Recovering the Sabbath

Rev. Abhi Janamanchi

September 2, 2007

From Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn.

If you sit down to meditate, even for a moment, it will be a time for non-doing. It is very important not to think that non-doing is synonymous with doing nothing. They couldn’t be more different. Consciousness and intention matter here. In fact, they are key.

 

On the surface, it seems as if there might be two kinds of non-doing, one involving not doing any outward work, the other involving what we might call effortless activity. Ultimately we come to see that they are the same. It is the inward experience that counts here. What we frequently call formal meditation involves purposefully making a time for stopping all outward activity and cultivating stillness, with no agenda other than being fully present in each moment. Not doing anything. Perhaps such moments of non-doing are the greatest gift one can give oneself.

 

The flavor and sheer joy of non-doing are difficult for Americans to grasp because our culture places so much value on doing and on progress. Even our leisure tends to be busy and mindless. The joy of non-doing is that nothing else needs to happen for this moment to be complete. The wisdom in it, and the equanimity that comes out of it, lie in knowing that something else surely will.

I was on the phone recently with a friend who asked how I was doing. "I’m keeping myself busy," I said without even a moment’s pause. The moment I said those words I wanted to take them back. "What am I saying, and who the hell is saying this?" I wondered. I am not keeping myself busy. If anything, I am trying to keep myself un-busy, trying to enjoy my vacation, or what’s left of it.

I don’t like vacations. I don’t know what to do with them. I lack the discipline that some of my colleagues have in not checking their email or answering phone calls from parishioners while on vacation. With regard to vacations, I am very much an American. Americans, according to a study, have by far the shortest paid vacations in the developed world and twenty six percent of American workers don’t take any vacation at all! According to the online travel company Expedia, half of American workers don’t take vacations because they are "too busy to get away." That saved the nation's employers more than $20 billion in vacation pay last year, about $200 per worker.

The economist Juliet Schor in the book, The Overworked American, writes: "For those with jobs, work hours have increased while sleep and time with our families have decreased. Commonly, wives have two jobs, one for pay and one at home without pay. Many husbands work overtime and second jobs. Single parents never stop working. We are all urged by ubiquitous advertising to spend more, which means we must work more to earn the money to be able to do so. Many things operate round the clock - grocery stores, general stores, entertainment, phone lines, and electronic media. Ours is a society that never pauses to catch its breath, to reflect, to rest." She concludes that we live in an economy and society that are demanding too much from people. And how true that is!

Why do we do this? I mean, why are we working ourselves to death? Well, to begin with, work is seen as a professional plus. It is in fact prestigious to talk about how many hours we work: "I work 60-70 hours a week," we hear people say (including yours truly). Oh yes, we moan and groan about it, but there is that unmistakable touch of pride in our voices. If there is a commandment that we take great pride or feel virtuous about breaking, it is the fourth – "Thou shalt keep the Sabbath." Isn't it ironic that God gave humans a gift - a day of rest - and then made it a commandment, so that they'd take it seriously. I guess the moral here is that human beings have always had a problem with resting. Or maybe it goes deeper than that: we humans have always been reluctant to make space for the Holy in our lives. We have always tried to fill our lives with stuff, things to do, tasks to complete, goals to achieve, and reputations to build.

As a minister, even though I work mostly out of joy and gratitude, I confess that I also work to construct an image, to nurture my ego, and sometimes, that overtakes the joy part. I have always believed at some deep place that if I were not working, I would not, could not, be loved, respected, or accepted. But I have found in practice that working hard is not a path to love - in fact, overwork tends to push the possibility for love out of one's life.

We are consumed with what we are doing that we are not paying attention to our loved ones or being present to their needs and hopes and dreams or just being with them to build deeper, sustaining relationships.

I have another confession to make - I keep busy all the time because I have a hard time saying "No." Whenever there's a request to offer a prayer at a meeting or to preach at a neighboring congregation or to do a workshop or to serve on a committee, or to perform a wedding, my first impulse is to say "YES." But saying "yes" to more things than I can actually manage to be present for with integrity and ease of being, I have found, is in effect saying "no" to all those things and people and places I have already said "yes" to. Why is that? Precisely because if I am overwhelmed, it is likely that I will be so agitated, so distraught, so stressed out, so self-preoccupied, that I won't be able to meet anybody or any situation from a place of ease and the fullness of my being.

Even when I tell myself that I am practicing mindfulness and embodying it as best I can from moment to moment, I find that there are huge costs and limitations to my dismissing the possibility of a true balance of the unfolding of things in my life. That is, when I set things up in a way that makes any real balance in my life a virtual impossibility, I am showing disloyalty to what I value most and preach often about, and thus I am practicing, what the poet David Whyte so graphically and accurately says, a kind of adultery, an infidelity. By keeping myself immersed in too many things that I can safely handle with integrity and attentiveness, I am betraying myself and betraying my relationship to people, to this church, to places, and to organizations. And I am losing touch, unknowingly, of my relationship to the possibilities and impossibilities of time.

Many of us live what Thoreau once called "lives of quiet desperation." Or, as William Wordsworth noted in the 19th century:

The world is too much with us; late and soon

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!^[1].

