Common Poorwill
Good work and good rest
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted A time to kill, and a time to heal A time to break down, and a time to build up A time to weep, and a time to laugh A time to mourn, and a time to dance
And the list of Ecclesiastes 3 goes on, as the Bible draws the attention of its audience to the cycles of human life. So, too, does the Qur’an, often referring to the cycles of creation. In Surah Al-Qasas, ‘The Story’, the twenty-eighth chapter of the Qur’an, we are told, “In His mercy, He has made for you the night and the day, so that you may rest in it, seek His bounty, and be grateful.” (Qur’an 28:73).
Most interpreters throughout history have thought this to mean that the day is created to engage in good work, seeking the bounty of the Creator, and the night is created for good rest, recharging, and reflecting. The combination of the two, in balance, gives us all we need to live a fulfilled, purposeful, and fruitful life, for which gratitude is due. This interpretation is reflected in a similar verse in Surah Yunus, ‘Jonah’, the tenth chapter of the Qur’an, “He is the One Who has made the night for you to rest in, and the day, giving sight. Surely in this are signs for people who listen.” (Qur’an 10:67).
Much like darkness and light, work and rest are not only opposites but also intimately connected. Without darkness, there’d be no light, and without light, no darkness. Well-rested, we are able to do our work with dedication, energy, and patience. And after a day of good work, our heads rest more comfortably on our pillows. But even beyond that, in the heat of work, during the day, we find little moments of shade whilst taking a break, nap, or engaging in silent prayer. During the night, little stars of light appear as we pursue creative endeavors, engage in conversation, or recite our prayers out loud.
This balance is sacred and beautiful. In Surah Ya-Sin, the thirty-sixth chapter of the Qur’an, we are told, “It is not for the sun to overtake the moon, or for the night to outpace the day. They all proceed in their orbit.” (Qur’an 36:40). With patience, day after day, we follow the cycle of their orbits, our work rising with the sun, and our rest rising with the moon, as the quality of our rest reflects the quality of our work, like the moon reflecting the sunlight.
Whilst this is the way human beings are naturally created to interact with the cycle of light and darkness, other creatures have different patterns in their cycles of rest and work. Nocturnal animals, like Barn Owls, rest in the warmth of daylight and work in the wake of the night. Emperor Penguins, like many other kinds of Penguins, are known to get their sleep from hundreds of little naps throughout the day and night, lasting an average of four to seven minutes per nap. Other birds, like the American Robin, are diurnal animals just like us, who prefer the sight given by the light of day. When the sun goes down, they retreat under the safe covers of shrubs and bushes. Like most species of birds, and unlike us, they sleep on their feet, perched on the ground, in a cavity, or on a branch.
Some birds, like the Great Frigatebird, blur the boundaries between work and rest. They are known to sleep while flying. During their migrations, Frigatebirds at times stay up in the air for periods of up to two months without a single break or landing. Funnily enough, these seabirds cannot swim, or rather, they cannot get up out of the water after they land on it. A quick nap in the water would, for them, rather result in eternal rest after they eventually drown. As such, on long journeys overseas, they have no choice but to remain up in the air. Entering into a state of half-sleep, their bodies continue to fly on ‘autopilot.’ In His mercy, their Creator gave them a pillow of clouds.
Up in the sky above the ocean, Great Frigatebirds do not have to fear an attack from a predator. But many other birds are not blessed with that same luxury as they seek rest. Starlings gather together in groups of up to a million birds to find safety in numbers. Similarly, Flamingos prefer to sleep in a group, albeit a much smaller one. Because they have many natural predators and are very visible with their pink feathers high up on their tall legs, Flamingos even sleep in short naps with one eye open.
Common Poorwills, in contrast, are created with the perfect camouflage. When they close their eyes, they perfectly resemble a little heap of dead leaves, blending in splendidly in their dry habitat in the north of Mexico and the southwest of the United States. This small bird, known by the Native American Hopi people as Hölchoko, “the sleeping one,” is the only bird known to enter a state of torpor. In torpor, these birds lower their body temperature, heartbeat, and rate of breathing, entering a deep sleep for days, weeks, or even months. Much like hibernation, these Poorwills use this deep state of sleep to make it through particularly harsh winters, but sometimes also for periods of extreme drought or wildfires. When life gets too overwhelming and tiring, their body knows just what to do: rest.
Our bodies know just what to do as well, but unfortunately, we do not always choose to follow the way our Creator intended for us. As it is written in the Bible, “Even the Stork in the heavens knows her appointed times; And the Turtle Dove, the Swift, and the Swallow keep to the time of their migration. But my people do not know the ordinance of the Lord” (Jeremiah 8:7). Much like many other aspects of creation, our bodies have become the sites of exploitation in the pursuit of ‘more’. When our days are filled with the blessing of good work, whether it is out in our communities, on our land, or inside our households, our nights are often blessed with good rest. But in our days, good work has become a rare blessing and privilege.
