In case you hadn’t spotted, we’ve doing a good deal of travelling. Over a thousand, closer to two thousand some months, of miles each calendar month since September. Also in case you hadn’t been reading my newsletter, most of those miles have been in a little or a deluge of rain. Today the sun is shining and its heaven. We’ve actually been in our own bed since July 9th. Amazing. We knew that running two parallel exhibitions would be time consuming, but we had no idea how much. This afternoon, just before this blog, I managed to finish a whole set of images for some illustrations I’m still in the middle of the commissioned work to do.

I keep reading that rest is important. Intellectually, I know it is true. Spiritually, I know it is true. Physically, my body has been managing my history by being busy. If I’m busy, then I’m not remembering things I don’t want to ever think about again. If I’m busy, I keep myself out of someone’s line of fire. If I’m busy, I keep myself proving that I’m worth it. Well, thanks to some lovely very hard work of Lent this year 2024 after the touring began, I let myself get as enormously angry as I wanted by doing a structured Lament every week day of Lent. I knew that I needed to rest regularly from that, so I let the weekends of Lent offer that rest. Result? I learned to rest. I intellectually, spiritually and physically, put my history to bed. Its power is gone. I can breathe.

So, increasingly since Lent, I’ve been resting, faffing, doing some adminstration and having wonderful catch-ups with friends and family. We have turned journeys to and from exhibitions into mini holidays for ourselves, and adding dinner with people we love, stopping to see unexpected family and even taking in the United Reformed Church General Assembly just for a visit. Thanks to the URC’s generosity, we stopped for Sunday lunch and renewed friendship and colleagueship all over the place.

I offer you rest, dear readers. I can testify to its power and its peace.