Because of this, Wordsworth frets, we were "out of tune." Not to mention, out of breath. I wish I had paid more attention to what he said.

Every great tradition includes some form of the Sabbath. Muslims have Friday as their holy day, and like wise Hindus and Buddhists renew their vows of simplicity on full moon, new moon, and quarter moon days.

And, of course, the idea of the Sabbath - six days of work followed by one day of rest - is woven deeply into the fabric of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The first story in the Hebrew Scripture moves to a climax on the seventh day: having created the earth and everything upon it, God rests, blesses this day, and makes it holy. God takes pleasure in what has been made. The scripture reads, "And God saw everything he had made, and, behold, it was very good." God shows no regrets. God doesn’t say, "It was very good, but it should have been better." God doesn’t say, "Gee, you know, I should have thought through the plumbing design for human beings – I’d better do some more work on that tomorrow." Some of us wish she had! No, all is well. It is good enough. It is time to rest.

Also related to the Sabbath was the idea of the {"sabbatical year," which in the Jewish tradition was a year during which the land of ancient Israel was left fallow, observed every seventh year. Transferred to academia and ministry, this practice became the basis for sabbaticals. After eight years of ministry in Clearwater, I will be taking a sabbatical - a time of rest and renewal - in November.

So now comes the "how to" portion of my reflections - well, how are we (and more specifically, how am I) going to change? It’s kinda like the old joke about how many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb - only one, but the light bulb has to want to change. Maybe we need to burn out or get really sick before we’ll surrender to the needs of our bodies and our spirits. That’s been my approach and I don’t recommend it. Certainly you will not receive much support from our particular culture, which is grounded in cut-throat competition and material success. We will have to become profoundly counter-cultural, in fact.

But, how to start? Start small, says Wayne Muller, too much at one time and you get the bends. You could even start with some deep breathing for 30 seconds. Really! It’s enough to break the routine rush. Take a Sabbath hour or even half hour. Go somewhere away from work - take a walk with no purpose. Stop to smell the flowers. Lie down and look at the sky. Believe it or not, the very purpose of the Sabbath is to have no purpose. The Sabbath, to borrow Jon Kabat Zinn’s term, celebrates "non-doing." Muller uses the word "delight" – "its sole purpose is delight," he says, "let the fruit of the peach run down your chin." Delight does not include paying bills, making lists of things to do, or thinking about people who make us mad. Delight could include visiting an art gallery, going to a concert, singing, dancing, gardening, reading a book, or walking around your neighborhood.

Delight could also include taking some risks! Risk appearing foolish or even lazy. Risk offending someone who thinks you're way too old to be doing what you’re doing.

Sabbath, or Shabbat, is an attitude, the attitude of respect for ourselves, for others, for all of life, and for that which is responsible for life. As difficult as life is, we must always remember to be joyful, at least one day a week. "The Jews keep Shabbat," someone said, and the wise response came, "No, Shabbat keeps the Jews."

Secondly, the sabbath is a way of being. Jack Kornfield, in his book After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, says: "We need to become the sanctuary we seek. This can begin with a Sabbath day or a daily period of meditation and prayer. Sometimes it may require creating regular periods of silence where we work. It can mean reassessing our lifestyle, moving toward voluntary simplicity, spending time in nature, attending periodic retreats. It may mean turning off CNN and turning on Mozart. In times of difficulty or conflict, it may mean taking a breath, settling the heart, listening silently to our deepest intention. In these moments we remember our heart's task on earth."

And finally, Sabbath is a gift, a gift designed to restore us, a time when we let the cares and concerns of our lives fall away, where work is put aside, and we exist just to be and for no other reason. We can just delight in being alive; we can enjoy the pleasures of the senses. We can breathe deeply and give thanks for all the blessings of our living, the blessings that we may have forgotten in our preoccupation with work. We can be alone or be truly present to those we love. Keeping the Sabbath is not just law - it is an opening that makes space for the Holy in our lives. The commandment, the law, just clears the path; it is the soul that must respond to the gift. And that is your choice and my choice.

Who knows, in the process, we may discover things about ourselves that we never knew or suspected. Who knows, we might even get to like it. Who knows, we might learn to make room for the holy more in our lives and begin to appreciate life's sacredness in all its ordinary moments. Who knows, we might learn to keep the sabbath here at UUC at least on Sunday with no meetings after services, keeping it instead a day of worship, fellowship, and renewal that deepens our faith and our relationships with one another. Who knows, we might together start a quiet revolution in which we reclaim time for all that makes our world a better, more gentler place, and our lives within it more divine.

That's what I wish and pray for all of us this day and in the days to come.

BENEDICTION - Richard Gilbert

O God of Work and Leisure

Teach me to shirk on occasion,

Not only that I may work more effectively

But also that I may enjoy life more abundantly.

Enable me to understand that the earth

Magically continues spinning on its axis

Even when I am not tending thy vineyards.

Permit me to breathe more easily

Knowing the destiny of the race

Rests not on my shoulders alone.

Deliver me from false prophets who urge me

To "repent and shirk no more."

I pray for thy grace on me,

Thy faithful shirker.