"How do you do nothing?" asked Pooh…. Christopher Robin replied, "It means just going along, listening to all the things you can hear, and not bothering."

For many years I have written a newspaper column at least twice a month. During the past several years, it has been almost once a week. Adding a stray column here or there, I would estimate that I have written some 500 columns about a variety of spiritual topics.

But recently, as has happened several times during those years, I have found the writing difficult, the thoughts jumbled into little piles like rocks collecting on the bottom of a stream bed that has stopped its move forward.

I remember the first time this happened.

Tossing and turning one sleepless night, I wondered if I could possibly be losing the gift I had been given. It was a disquieting thought, so I rose from bed to find something to occupy my mind.

Of course, as many women will do, I turned to cleaning, sorting out piles of mail that had accumulated in the den. As I threw one thing after another into the garbage I came across a greeting card that I had purchased but never sent—probably because I liked it so much I didn’t want to part with it. The photo was of a cat stretched luxuriously across the top of a roll-top desk full of "stuff," obviously basking in the sun which shone through the adjacent window. The verse read, "There’s no pleasure in having nothing to do. The fun is having lots to do and not doing it."

Doing nothing is a concept I can’t quite get my head around, but at three in the morning, with a mind running on overtime and getting nowhere, it sounded like an incredibly wonderful experience.

Still, being the often times stubborn Irish woman that I can be, I put aside the thought and went on cleaning, musing about the solution to my predicament. The next thing I was to pick up was a book of poetry by Emily Dickenson. Randomly I opened the pages and my eyes rested on a poem about a little brook. The first and last verses say it all: "Have you got a brook in your little heart . . . and your little draught of life is daily drunken there . . . Beware lest this little brook of life some burning noon go dry!"

As the light began to dawn in my head, it was almost as if my faithful guardian angel could be heard muttering something like, "It’s about time!" while exhaling a sigh of relief.

I sat in a nearby chair and considered what I had to finally acknowledge. I needed to stop writing for a time and take a respite for doing nothing—not a retreat, not a time of prayer or recollection, all of which have a purpose, but a time of no purpose other than to simply be and, in the "be-ing", be renewed and refreshed.

So, every year, as I did then, I take a hiatus from writing. But during this time of simplicity and expectant waiting for the rain of renewal, I store up all the spiritual lessons life has to offer so I have plenty to write about when the brook is filled.

If I were to rate my accomplishments in life, learning to make some time for "not bothering," is high on my list.

Thanks, Christopher Robin!

Copyright © 2010 Mary Regina Morrell