וַיִּקַּ֛ח יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהִ֖ים אֶת־הָֽאָדָ֑ם וַיַּנִּחֵ֣הוּ בְגַן־עֵ֔דֶן לְעָבְדָ֖הּ וּלְשָׁמְרָֽהּ׃
The LORD God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden, to till it and tend it. ~ Gen. 2:15
The older I get, the more ways I see I am like my Dad. The anniversary of his death is coming up soon, so I guess I’m thinking about him now. I wrote about him the day he died, a post I like to share each year on the anniversary of his death — or sometimes on his birthday, which that year was just two weeks before he died, the morning of the first day of Pesach.
My Dad had a deep sense of what I can only call spirituality, as amorphous as that word is. In his best moments, he knew he was part of the unity of all being, and there was inner peace in that. I described him like this as he approached death: “These last weeks my Dad was in a very Zen space. He was neither rushing toward death nor struggling to remain in life. He was exactly where he was and was content there.”
But he did have extended times of disconnect, as I do, times when busy days and complicated emotions get in the way of the experience of “interbeing” and simple truth. It was easy to see when he was in this space. His body language declared it. I called it his Executive Walk. When he moved like this, his shoulders were hunched, his eyes were down, and he drove forward with greater speed as though it would move him through his tasks and responsibilities more quickly.
I also do an Executive Walk, even when I’m in one of my favorite times of day, walking outdoors. Doing that Executive Walk decreases the simple pleasure of my walk. Rushing toward my steps goal so I can move on to my next tasks and responsibilities means I miss that opportunity to restore my sense of interbeing, to connect to the air on my face, the clouds drifting above, the buds on the trees, the wrens on the bushes around our homes singing their hearts out just because. I am disconnected from my little dog and the pleasure he gets from stopping to investigate and experience every tiniest aroma. I am even disconnected from myself, my sense experience and my body.
Blessings teach us to notice. Perhaps instead of counting steps, I should count blessings, strive to reach that elusive 100 blessings a day. Maybe in this way blessings are an antidote to “busy-ness,” those things that fill our days and distract us from our true purpose and meaning, tilling and tending the Garden that surrounds us, noticing what it truly needs, not what we, in our busy-ness, think it needs.