The Sabbath
A lovely freedom.
You don’t have to read far in the Hebrew Bible to come upon these words: “On the sixth day God finished the work he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it [made it holy], because on it God rested from the work that he had done in creation.” Genesis 2:2-3.
Exodus 20:8-11 says: “Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.”
Elizabeth and I lead busy lives, occasionally meeting each other coming and going. Sometimes, it’s like living life at double speed. We decided we wanted to live more slowly, to savor rather than wolf down.
We turned to the Hebrew Sabbath as a model. We decided it could be any day of the week, not just a Saturday or a Sunday. We bought flowers, we listened to music, we lit candles. We decided to not read or watch the news of the day—not to criticize or speak ill of anyone. On that day, not to agonize over the fate of the world or whether our favored political officials or candidates thrived. And, not to work on our “sabbath”.
Observing the sabbath like we have has brought us more peace. However, it requires a life tempo, regular schedules, and discipline we don’t have. Rarely now do we observe our “sabbath” like described above. Even so, on most Saturdays and Sundays and sometimes on other days as well, we engage some of the practices I have described. Even that little bit is a blessing.
If you are interested in exploring what the Sabbath could mean to you, I recommend THIS DAY Collected & New Sabbath Poems by Wendell Berry. In the Introduction, Berry says, “On Sunday Mornings I often attend a church in which I sometimes sat with my grandfather, in which I sometimes sit with my grandchildren, and in which my wife plays the piano. But I am a bad-weather churchgoer. When the weather is good, sometimes when it is only tolerable, I am drawn to the woods on the local hillsides or along the streams. The woodlands here are not ‘the forest primeval’ or ‘wilderness areas.’ Nearly all are reforested old tobacco patches abandoned a lifetime or more ago, where you can still see the marks of cropland erosion now mostly healed or healing.
“In such places, on the best of these sabbath days, I experience a lovely freedom from expectations—other people’s and also my own. I go free from the tasks and intentions of my workdays, and so my mind becomes hospitable to unintended thoughts: to what I am very willing to call inspiration. The poems come incidentally or they do not come at all. If the Muse leaves me alone, I leave her alone. To be quiet, even wordless, in a good place is a better gift than poetry.”