mirror ball 9: stopping

The writer Andre Gide relates this experience of a trip he took into the Belgian Congo:

"My party had been pushing ahead at a fast pace for a number of days, and one morning when we were ready to set out, our native bearers, who carried the food and equipment, were found sitting about without any preparations made for starting the day.

Upon being questioned, they said, quite simply, that they had been traveling so fast in these last days that they had gotten ahead of their souls and were going to stay quietly in camp for the day in order for their souls to catch up with them.

So they came to a complete stop."

My hope for all of us is that we can make time in the holidays for our souls to catch up.

This is an open-ended mirror ball subject...
possibly:
do you have a hope for your loved ones at this time of year?
was there a time when you needed to stop and let your soul catch up?
or any other thoughts...

Elisabeth: My soul is catching up to me in the ceramics studio, where I'm spending time sculpting and wondering why I haven't done it my whole life!

John: In a way I feel like the 30 years between age 16 and today have been a long, slow process of letting my soul catch up. Or to put it a little differently, to let my scared soul come more and more out of hiding so that it can be fully present in most any situation. It's like a street cat that gets taken in and spends months scooting from under the bed to the back of the closet to the food dish and back again, and then gradually lets itself get a pat on the head, then a chin rub, until at long last it's sleeping belly up on a soft blanket at the foot of the bed.

Steve: This makes me think of just last week, when my sweetheart and I went to the Oregon coast, rented a cozy hotel room with a fireplace and a view of the ocean, and did "nothing". It's odd that when I say I did "nothing" I often mean that I did the things I like the most—read a book, stare at the fire, snuggle with my guy. The restorative things.

I also remember a night back in 1986 when I was living in NYC, in a messy relationship and drinking a lot, not knowing what I was doing with my life. It had pretty much stopped being crazy fun and was now most of the time just crazy. One night I sat up in bed and knew very clearly that if I didn't get out of there—New York—I was going to lose touch with the little voice in me that made sense; that was trustworthy. Before long I was back in Portland, living first with a friend and then on my own, sitting for hours chain-smoking, bouncing my knee up and down with nervous energy, beginning the long process of letting my soul catch up to me.