Sabbatical – Sort of…

Wayne Muller, minister, therapist, community organizer, published Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives 20 years ago, and the wisdom of creating an oasis of time and space to ponder and reflect is as true today as it was then.

And so, after posting these Resources for Recovering Resilience daily since March 16, 2020, the day we went into sheltering-in-place, and after the completion last week of the online Resilience 2.0 course I launched directly in response to the pandemic and the re-awakening throughout our country, indeed throughout the world, about other issues the pandemic was back-burnering – racial injustice, social inequity, climate change – I’m going to take a mini-sabbatical for the month of August 2020.

Along the lines of:

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world.  This makes it hard to plan the day. – E.B. White

I want to use the time and space to think through and reflect on what I can offer next, and how I need to deepen/expand those offerings to continue to be “competent, creative, contributory” while also being relevant and very practically helpful.

I’ll be planning a new series of live webinars and online courses under the Resilience 2.0 umbrella for “Resilience for Right Now…and For the Long Haul” to launch in September 2020.

I’ll return to posting my Resources for Recovering Resilience to twice a week, as in “the good old days,” probably once again every Monday and Thursday.

And I’ll also be doing my own research, studying, learning, percolating, synthesizing. And while there are so many truly excellent offerings available via the internet these days (many links offered on my website page Resilience for Right Now…and For the Long Haul) I want to return to the discipline of reading books – two hours a day.

I know from reading years ago:

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr

Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked by Adam Alter

that it’s deeply wise practice to protect the functioning of my (hopefully competent, creative, contributory) brain, to not get all of my information about the world from too much time on my computer. (Brain fog, impaired concentration, challenges in sorting out the relevant from the irrelevant, all of that.)

So I’ll be doing some of my learning the old-fashioned way, through reading books, committing to a practice of reading two hours a day, every day. Not a luxury; a true resourcing.  On my list so far:

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Delia Owens

The Velvet Rope Economy: How Inequality Became Big Business by Nelson Schwarz

The Field of Lies: Critical Thinking with Statistics and the Scientific Method by Daniel Levitan

Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth by Rachel Maddow

Granted, not light reading.  But true learning. And I hope, as I teach, transforming adversity into learning and growth.

May you find some good summer reading in this traditional August time of vacation, rest and renewal as well.