Mary: An American Sabbath?

As an International Baccalaureate teacher, I have the fortunate ability, along with my students, to explore the deep-seeded and oft hidden motivations of a culture.  As of late, many of my classroom conversations have centered around America's obsession with "more."  More money.  More youthfulness.  More fame.  More beauty.  More effort.  More technology.  More words.  More possessions.  More work.  More noise.  More suffering.  More rewards.  More distraction.  More destinations.  Divorces.  Upgrades.  Downloads.  More.  More.  More.

I'm tired just typing that.

But, then, I ponder...isn't the idea of "more" what drives our society?  America is a capitalist culture (God bless America, and give us M.O.R.E!), and capitalism is built on the very idea that what I have right now is not good enough, thus I--we--work harder to earn more.  And dang it, if I dare think it is enough (Gasp the thought!), well thank the good god of Moreness that there are commercials and billboards and Internet ads to tell me how untrue that is!  Businesses are built on this excessive exertion of energy.  And sadly, I think, so our churches.  Perhaps that is another post...

But I fear that this economic and healthy (?) perpetual pursuit of more has seeped into the seat of our souls.  More religious events.  More spiritual activities.  More shallow hallowed be thy names and thy kingdoms of busyness come.

But I have some questions disturbing me lately...
Where is the less in blessed?
Dare I say, where is the emptiness?  
The utter abandonment to the still and quiet nothingness where Everything can be found?

I wonder if I have even drawn near to that holy emptiness yet.  Nearly 5 months of consistent Sabbath keeping, and well, even on Sundays I'm looking for more.  If I sit on my couch and enjoy the sun, eventually it's not enough.  If I lay in bed and rest my eyelids and heart, soon the questions about what to do next creep in.  When making dinner, I'm constantly thinking about the next. moment.  In other words, more.  More is always there, even on Sabbath.

It is almost as if the Sabbath for me has been this adventure skiing, where I have stood at the top of the mountain in utter snowy stillness, but yet have refused to dive off the cliff on a blind, downhill race into an unknown abyss.  I will go this far; but no farther.  I cannot surrender to the emptiness.

I'm not OK with this.  And quite frankly, I'm a little peeved that my country's culture is dictating the matters of my heart and my God.  And I can't relinquish this haunting voice of Wayne Muller:

"This is one of our fears of quiet; if we stop and listen, we will hear this emptiness.  If we worry we are not good or whole inside, we will be reluctant to stop and rest, afraid we will find a lurking emptiness, a terrible, aching void with nothing to fill it, as if it will corrode and destroy us like some horrible, insatiable monster.  If we are terrified of what we will find in rest, we will refuse to look up form our work, refuse to stop moving.  We quickly fill all the blanks on our calendar with tasks, accomplishments, errands, things to be done--anything to fill the time, the empty space.
But this emptiness has nothing at all to do with our value or our worth.  All life has emptiness at its core; it is the quiet hollow reed through which the wind of God blows and makes the music that is our life.  Without that  emptiness, we are clogged and unable to give birth to music, love, or kindness.  All creation springs from emptiness.  In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  The earth was without form, and void..."

Dave asked this too, on a previous blog.  So much is to be said about this...this...unwillingness to let go and just b.e.  Do I consume myself with being more, with being enough, even on Sabbath, so that I can't just dive into the unknown abyss?  Can't I let myself be OK with a void, so as to be the birthing place of something new and glorious and wondrous and beautiful?

Is the only way to M.O.R.E. through less?

Through nothing?

The Nuts and Bolts

Inevitably, I knew we would face the how-to's of Sabbath.  It is not enough to just wake up on Sundays with a mind to be different from the other 6 days.  We need a plan.  We need guiding principles.  Today, I'd like to reflect on those.

Guiding Principle #1.  The Sabbath cannot be a different me.

I've been finding that the Sabbath is the highlight of my week, and rightly so.  But it is also becoming the distinguishable highlight of my holiness.  Not rightly so.  Of course on Sabbath it is easy to be loving, to be at peace, to hold my tongue from the wrathful things it can say, to silence my mind from the mean-spirited perpetual criticalness.  But what is that?  It means nothing.  After all, it is easy to avoid fighting when not on the battlefield.  But how I live the other 6 days is more important than how I live on one day called Sabbath!  Thank God, I'm coming to this place where I see how there is a disconnect between who I am on Sunday, and who I am the other days.  I'm not ok with this.  I'm sure those around me and Him whom I serve is not either.

I confess that I am condemning, of myself and others.  I confess that frequently I do not use the power of language to build others up, but rather to tear down.  I confess that fear consumes my heart and anxiety my mind.  I confess the terrifying paradox of insecurity and arrogance.

The Sabbath must be a different day from the rest of the week.  But I shouldn't be.  Oh hypocrisy!

Guiding Principle #2. A Sabbath mantra by which to live.

