killing ourselves, killing the body politic, killing the ground on which we walk and the water we drink.

We need change at fundamental levels if we as individuals and as a species, as human beings — beings capable of love, exquisite creation, discerning intelligence, and joy — can hope to survive. We’re at a crossroads.

This newsletter is an attempt, however imperfect and slow, to explore experience and ideas that might provide some insight into how to “rest,” a simple word that I’ll use to express the much broader experience of ease, peace, radical openness, respect, calmness, freedom, and quiet intelligence.

There’s a lot of advice out there right now about “resting” — take more naps and vacations, draw a deep breath, do a “mindful minute,” go for a walk, get massages, and the like — and while these are all good to do, I’m interested less in something to “do” than in a state of being.

In other words, I see “rest” not just as thing to “get” or “make time for” (something additive) but as a position of inner ease from which we interact with each other and the world. Spiritual teachers might call it “presence” or “open awareness” that naturally expresses itself with generosity and curiosity because it needs nothing. “Rest” is contentment. It’s the opposite of consumerism.

I think this is what our world needs. It’s certainly what I need.

I’ve always been a syncretist, naturally making connections among disparate ideas. I have so much in my head in response to the concerns described above — ideas from multiple philosophical and spiritual traditions, science (ecology, biology, technology, geology, physics, more), current events, art and literature, anthropology, and travel/geography. I’ve studied and practiced Buddhism especially deeply and have a history in Christianity. I read massively, widely, constantly; I have a library of thousands of books that touch on these topics in one way or another. (My favorite place in the world is a well-stocked bookstore.) I’ve traveled all over the planet, much of the time solo, in search of “answers” to questions that I’m perhaps beginning to articulate — though the best answers are always nothing more than deeper questions.

The upside is that my inner life is extremely rich; the downside is that I hold so much that when I sit to write, I hardly know where to begin. I get stuck, and I was never a fast writer to begin with. Nevertheless I want to try to start trying to put some of these ideas on paper in coherent, or at least semi-coherent, form.

I have a further framework for exploring these ideas, a book of creative nonfiction in progress. It’s called Sea Fire Sky: Rediscovering Rest in a World That’s Gone Mad, and I’m still playing with subtitles, something to do with journeys or investigations (experiential as well as intellectual) to discover ways to restore ourselves and the planet that we’ve harmed. The title refers to the three locales that I explore—Sardinia (sea), Iceland (fire), and Tibet (sky)—with the reader in asking these questions. Each place embodies a truth, inspired by Buddhism but found across all the disciplines I mentioned, that I think is fundamental to realizing “rest” as I’ve defined it.

My post Falling Between Tectonic Plates, from Iceland, describes the radical change I’ve made in my life to pursue this topic and book.

I welcome your input. I can be very shy (as with my writing) and extremely outgoing (as with my public activities). At the moment, in summer/fall 2025, I’m focused on deep writing, but connection remains core! Please do subscribe (free) and we’ll stay in touch!