Go Fly A Kite!

Abraham Joshua Heschel once said that the first holy thing in all of creation was not a people or a place but a day. Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. Heschel called that seventh day "a palace in time."

Keeping Sabbath is difficult for me. As Barbara Brown Taylor reminds Christians in An Altar in the World, the Sabbath in the Bible (both Testaments!) is from Friday sundown until Saturday sundown. Sunday is "the Lord's Day" - a little Easter - the day of resurrection; a very important day for Christians but technically not "the Sabbath."

In any event, keeping a full twenty-four hour Sabbath on Saturday OR Sunday is an impossibility for me given my vocation. Saturday is a day for doing a variety of errands at home and occasionally finishing up a sermon by 5 p.m. when we have our first weekend Eucharist at St. Francis. Sunday is usually filled with not only church but various meetings and church obligations. Monday is my "day off" from Church and I'm pretty faithful in keeping it as such. In the past it has been my Sabbath. But over the past few years it's been a teaching day at Assumption College and the day I devote to preparing for the entire week. I justify this by saying that devoting Monday to college students is life-giving for me; and it is. But it is not Sabbath.

So I have plenty of room for improvement in that area. But what I am much better at doing is taking time in the summer - both in and around Holden and by getting away - that is in its own way Sabbath-like. I understand the virtues of having Sabbath every week. But in the absence of getting that down perfectly, it helps at least to create a "palace in time" each July and August - first on the Outer Banks in North Carolina and then on Cape Cod, in Massachusetts. Each of those times include extended family: the former with my family-of-origin and the latter with Hathy's. Unlike some people whose vacations are filled with things to do, our vacations are a lot like a Seinfeld episode: they are vacations about nothing. Literally they are about no-thing. Just time and space with no agenda.

We are beach people and just the sound of the water hitting the sand restoreth my soul. We are food people and just beginning to think of the "rotation" for this year - my brother will cook for twenty-one on Sunday night, each of my sisters and my step-father and mother will take their turns. I'm thinking we will serve brisket this year...

I will read more and watch less television this coming week. I'll sit and talk after dinner or play a game, with no meetings to attend. I probably will not literally fly a kite myself, but I'll thoroughly enjoy watching the kids who range from nearly twenty to five do that. It will truly be "a palace in time" and a reminder that time is a gift from God and rest is good for the soul. We live in a culture that sometimes makes us feel like we need to apologize if we are not crazy busy. I know people who get two weeks of vacation and don't take that. I get four and savor every minute of it. I look forward to having no thing to do this week, which allows me simply to be the person God created me to be.