Cease from what is necessary.  Embrace that which gives life.  (Buchanan, The Rest of God)

There are many things to do on a Sabbath.  And many things not to.  How does one choose between those options?

I'm finding it appealing to live by the aforementioned mantra.

Do I have to do it?
Then no, don't do it.

Do I want to do it?

Then, yes do it.  And love it and laugh it and live it and linger it.

I've heard many accounts of the stifled, legalistic households of Sabbath, where people couldn't even turn on a light or take a walk.  I do not want Dave and I to become that.  After all, Sabbath was made for us, not us for it.  Thus, we should grasp at whatever gives the thumping heartbeat of life, and toss aside whatever steals the thrill of living in a moment.

Guiding Principle #3:  Waste time playing.

"Play is subversive.  It hints at a world beyond us.  It carriers a rumor of eternity, news from a kingdom where Chronos [the enslavement of time] and utility are no more welcome than death and Hades and the ancient serpent.  When we play, we nudge the border of forever"(Buchanan, The Rest of God).
"Maybe all the other virtues of childhood--trust, humility, simplicity, innocence, wonder--are not separate from a life of playfulness, but the fruit of it:  that apart from cartwheels and kite flying, leapfrog and hide and seek, snakes-and-ladders and digging for buried treasure, all those other things wither"(Buchanan, The Rest of God).

Our house has been awfully quiet the last couple of Sabbaths.  We gathered around 500 puzzle pieces while listening to Classical music.  We spend time on our couch reading and meditating to the tune of our gentle wind chimes.  We lay down and cuddle and nap in the middle of the day without guilt.  It's been good.

But it's been unbalanced.  We need some adreneline on a Sabbath...the stuff that makes our heart thump and our soul smile.  Climb some 14ers.  Ski.  Take a road trip.  Hike for the best picture spots.  Eat ice cream next to a babbling brook.  Play Twister.  Challenge at tennis.  Swim and lounge in a hot tub.  Laugh til our belly hurts.  Scream while dropping stories on a roller coaster.  Swing at the park.  Play.  Like little kids.

There is something...
so...
so...Sabbath about that.

falling prey to the routine

So it's been almost 2 months now. Things have gone very well. It's really nice to have an excuse for nap taking and reading. I've noticed some things that are frankly a little disturbing. Although I have been really enjoying the physical rest that sabbath brings, it seems that unwittingly I have stopped there. It has been hard to discern, but I feel as though non-sabbath thinking has crept into the sabbath. What I mean is this. A pattern has been developing: wake up, meditate and journal, eat, nap, read, make dinner, play games, bed. Overall not a bad way to spend the day. The problem enters when this becomes the routine every sabbath. While going through this routine I have found myself giving over to the mindless task of doing, not being. As I'm doing one thing my mind is already ahead, anticipating the next. This is not the key to mental and spiritual rest. This is a dangerous game for me, to subtly revert back to everyday thinking. It allows me to achieve physical rest, but the mind still desires multitasking and unnecessary obsession. Am I so afraid of what i might find in true silence and stillness?

A Familiar Whisper from a Stranger

"Sabbath is a stranger you've always known.  It's the place of homecoming you've rarely or never visited, but which you've been missing forever.  You recognize it the moment you set eyes on it.  It's the gift that surprises you, not by its novelty, but by its familiarity.  It's the song you never sang but, hearing it now, know inside out, its words and melody, its harmonies, its rhythm, the way the time quickens just before the chorus bursts.  It's been asleep in you all this time, waiting for the right kiss to wake it."

Mark Buchanan The Rest of God

This Moment Alone

One of the blessings--and greatest struggles--of practicing the Sabbath is practicing mindfulness of this moment.  It is so opposite of the career I have and the kind of person I am.

As a teacher, my success hinges on the ability to predict and plan for the next moment--who will struggle?  who will be bored?  how long left til the bell?  who will need encouragement?  who will need celebration?  who will need redirecting?  how can I change this lesson?

How do I turn that mind off on Sunday?  Let me tell you, it's a challenge!  Here's a typical mental battlefield through my thoughts dodge as I sit on my couch and try to be in this moment alone...

When should I start dinner?
What's Dave thinking?
Am I ready for school tomorrow?
When should we nap?
Should we take the dog for a walk after we get up?
Should I run later?

You get the point.

Sure, we can schedule a day to partake in worshipful rest...but did my brain get the memo?  Hardly not.

I think this endless mental striving is one of the curses of our 21st century.  After all, we live in a society where multi-tasking is a talent, busyness is success, and silence is sinful.  Who in their right mind is in this moment alone?

And that is the point to which I arrive today.  Perhaps being in this moment is not about the right brain.  But we all have two sides to our brain...don't we?  And couldn't we ALL use a little more left brain?  Time to create.  Time to imagine.  Time to bathe in beauty.  Time to applaud chaos and exalt unknowing.  Time to ask questions without demanding answers.  Time to get lost in the details and surrender the big picture to Supreme Artist.  Time to just...be...

