Rhythm anyone?

Have you ever been around someone who struggles with rhythm? I mean someone who really tries but, in spite of their efforts, it seems as if the beat they are following is one all their own? I was employed for years as a professional musician and so I probably have an overdeveloped sense of rhythm, although you would never know were you to observe me on a dance floor. Still, I have this anal ability to detect when someone is following a beat that is not quite in sync with the music.

I am learning a lot about rhythm right now. I am learning that there is a rhythm to life, one that includes sleeping and waking, working and resting, training and recovering. In my cycling, I have found the critical importance of recovery following periods of intense interval training. Recovery provides opportunity for the mind and body to rest and become stronger than it was before. In my life, I have become aware that the past three or four years I have been tapping my foot to the rhythm of my own drummer, as most of us do. My metronomic tendencies bring this into relief in the form of an unsettledness in my spirit; an intuitive urging deep in my gut.

The difficulty of it all is that I find myself wanting to follow the rhythm of our culture; a rhythm whose tempo is unsustainably fast. If I follow this for too long, I find myself weary with busyness, irritable to constant noise, resentful to incessant demands, and longing for simplicity. I can only follow this cadence for so long before I look like I am on the dance floor, completely awkward and out of place-an illustration to all observers that something is desperately wrong.

For me, this season is increasingly about finding the rhythm to which I was created to tap my foot.