2017.9.3 Sabbath as Practice for Resistance and Resilience

2017.9.3          Sabbath as Practice for Resistance and Resilience

Rev. Laura Bogle         Foothills UU Fellowship

Time for All Ages A version of the story found here: https://philipchircop.wordpress.com/tag/doorways-to-the-soul/

Readings

From The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (published 1951):

“Man is not a beast of burden, and the Sabbath is not for the purpose of enhancing the efficiency of his work.”
           

From Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now (p.xii) by Walter Brueggeman (published 2014):

“In our own contemporary context of the rat race of anxiety,… [the sabbath is resistance] because it is a visible insistence that our lives are not defined by the production and consumption of commodity goods.  Such an act of resistance requires enormous intentionality and communal reinforcement amid the barrage of seductive pressures from the insatiable insistences of the market, with its intrusion into every part of our life from the family to the national budget.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It’s been 13 days since it happened, an eternity in our instant-news-cycle driven culture.

It’s old news, but I’m still thinking about it every single day.

It was the day, August 21, when something out of the ordinary happened.

Schools closed.  People took off from work early, or even the whole day if they could.

Some people had parties, and gathered with family and friends to play and eat and enjoy each other.

For about two minutes, even people still at their desks or shops or factories or driving their cars, stepped outside at the same time, and looked up and focused their attention on something else, something beautiful, something much much bigger than themselves.

And you didn’t have to pay for it. Sure, you could pay for parking near a good spot, I’m sure their were some t-shirts you could buy.

But the total solar eclipse itself could not be commodified.  We have not yet figured out how to control the path of the sun and the moon for maximum profit.

For a moment, I felt as if we had entered a different dimension.  The light dimmed and the cicadas struck up their chorus in the middle of the day.  We could see some stars that normally are hidden from us at 2:30 in the afternoon.  Some people cheered.  Others, like my children, became very, very quiet.  The heavens that many of us don’t pay much attention to suddenly became the focus of our excitement and awe and amazement.  And it didn’t seem to matter your religious preference or your political orientation or your age or your race or your social status.  We were all there together.  And I was so thankful to be witnessing it—both what happened up above, and what happened down here.  Why did it take something on this scale of magnitude—a total solar eclipse!—for this kind stopping, just to be in awe.

I loved it so much, I wanted it for everyone.  I thought about those locked away in prisons and those locked away in jobs they could not leave – those who could not or would not step outside and look towards the heavens and a moment of freedom.

The experience made me think about other times and other cultures that respect a kind of rhythm of rest, a rhythm of gratitude and awe at regular intervals.  A rhythm that many of us in this country have mostly left behind. A rhythm of Sabbath.

The great 20^th century Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote in his book “The Sabbath” in 1951: “There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord.” 

He’s talking about the 4^th commandment, to observe the Sabbath.  It’s a time to imitate God, stopping your work and appreciating the gifts of creation.

In 2005 his daughter, Susannah Heschel, also a great scholar and theologian in her own right, wrote a new introduction to his book.  In it she reflects on what observing the Sabbath was like in her home growing up:

“When my father raised his Kiddush cup on Friday evenings, closed his eyes, and chanted the prayer sanctifying the wine, I always felt a rush of emotion.  As he chanted with an old, sacred family melody, he blessed the wine and the Sabbath with his prayer, and I also felt he was blessing my life and that of everyone at the table.  I treasured those moments….

My mother and I kindled the lights for the Sabbath, and all of a sudden I felt transformed, emotionally and even physically.  After lighting the candles in the dining room, we would walk into the living room… facing west, and we would marvel at the sunset that soon arrived.”

There again is a turning to the heavens and the gift of creation that we receive no matter what.  There is turning the ordinary —wine, candles, sunset—into the out-of-the-ordinary during a special realm of time.

When and how do you enter a realm of time where the goal is simply to be, to give, to share?

When and how do you enter a realm of time where your attention is tuned not to CNN or NPR or Facebook or Twitter or your to-do list or your – fill in the blank-- But tuned to something much bigger and much smaller at the same time.  Tuned to something like the sunset.  Tuned to something like the cricket sounding in the middle of the all the noise.

