Capitalism Can Burn Book Club - Part IV
Rest Is Resistance: Imagine
“I believe that the deepest part of our oppression lies in the theft of our imagination.”
~Tricia Hersey
The first time I came across the Nap Ministry was a couple of years ago on Twitter. She made a post about rest. As a person who was new to her work, I was confused. One day I commented under a post:
“But you don’t understand. I’m poor. I’m underemployed. I can barely pay my rent. How can I afford to rest?”
I wanted her to give me a step by step quick start guide on how to rest. Even my questioning was rushed. She paid me no mind as she responded to every comment except mine. Her lack of an answer made me pause. Her book hadn’t been published yet. Instead, I went back and read her past teachings where she had already answered that question over and over again.
The answer I found? Slowly. You do it slowly.
In the section entitled Imagine, the author writes:
“This work is about more than naps and is more than literal sleep. How do I unravel? How do I deprogram? The answer is you do it slowly. You do it with intention. You do it with care. You do it simply by believing that you deserve to rest. Our self-esteem and self-worth have been wrecked by capitalism, patriarchy, ableism, and racism. All have made us believe we aren’t worthy and and that we must prove ourselves by pushing hard every day to be able to receive love, care, rest, and grace. It can not be repeated enough how abusive this lie is to us. Grind culture has thrown us into believing that suffering, hyper-productivity, and constant doing is redemptive. This is a lie.”
One way we can rest is by reclaiming our stolen DreamSpace through imagination.
In my own life, it’s 10 minutes a day when I put my phone away and daydream.
That’s my daily act of resistance. That’s it.
To close out the first Capitalism Can Burn Book Club, I’ll leave you with 10 questions from the Nap Bishop to help you create your own rest practice:
What do I feel called to do?
How can I create space for me and my community to heal? What needs healing in me?
Can the idea of unplugging and resting for a whole month be reimagined by creating smaller moments of rest daily, weekly?
What does intentional rest and care look like to you?
How is your heart?
Who are you being?
What are you holding?
What story are you telling yourself? What is a more liberating story you can tell?
How can you create rest in this moment?
Are you ready to change?
As Octavia Butler wrote “the very act of trying to look ahead to discern possibilities is an act of hope.”
In solidarity & rest,
~Robin
I read this book just a few months ago, and it was my first time hearing about the author and Nap Ministry. Life changing in so many ways. The cadence of her voice in the audiobook. The language about refusing to mortgage one's body for capitalism. Incredible. Thanks for calling our attention to it once again.
I haven’t read this remarkable book yet. However, I am very aware of the powerful elixir that sleep is, the manner in which rest impacts my Spiritual Awareness and ability to perform. So, it’s no wonder that societal structures designed to cause exhaustion are maintained in order to control us en-mass.