I’m in the habit of thinking in terms of songs. Since I was into the Beatles so much back in the 1970s, two songs popped into my head when I read today’s prompt – Paul McCartney’s Golden Slumbers and John Lennon’s How Do You Sleep? Lennon’s is a bitter song – the sort of feelings that would keep you awake. Golden Slumbers is much more relaxing:
Golden Slumbers fill your eyes,
Smiles awake you when you rise,
Sleep pretty darling, do not cry,
And I will sing a lullaby
I first heard Golden Slumbers when a friend played me Abbey Road back in 1976. Back then, I used to listen to Radio Luxembourg 208 on my little transistor radio, which helped me to get to sleep. Nowadays, I listen to audiobooks. I should see what happens if I don’t listen to an audiobook, but I do enjoy them. And sometimes, they merge into my dreams, so someone I know might end up giving a speech using the audiobook script. 😀.
I do read about different strategies to help you to sleep, but nowadays I don’t have much trouble getting to sleep. I sometimes wake up too early or even in the middle of the night, but again, I just listen to my Audiobooks and I fall asleep again.
When I was working, agitation about a difficult project might wake me up at 2.30 AM, and it wasn’t easy to get back to sleep. I only really discovered techniques to avoid worry and ruminating in the late 2000s. And they don’t always work, but it’s useful to try them. Jesus urged us not to waste energy worrying, but I think that God leaves it to us to devise specific techniques, and nowadays people are much more aware of how to stay mentally healthy. And it’s nice to listen to each other’s advice and experience as well as the experts.
One way is not to spend too much time thinking of all the injustices done to you during the previous day at home, work, and elsewhere. I used to think of the following verse in terms of being more holy, but a byproduct of avoiding deep anger is that it keeps you healthier and happier. Compassion and forgiveness is good for you.
Ephesians 4:26-27
26 “In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, 27 and do not give the devil a foothold.
It doesn’t mean that you should never be angry. There is a righteous anger that might motivate you to address issues, but you shouldn’t allow it to comsume you. And think of all the awful things that are done out of anger – and how anger distorts our thinking. As a Beatles fan, it was very sad to read about all their bitter conflicts around the time of their split, but that can and does happen is most families and communities – and churches. Sleep is a wonderful gift, so we shouldn’t spoil it by anger. And we shouldn’t spoil our waking hours with anger either.
Here’s a happier John Lennon song – not totally happy, but it rejoices in sleep rather than using the time to list his grievances against Paul McCartney 😀.
and here are some hymns that touch on peace and harmony:
Hibernia Gospel 