I desperately need time in this moment alone.  I need to honor my left brain more.  For I commiserate with these words:  "Being in a hurry [is my biggest regret in life].  Getting to the next thing without full entering the thing in front of me.  I cannot think of a single advantage I've ever gained from being in a hurry.  But a thousand broken and missed things, tens of thousands, lie in the wake of all that rushing"  (Buchanan, The Rest of God)  Being in a hurry makes me look and feel more productive (a mere illusion), sure...but in the end it leaves me--and I imagine those to whom I connect--empty.

So on a recent Sabbath, I stopped.  I sat in a moment alone.  I stopped waiting for the next.  It was a forceful and wondrous snowstorm which transfixed my view.  And my left brain celebrated the tiny beauties and melodious paradoxes I witnessed.  I captured them.  In a poem.  I created. 

"Now"

I sit in a Sabbath snow globe

listening to the silent, still, secret snowflake whispers.

The snowfall suffers confusion,

first tumbling vertically to the earth, then

stolen and sidetracked by sweeping thieves of wind, 

finally swirling and twirling around the centurion pine--

who rises as a centennial axis.

The graceful carousel of quiet nothingness eternally spins.

Must the snowfall have a direction to fall?

Or does it just...

Fall?

Be?

Surrender control and blur into white identity.

There is no next moment; only now.

A million small, lacy snowflakes scramble

outside the glass pane.

A million nows.

Rest...or Die: Mary

Rest...or Die.
Harsh title, I know.

Yet not as harsh as the words Jehovah spoke to his people in Exodus 31 (version, The Message):
God spoke to Moses: "Tell the Israelites, 'Above all, keep my Sabbaths, the sign between me and you, generation after generation, to keep the knowledge alive that I am the God who makes you holy. Keep the Sabbath; it's holy to you. Whoever profanes it will most certainly be put to death. Whoever works on it will be excommunicated from the people. There are six days for work but the seventh day is Sabbath, pure rest, holy to God. Anyone who works on the Sabbath will most certainly be put to death. The Israelites will keep the Sabbath, observe Sabbath-keeping down through the generations, as a standing covenant. It's a fixed sign between me and the Israelites. Yes, because in six days God made the Heavens and the Earth and on the seventh day he stopped and took a long, deep breath.'"

Practice the Sabbath...or perish.
Invest in a day to stop...or suffer isolation.

Now, I'm quite certain the literal components of this passage would fire a passionate debate (which is of no concern to me right now), so I'm going to go figurative.  It seems to me here that this is one more place God demonstrates his omniscience.  Humanity does not have an off button naturally.  We will go until we're sick, dead, or both.  Especially in this modern time, when during one tiny breath of time, we can be working, communicated with someone on Facebook, watching the news, eating lunch, Googling, and texting our spouse about picking up dinner.  Go. Do. More. Yes. Sacrifice. Strive.  An endless string of pressing concerns chokes our lives.  Rest...or die.  How many of us are dying of business?

Wayne Muller comments on our fatal gluttony for business:  "A 'successful' life has become a violent enterprise.  We make war on our bodies, pushing them beyond their limits; war on our children, because we cannot find enough time to be with them when they are hurt or afraid, and need our company; war on our spirit, because we are too preoccupied to listen to the quiet voices that seek to nourish and refresh us; war on our communities, because we are fearfully protecting what we have, and do not feel safe enough to be kind and generous; war on earth, because we cannot take time to place our feet on the ground and allow it to feed us, to taste its blessing and gave thanks" (see below)  A life lived with no rest, no pause, no stillness is a life of violence: destructive to our souls, dangerous to our loved ones, deadly to our bodies, debilitating to the innocent bystanders of our incessant striving.

So yes, there is no question that God's warnings about Sabbath for his people are harsh.  Rest...or die.  Stop...or suffer isolation.  But it is easy to see how these admonishments are for our own good.  Rest...or die, because our physical selves suffer from non-stop going. Stop...or suffer isolation, because our relationships (sometimes even those within the same household) are diminished by our constant output of energy.  (Ironic, no?  You think in a society that is more connected than ever isolation would not occur?!)

I work a job that demands at least 60 hours a week and 100% of my mind and heart.  I have a house that is constantly dirty.  I have a marriage that cries for cultivation.  I have furry pets who need walking and feeding.  Thank God, literally, for His gift of a weekly off button.

When was the last time you pressed yours?

To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence.  ~Thomas Merton

Wayne Muller's Sabbath book...

Another One...

Though I will be posting more later, I just have to say that already (not even two chapters into it), I am profoundly affected by this book.  If you are keeping up with this blog, you will be hearing a lot about it!