Finished reading: Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey 📚

I got this book as a Christmas gift from my mom. Thanks so much, mom! This book was great.

Rest Is Resistance is a meditative thesis on the healing and transformative power of giving yourself enough time to rest. Where the “resistance” part fits into this book is with the authors insistence that our practice of rest cannot be truly transformative if it is aimed at making us more productive at work, or better able to serve the demands of capital. The point of rest is to spend time not serving capital. And the more we refuse, the more deeply we prove that we can survive without it.

The point from this book that has most stuck with me is the contrast the author makes between the concepts of “Freedom” and “Liberation”. She describes “Freedom” as a state of being unencumbered and unburdened, by either internal or external limitations. We become quickly frustrated by Freedom, she writes, because we mostly only see the ways in which we are not free, and we tend to panic, strain, and overexert ourselves to chase after a state of Freedom.

“Liberation,” by contrast, is the process of freeing yourself, over time, slowly and well. Doing the careful work to untangle yourself from your confusion and burdens. If we think of our journey of self-discovery in terms of Liberation instead of Freedom (just as Black Americans and other marginalized groups must conceive of their collective struggle), we are left with the energy and discernment to bring the long, necessary project to eventual conclusion.

Rest Is Resistance contains in it, I think, a particularly feminine kind of spiritual wisdom. Reading it made me reflect on the overwhelmingly masculine hue that my spiritual formation has taken on; due to my combination (doctrinally) Catholic and (culturally) Evangelical upbringing. I don’t have lots of concrete thoughts, yet, on the differences between masculine and feminine spiritual wisdom; except for that, as far as I’ve noticed, perhaps masculine spiritual wisdom tends to reach towards physical transcendence, and feminine spiritual wisdom tends to reach towards physical embodiment.

I’m excited to continue exploring this female spiritual path. The next book coming from my mom is Wild Mercy by Miribai Starr - so expect a review of that book eventually (I actually read Rest Is Resistance back in February… I’m lagging a few months behind on reviews!).