Brian’s Reflection: Saturday, February 23, 2008


To Sleep

O SOFT embalmer of the still midnight!
Shutting with careful fingers and benign
Our gloom-pleased eyes, embower'd from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,
Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities;
Then save me, or the passèd day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;
Save me from curious conscience, that still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oilèd wards,
And seal the hushèd casket of my soul.

- John Keats, poet, who died on this day, 1821, in Rome


I didn’t sleep through the night for a week after my latest surgery. Woke up after a couple of hours, then awake for five, before a bit of restless dozing. So I know what Keats is talking about. How healing Sleep is.

I know now, when I wake up in the night and can sense that I’m not going to return to sleep, to reach for a book. Two nights ago it was “Love in the Time of Cholera”; last night, “Birds of North America”. Informative, entertaining.

But I do often remember what Fr. Huntington, OHC said, “When you awake in the middle of the night, assume that God wishes to speak with you”. (I may be paraphrasing a bit.) A “curious conscience” is usually part of the “still midnight”. I have found that it’s a good time for scattering fantasy and resting in Reality, getting comfortable with it. And I find that Reality is a good antidote for anxiety. “Resting in God” is another way to put it since, for me, God is the Healer and Friend, Who often indeed does away with “many woes”.

Brian+