Workers all over the world in the margins of their societies slave away at repetitive and unfulfilling labor. In call centers, they have the same conversations over and over again about products they do not own or truly care about, and with people they don’t have meaningful relationships with. In factories, workers are reduced to human machines, stripping away all creativity from the creative process in exchange for greater ‘productivity’. Because many industrial processes are so very compartmentalized and hierarchical, in the language of Marxist critiques, workers have become alienated from the product they create, from the production process, from other workers, and ultimately, from their own human nature as creative and inherently valuable beings.
But this is not only a struggle of the working class. Lower- and upper-middle-class employees increasingly find themselves stuck in the meaningless webs of bureaucracy. Instead of focusing their energy on teaching, research, and healing, doctors of all kinds are writing endless reports for educational boards, grant suppliers, and insurance companies alike. Their time slowly ticks away in meetings that are called for by protocol rather than necessity, much of it to fulfill the standards set by institutions of bureaucracy. And then we are not even speaking of the types of jobs anthropologist David Graeber not-so-subtly labeled ‘bullshit jobs.’ Graeber explains: “Shit jobs tend to be blue collar and pay by the hour, whereas bullshit jobs tend to be white collar and salaried. Those who work shit jobs tend to be the object of indignities; they not only work hard but also are held in low esteem for that very reason. But at least they know they're doing something useful. Those who work bullshit jobs are often surrounded by honor and prestige; they are respected as professionals, well paid, and treated as high achievers - as the sort of people who can be justly proud of what they do. Yet secretly they are aware that they have achieved nothing; they feel they have done nothing to earn the consumer toys with which they fill their lives; they feel it's all based on a lie - as, indeed, it is.”
Because so many of us are no longer fulfilled by good work, we equally struggle to find good rest. Dreading the workday to come, we anxiously cling to our phones and television sets in an attempt to forget about the ticking of the clock. In our rest, we no longer aim to reflect and remember, but rather seek to forget and deny. And then, when we have finally summoned the courage to go to bed, all those things we sought to forget come knocking on the doors of our minds. So we get our phones out again, as we start imagining a different life. Perhaps we even play out a different life in online games and chatrooms. Eventually, we sleep too little too late, so when the time comes to wake up for the dawn prayer, fajr, we struggle to get up and often don’t. Unrested, the pursuit of change seems too steep a hill to climb. Night by night, we slowly lose our dreams and will to strive for something better as we settle for a life in the gray of twilight, not truly working, not truly resting.
It isn’t ‘good work’ that Tricia Hersey aims to resist in her book Rest is Resistance and in her movement The Nap Ministry. Rather, it is the lie that good work can ever exist without good rest that she calls out, as well as the pervasive problem of bad, meaningless, and slave-like work. She calls out the capitalist exploitation of especially Black American bodies that is such a fundamental part of ‘grind culture.’ She reminds her readers, “You were not just born to center your entire existence on work and labor. You were born to heal, to grow, to be of service to yourself and community, to practice, to experiment, to create, to have space, to dream and to connect.” Of course, within the Black American experience, wrestling with the structural, societal, and psychological legacies of slavery, these words speak to much deeper desires for freedom and rest than most tend to associate with practices of self-care. In a world where the capitalist system tells you that your value is based on your productivity, echoing the language of slavery, actively resisting that myth by taking rest becomes a radical form of resistance.
Healing, growing, being of service, practicing, experimenting, creating, dreaming, and connecting are all examples of good work. In many ways, therefore, the Rest is Resistance movement is really just as much a movement for good work. Rest, according to Hersey, is not achieved only by taking naps and sleeping. Rather, she says, “To dream, to rest, to turn away from the toxicity of grind culture are radical acts of love for ourselves and our culture. I often speak about how naps will not save you if you are still upholding anti-Blackness, white supremacy, ableism, and patriotism. All these things are the opposite of love and care. We can’t continue to attempt to dream up new ways of being while still supporting systems of domination.”
Our work is not good work if it does not create a structure for good rest. Exhausting our bodies to their breaking point is not worship; it is domination. Our bodies are entrusted to us by their Creator, just like the rest of His creation, to care for with gratitude and use for goodness. In the same chapter of the Qur’an in which we are told that the sun ought not to overtake the moon, and night ought not to overtake day, we are also told that on the Day of Judgement, our very own bodies will testify of how we used them, and how we cared for them: “On this Day, We will seal their mouths, and their hands will speak to Us. Their feet will bear witness to everything they have done.” (Qur’an 36:65).
We know what our bodies need. They tell us. All we need to do is be “a people who listen.” Naturally, I don’t mean to imply that we should follow our every bodily whim and craving at any time. As with all other matters, we need to seek a fair balance, acknowledging that there is a time for work and a time for rest.
After forty weeks of writing, forty weeks of learning, and taking different birds as my teachers, I am grateful to now take my rest. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for being a part of this journey. For now, this is where we part, as this will be my last post on this platform.
But as much as it is my time to step down, it is also your time to step up and take over. Go out and explore the endless teachings of creation, whether you find them in birds, trees, cities, art, books, your neighbor, or within yourself. Read the signs on the horizon, and dare to listen to the words you encounter. Hopefully, you will do a much better job than I did. Either way, my dear sibling, I wish you the very best, in work and in rest.
As-salamu alaykum, peace be upon you.