The Surrender of Sleep
The Grace of Truancy and Meditations at Compline
Who can the sullen writer blame when countless deserving stories cry out for their telling? Or the inattentive artist while meadows and maidens strike a pose for their unveiling? Or the minister in his study with sixty-six books-in-one awaiting exposition as angels and archangels stand guard his vocation for fulfilling? No one to blame of course. Yet, it is a personal sorrow when the “thorn” bears down on the creative nerve to paralyze the productive hand. “The spirit is willing but the flesh is”—well, to be precise—sick.
I still feel sadness when I can't minister even the smallest voice of testimony. And so I have not been able to write. I led my family in devotions and had to go to bed. The disease seems to declare a moratorium and, then, when I am lulled into complacency it lunges like a panther to devour. So, please forgive me for my quietened corner.
It was no less than the Bard himself who experienced a rare pause in his prodigious profession and felt the need for a figleaf of sorts to cover his naked page. Ever his own harshest critic Shakespeare achieved noble self-deprecation by pretending to blame his inscrutable muse—his “truant Muse”—in Sonnet 101:
O truant Muse, what shall be thy amends
For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed?
Both truth and beauty on my love depends;
So dost thou too, and therein dignified.
Of course, I am no Shakespeare, though a mortal Milton I am (infinitely incomparable but vain enough to mention the greater Milton). But, in truth, I feel closer to being Donne (viz., “done”). So, with my sadness for being unable to write this column in recent days now shoved deeply into the pretentious wad of words, I do want to thank the Lord that I can write at all. And I thank those of you who read! I tell myself that I write for God’s glory and others’ good, but when I cannot compose a paragraph I recognize that there is unavoidable self-interest also in play. I have missed writing. For, indeed, I have been ill—nothing new—just the relatively long arc of symptoms of a disease traced to Adam’s fall. It is as if there is only so much gas in the tank—in my case, quite literally, available adrenaline in the veins and autonomic impulse in the nerve. Yet, we can bless the thorns. For afflictions remind us of the brevity of life and the inestimable sacredness of now.
In the Christian liturgical hours the last prayer “completes” the offices of the day. Thus, the service is in the Latin, completorium—“complete.” A derivative of completorium is our English word “compline.” Completorium describes the closing prayer on a closing day. And that is where I found myself again tonight when I read the familiar words of David, “Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still” (Psalm 4:4). In these sparse but Spirit-breathed words I recognized God in the moment—meaning, of course, I actually sought Him. For He is always here though my spiritual dullness denies me His comfort. As I meditated on this one passage I thought of the wise words of the Presbyterian minister, the now late Frederick Buechner (1926-2022). I was surprised that my search to find the quote from his book Whistling in the Dark (1988) proved to be as much a part of my meditation as the silence. It was like seeking out an old friend for a divine cordial before bedtime. His insights on Psalm 4 had directed me to the Good Shepherd back in the day when I first read them, alone in a barracks in Heidelberg Germany. These are the words I read then, and recovered just a few moments ago. This is the essay Burchner called, “Sleep:”
IT'S A SURRENDER, a laying down of arms. Whatever plans you're making, whatever work you're up to your ears in, whatever pleasures you're enjoying, whatever sorrows or anxieties or problems you're in the midst of, you set them aside, find a place to stretch out somewhere, close your eyes, and wait for sleep.
All the things that make you the particular person you are stop working—your thoughts and feelings, the changing expressions of your face, the constant moving around, the yammering will, the relentless or not so relentless purpose. But all the other things keep on working with a will and purpose of their own. You go on breathing in and out. Your heart goes on beating. If some faint thought stirs somewhere in the depths of you, it's converted into a dream so you can go on sleeping and not have to wake up to think it through before it's time.
Whether you're just or unjust, you have the innocence of a cat dozing under the stove. Whether you're old or young, homely or fair, you take on the serenity of marble. You have given up being in charge of your life. You have put yourself into the hands of the night.
It is a rehearsal for the final laying down of arms, of course, when you trust yourself to the same unseen benevolence to see you through the dark and to wake you when the time comes—with new hope, new strength—into the return again of light.
That cold February day in Germany I understood the Psalm in a new way, an expression of thought at once consistent with the rest of Scripture, and instructive to a relatively new pastor and military chaplain. “This is how you read Scripture to shepherd people,” I had thought. And that is right. But what I see now is what I need now: that sleep and even the physical fatigue from disease is—can be received—as a gift, a serene grace that fits us for a coming transfiguration. So, I thought, “Share this, then.” For it just may be that someone reading this needs to accept the gift of sleep as a deeply personal touch from the One who created you, loves you, sustains you, and will keep you now and forevermore. For me, the Psalm once more became a prayer, the “closing” prayer: Compline. No pressure to produce. No guilt for not being able to write, preach, or teach. Just rest—deep rest in the One who sleepeth not. O how I do ask our Lord Jesus to grant that gift to you. No one should cherish His blessings alone even if we must say compline in secret. But to do so is to say to Christ and others:
Good night.