I’m getting ready to teach a new class: “Spirituality & Sabbath.” I’m having a blast reading, mediating, praying, sketching, and thinking in preparation. As you may know, I’ve spent the better part of my adult life opening to faithful presence both personally and collectively within the ecosystems of relations that is one’s parish. I’m learning a lot about place… I’ve invested less energy reflecting on time. Yet time & place are vital to any real meeting, connection, or relationship… every moment is lived at the intersection of time & place.
I’m hoping this course will arouse opportunity to attend to the third great guide unto the real. The first guide is the place you inhabit. The second is your body. And your third trustworthy guide is time itself. There is a sense in which the particularity of your body in time & place is one’s life. Attending to and from the perichoretic dance of these three guides may be God’s invitation to faithful presence.
I sense that what listening is to place, sabbath is to time.
As we listen to a place and its inhabitants we come to see its sacredness. Through your particular context you are being invited to discover a way of harmony with all who call that place home. As one listens deeply to their parish they receive the gift of – near immediate – feedback in response to how they live. If one lives in a way that pollutes the air, they breathe it; if they lie to their neighbors, they feel the the reality of breached trust in their relationship, etc. Place mirrors back the impact of our presence. Sabbath may offer a similar gift by enabling us to attune to the sacredness of time.
My growing sense is that the courageous practice of sabbath is the primary posture for slowing the tyranny urgent to see and feel life life in context. Time is holy but busyness is a thief and a lier. Busyness shouts one’s importance while nudging the gift of the moment just out of reach.
In the primordial creation narrative of Genesis chapter one, the poem paints a picture of the Divine singing creation into being in six days and on the seven day resting.
On the seventh day, having created, God rested. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy…
Genesis 2:2-3a
As I sat with this lyrical pericope over the last few days I was struck that the very first thing in scripture God sanctifies or names as “holy” is day… the seventh day… what would later become known as the sabbath… God makes time holy. Is that important? Does that mean anything? If so, I wonder what the implications might be? I usually think of people, places, and even rituals as holy, but I confess I have not imagined time as holy.
We know that Sabbath is a day of rest, meaning a day where the activities and labors that fill the other six days cease.
We also know the modern proverb (Benjamin Franklin, I think): “If you wanna get a job done ask a busy person.” I know that feeling. When I am in the zone I can accomplish an amazing amount of work, effortlessly sliding from one thing to the next. Many modern cultures reward hard work. I also sacrificed decades of life on the altar of moving from one thing to the next. As though hard work as an end. I’m discovering it is not.
Hard work often feels more like a wolf in sheep’s clothing: contributing to an image of missional accomplishment, often concealing its real price, unfaithful presence to self, loved ones, neighbors, land, and even God. Only through regular and sustained ceasing from our labors – like striking workers in a factory – can we hear the holy prophetic whisper of time. Sabbath is that kind of walking off the job, a daring move unto unto life. Sabbath flips over the tables of our heart’s desires, reminding us that time is a holy temple… each moment an invitation to keep in step with the Spirit.
Place . Body . Time . I’m really looking forward to this course. Please pass along any research or reading recommendations for me.
Peace, dwight
