Rest

This is the final post in a series on The Way of Love.

When I began to think about writing this series, which now comes to an end, I was going to begin with Rest, even though it is the last one. The reason for that way in is that I happen to believe right now it may be the single most important one on the list, the one through which all the others are possible. In the Episcopal Church, at least, we have a pretty good sense of what it means to be a people who turn, learn, pray, worship, bless, and go. We have liturgical supports in place to do these things. But we are not very good at keeping the Sabbath holy - or even of valuing that as a goal. 

We live in a frenetic 24/7 society. We live with information overload and work, work, work. So I searched my own blog to see what I had written on Sabbath and found this post from over eight years ago.  It reminded me I don't need more information to keep the Sabbath holy. I understand why it matters! I understand why I crave it and take "tired" as a normal state of being. What I need is practice. And maybe some encouragement. And I bet that's true for most of my readers as well. 

Since that post I have read and re-read Walter Brueggemann's Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now. I commend it to you. In fact I wonder if this book might be a helpful book study for congregations or a clergy group. Anyone interested? 

Here are three quotes to whet your appetite: 

• The Sabbath rest of God is the acknowledgement that God and God's people in the world are not commodities to be dispatched for endless production and so dispatched, as we used to say, as "hands" in the service of a command economy. Rather they are subjects situated in an economy of neighborliness. All of that is implicit in the reality and exhibit of divine rest.  

• That divine rest of the seventh day of creation has made clear (a) that YHWH is not a workaholic, (b) that YHWH is not anxious about the full functioning of creation, and (c) that the well-being of creation does not depend on endless work.  

• Multitasking is the drive to be more than we are, to control more than we do, to extend our power and our effectiveness. Such practice yields a divided self, with full attention given to nothing.  

In his classic way, Brueggemann reminds us that Sabbath rest is more than chicken soup for the soul. It's more than a good thing for our bodies. It's a daring socio-political act of resistance to say "enough is enough." It's there to remind us we are persons, not things. 

For our Jewish cousins, the Sabbath is from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. We have so much to learn from them. Except in Israel (where most of the economy shuts down) most Jews have to find ways to keep Shabbat as a counter-cultural act. American culture doesn't stop on Saturdays just because Jewish people are taking a rest.

For the most part, Christians at best have truncated the Sabbath to Sunday mornings for an hour. And because there is no other time of real rest built in, many families would rather sleep in and eat pancakes if they have the chance than bustle everyone out of the house. I totally get that. For clergy it's further complicated by the fact that Sunday is a work day. Whether it's a good move or not I find that many vestries across my diocese meet on Sundays after worship (rather than a weeknight) because their members either don't have another weeknight to give up or don't like driving in the dark. In any case it means that Sunday, even in the Church, is often more than worship and not a day of rest. So we need to be intentional, and creative. 

My work week is Monday - Thursday, usually with one or two evening meetings in there. I try for not more than two nights out with congregations, and when I get to three in a week I feel every minute of my age. Most Sundays I'm in a pulpit somewhere and meeting with the vestry afterwards. Usually one or two (and occasionally three) Saturdays per month I have some diocesan work. All told, while I do have some flexibility, on average I work between 45-55 hours per week, not including the time it takes to keep up with this blog!  

I am not complaining. Nor am I bragging. So far as I can tell, since I know mostly very busy people, this seems pretty normal to me.  I'm certainly blessed to have work that I feel has a purpose and I cannot even imagine working that many hours for just a paycheck, as I know many people do. 

In any case, Friday is my day of rest. And I'm mostly pretty faithful to that, although there is always room for improvement. I've learned that no matter how busy a week may be, if I hold that and have it to look forward to, I can do it. It's a day to recharge my battery. Since Hathy and I are empty-nesters (and since she works on Fridays) it is almost exclusively "me" time. 

Yet I find even within church culture it is an act of resistance to protect that or claim that. We live in a culture that never stops. Literally. Never. Stops. Every parish priest I know has to figure out how to deal with the non-emergency phone call that begins, "I know it's your day off, but..."

I have joked over the years that my least favorite hymn in The Hymnal 1982 is "Come Labor On." It's a perfectly acceptable hymn about our calling to do God's work and I get that. But it's the question "who dares stand idly by?" that makes me bristle every time. It's a Protestant work-ethic song. Yet the deeper roots of our tradition insist that even God "stands idly by" on the Sabbath and makes it holy.  

What changes in us when we take at least one twenty-four hour period a week to stand idly by and let the world keep rotating on it's axis without us needing to do anything, but just to be? We should never apologize for doing that. It is a way to sanctify both that day, and the work that will be there when we get back to it. 

So, this is the longest post in this series and if you count the fact that I found that old Sabbath post at the beginning it's even longer. The reason for this is that I have come to believe that this witness is a key component to the way of love. It's definitely the one I need to be focusing on. Now if I can only act in accordance with what I believe and practice what I preach!