Sleep and death. Oh, and life. « the headspace collective

joncoe

04:49:10 pm on March 19, 2008 | # |

I must confess that I’m not a great sleeper. Well, that’s not entirely true – give me a seat on a bus (or even a place to lean), my desk at work, or an engrossing film, say, and then just try to keep me awake. But as for night time, in bed? Well, that’s something quite different. I’ll either lie awake for hours, despite my desperate need for sleep, or I will get to sleep at a reasonable time and then wake up a couple of hours later. And then, in the morning, I’ll have to force myself out of bed, feeling like I haven’t slept at all.

But I don’t mean just to moan about a mild case of insomnia. There is an important point here. Honestly. Well, I think there might be.

A point at least is that sleep is a fascinating thing. It is essential for us as creatures to rest, to slow down. To switch off. We can’t keep going forever – we need to recharge.

Just this week, for no good reason, a quote from Gandhi came to mind. It’s this: ‘Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.’ It’s one of those sayings that could probably be taken in a number of ways. At its most basic level, you could say that sleep is indeed like a taste of death, or an end. Loss of consciousness, of control, of even awareness of our surroundings. At the very least it puts life on hold for a bit. But on awaking, well, we’re back into the fray, we’re back in control (or are we?). We’re alive again.

But I’m sure he had more in mind than that. For me, at least, it has real resonances with aspects of the Easter story, and what it tells us about what might be revealed to us at the cross. What Gandhi seemed to have been saying was that at the end of any given day, I consign to that day all that I was, everything that concerned me, everything I did, every mistake I made, as well as any positive things I’ve done. They are behind me. And in the morning, I can know that they are not going to control today. Today I can have a new start.

Maybe in reality it is impossible to live outside the consequences of what we’ve done – good and bad – but perhaps the idea is that our attitude will not be to let guilt over the past control our future; not to let pride over past successes stop us from doing still more.

That I think is a huge part of Easter. Jesus’ death and resurrection tells us of the freedom God offers us from those things which control us – not just from the things we’ve done wrong and the guilt that comes from them, but also from those very assumptions we make (often about ourselves) that continue to control us – those ways that we fall short (or feel that we fall short) of who we should be. We can start again each day.

At least, that’s the theory.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who (rightly or wrongly) recoils at the concept of a ‘born-again’ Christian. It obviously has its roots in the Bible, and Jesus’ own statement that ‘no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.’ John 3:3. But the emphasis tends to be on it being a one time thing – a decision one makes, at a meeting, which one then follows up with a set prayer. But I have my doubts. I think this idea of rebirth (which has transformed from a beautiful metaphor to quite an ugly cliché) is about an ongoing, daily, thing. Because we never have it sorted. We always need a new start.

Well, I know I do. Basically, I guess what I’m saying is that I’d like to be able to say for myself ‘Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.’ Or, to put it another way – perhaps I wish it could be Easter every day. And not just for the chocolate.