A bump in the night

Hi Reader,

I’ve been learning to pay attention to my thoughts and feelings when I wake up in the middle of the night.

Sometimes it’s to rock the toddler back to sleep (though I’m really lucky that my wife takes care of this almost every time). Other times it’s just one of those moments where you can’t fall back asleep, you know?

I used to get irritated about these times, but I realized it’s not like I’m “supposed to” be asleep. Maybe there’s something important I could be thinking about. Ignoring my thoughts and feelings and just trying to get back to sleep might have me miss out on that thing, whatever it is.

As I’ve learned to listen to myself I’ve discovered that my mental activity in the middle of the night—as well as right when I get up in the morning—is different, and often incredibly fertile.

I think the reason for this is probably something like my identity isn’t fully awake, so I don’t have any of those “I ams” cluttering up my thinking. It’s like having access to a deeper part of myself than I’m normally in touch with.

It’s wonderful. But then, sometimes I write stuff down and when I read it in the morning it sounds like nonsense.

It would be easy to dismiss it. And I often do. Here are a couple I just found in my notes:

• “God is about violence”
• “the truth is not buried under dirt, its buried under flesh. And so we don’t need to dig for it. We need to cut for it.”

I honestly don’t remember what I was thinking with those two. The second one nevertheless resonates with me. There’s stuff to explore here.

It feels like a big part of the work of coming home involves digging down into the muck at what seems to be the bottom of my soul, catching hold of something with the fingertips of my understanding, wrestling it up into the light of awareness, getting clear on what it is, and then sharing it with the world.

More nonsense?

I dunno. What do you think?

Sleep on it and send me a note first thing when you wake up.