Creating Island Time: From Busy-ness to Presence

If Once you have Slept on an Island

If once you have slept on an island
You'll never be quite the same;
You may look as you looked the day before
And go by the same old name, 
You may bustle about in street and shop
You may sit at home and sew,
But you'll see blue water and wheeling gulls
Wherever your feet may go. 
You may chat with the neighbors of this and that
And close to your fire keep,
But you'll hear ship whistle and lighthouse bell
And tides beat through your sleep. 
Oh! you won't know why and you can't say how
Such a change upon you came,
But once you have slept on an island,
You'll never be quite the same.

—Rachel Field

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Most of us don’t take the time out to create Sabbaths in our days, or to take the time out to be on “islands” where we hear “the tides beat through (our) sleep,” or hear the ship whistle and lighthouse bell. We spend our lives being busy – and not present – in a way that costs us our peace, our inner peace.

“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence,” Thomas Merton says, “activity and overwork…To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence.”

Brother David Steindl-Rast, Benedictine monk, shares with us that the Chinese ideogram for “busy” is composed of two characters: “Heart” and “Killing.” 

If you know me, or have worked with me, have been following my life through these posts, you know I live on an island, Bainbridge Island, in the state of Washington, across from Seattle.

We chose a space, a meditative space, on which to build our home. I sometimes feel as though I am living in a National Park.  Each morning, I carve out space in time, to simply, be; to be with the Cottonwood Tree, the heron-who-fishes, the fog bank rolling in, the morning bird song, the unutterable quiet. It is a good practice.

And during the summers, we journey to Isle Royale, the journey which I wrote about in my last posting:

Embracing Change with an Awakened Heart: Isle Royale Lessons

That crossing is a six-hour crossing across Lake Superior. While one can take a seaplane to arrive in a half hour, my husband insists, and has always insisted, upon taking the National Park ferry, often a rocking, rolling one. When the winds blow, the Great Lake kicks up, like wild horses on the run. Why does he take the risk of discomfort?  Because he sees the crossing as a journey, a pilgrimage, a time to let go of one life, and welcome another, and appreciates those six hours, even if they are uncomfortable.

Crossings are like that, both real ones, and metaphorical ones.

It’s why I love travel so much…an opportunity to change conversations, you could say, to live in another reality for a while. Everything looks different when I come back home; I see with new eyes and a new perspective.

Islands are places to reconnect with nature, bringing us to solace, healing, restoration, and peace. In tune with the natural world, our own pace slows.

Islands, according to poet Rachel Field, who wrote this beautiful poem are transformative. One enters an island one person, and comes out another person. Rachel knew this.  “You’ll never quite be the same,” she says.

Today, I sent Rachel Field’s poem out to the participants of my next Heart of Leadership course, which begins in a week.  Why? They, too, will be on an island, a metaphorical island, a place of freedom and renewal, a place of restoration and self-recovery, a place to come in as one person and leave as another person. If you were a participant in one of those courses, you know that you will not only forever remember but carry with you a new experience of yourself, having stepped into a new life.

When you read this post, I will be leading the second day of that course, a day in which Forgiveness is the key land we visit, a place for letting go of the resentments of the past, and beginning life anew, for letting the past contribute to our present and our future rather than become it. So often, without the grace and benefit of forgiveness, without our willingness to let go of our resentments and our regrets, the future becomes simply more of the past. “Forgiveness,” Martin Luther King said, “is not an occasional act, but a permanent attitude.” It is also an opening into Self Compassion and Compassion for others.

We can all create metaphorical islands for ourselves. It takes dedication, intention, and what I would call a “longing for.”  When we connect with the depth of our heart’s yearning, we find ways to open new territory for ourselves. We create opportunities for renewal.

We can, at any time, even create islands of time, or “sanctuaries of time” in our days – places where we give ourselves Sabbaths, as Wayne Muller shares with us, in his book, Sabbath: times for restoration, times for real rest.

I Invite you to create “islands of time” in your days….

In the morning, sipping my tea, I create a sanctuary of time for myself, allow myself to descend into my own depths, and bring myself present to the natural world, outside.  I ask for guidance. A voice speaks and begins to move my pen across the empty white page, waiting for the ink.

This is a poem that came to me on a recent morning, as I was being present to the morning sun dancing on the water near my island:

Slowly, The Seasons Change

The coming of the Fall:
Sense it yourself. 

The leaves are still
on the Cottonwood.

The rising orange sun
performs a slow dance 
with the water. 

I feel Fall slowly, steadily, 
seeping, creeping,
into greenly trees just beginning
to turn yellow,
a bare hint 
of cold to come.

The trees are still
outside,
under the grey, sulky clouds,
Jeff Head partially buried
underneath the bank of fog
                     across the Sound.

I sip my tea slowly,
letting time, like warmth, expand within
like the coming of the Fall.

And what about you?

What about the coming of your next season, moves you, inspires you, opens up your thinking, teaches you?

I invite you, if you are called, to gently share your Voice with others, in this season of change.

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