Article October 17, 1983 Issue

Refreshment without vacation

KATHERINE ANNE LYDER STOFFEL

"My husband is under such pressure ... we've just got to get away!" "I need a rest. If I had a vacation, I could really read and study!" "Boy! When school's out, I'm not going to do anything but sleep and eat and lie around!"

Sound familiar? Vacation time should be a wonderful change of pace, an opportunity to do things we normally don't get to do. But in a world in which the pursuit of leisure and pleasure has almost become an obsession, it's well to reexamine the meaning of true rest. Are we "doctoring"—not with medicine, but with vacations?

What did our Way-shower, Christ Jesus, do when he needed refreshment? Mrs. Eddy writes of his prayer at the Last Supper, "Jesus prayed; he withdrew from the material senses to refresh his heart with brighter, with spiritual views."^{Science and Health, p. 32.} He knew the source of his being, his strength, to be God. Sometimes he actually went "apart to pray"—into a desert place or mountain. But because of the demands on him, more often he must have withdrawn from the material senses right where he was, turning away from the mortal picture of lack, of sin, of sickness, of insanity, to refresh himself with the conscious reality of Spirit and its creation.