Walter Brueggemann writes, “It is unfortunate that in U.S. society, largely out of a misunderstood Puritan heritage, Sabbath has gotten enmeshed in legalism and moralism and blue laws and life-denying practices that contradict the freedom-bestowing intention of Sabbath…. Sabbath is a bodily act of…resistance to pervading values and assumptions behind those values.”

If the intention of Sabbath is about Freedom, I want us to consider this morning, some ideas of Sabbath that are not about:

-deprivation, and strict laws, like not being able to buy wine on Sundays

-not about simply escaping and ignoring the world

-not even primarily about resting, though that can be part of Sabbath observance

-and not about a kind of piousness that probably wouldn’t fly with our Unitarian Universalist sensibilities

The poet David Whyte tells a story about a time earlier in his life—he wasn’t yet a published poet, though he wrote poems.  He was a in a time of his life where he was working very hard, working at a non-profit organization, trying very, very hard to save the world.  And he was exhausted, and he knew it.  He just didn’t know what to do about it.  He happened to have a friend who was a Benedictine Monk (shouldn’t we all have a friend who is a Benedictine Monk??) and he asked his friend for advice—what should he do to not feel so exhausted all the time?

And his friend, Br. David Steindl-Rast, said to him that the cure for exhaustion is not necessarily rest, it is wholeheartedness.  Find what you can be wholehearted about, says Br. David, and you won’t be so exhausted. You’ll feel more free.

A practice of Sabbath for wholeheartedness can help us find the resilience to move through a busy week, hard times at home, hard news week in and week out.  A practice of Sabbath for wholeheartedness can move us toward what matters most in our lives. 

A practice of Sabbath for wholeheartedness and liberation can help us resist the pressure of our capitalist culture that says our value comes from our production and consumption—how much we can sell, earn, or buy.

And the good news is that this kind of practice can look many different ways. 

My confession to you is that I’m not always particularly good at it.  Just last week I was preparing to meet a couple of leaders in the congregation and I had been late getting the girls to pre-school and I had too many things to do that day and the meeting room wasn’t set up and I just wanted to be my best for them… but I was frazzled.  And they could tell!

That’s why it’s called a practice.  Because we just have to keep at it, trying, not doing very well, and trying again.  How do we build in moments of Sabbath rest and listening throughout our days and weeks?  I encourage us to think about a practice of Sabbath that does not necessarily mean taking a whole day, though those of you more practiced can show us how to do that.

Here’s a simple practice that I do with my younger daughters most mornings.  We kind of stumbled organically into it but it works for us.  Monday – Friday as I drive them to their preschool we cross the TN River. As we cross the river, we simply say “Good Morning river!”  And sometimes we note: is the river foggy, is it calm, is it shiny, can we see any boats or birds?

Now, there are plenty of mornings that I forget.  I am sometimes wrapped up in my head thinking about the day ahead, or sometimes wrapped up in listening to NPR.  But usually my daughters remind me.  Good morning river! They call from the back seat.

A couple of times recently when we have forgotten they have made me drive back so that they can say good morning.  And now we have taken to saying Good morning fishes in the river!  Good morning sky and clouds!  Good morning Birds!  And sometimes we sing “I’ve Got Peace like a River.”

That’s it.  A few moments on the morning drive.  But it turns my heart towards what I love and what loves me back– my daughters and the land.  And it resists the relentlessness of urgency.  We stop and we look.  We treat the earth as a friend to whom we say good morning.  I carry the spaciousness and freedom of that moment in my day.

Here’s another practice that is a kind of mindfulness practice you can do anytime, anywhere, to create a moment of Sabbath in time.  Choose a color – say, the color yellow.  And spend some time out walking or driving, and put your attention on looking for the color yellow.  You’ll be surprised how much yellow you see when you start looking for it.  It’s like listening for the cricket in the middle of the big city.  Practice enough and it becomes easier to find what we look for, even in the midst of noise.

Here’s another:  choose a time each week – maybe just an hour, maybe a whole day—and put away the thing that usually takes your time, attention, energy.  You might even physically put it away in a box for a while.  Put your phone or your iPad out of sight.  Put your to-do list of things left undone into an envelope and seal it up.  Cover up your TV with a cloth. 

Write down what is making you anxious and resolve to put it aside for a time, knowing it’s mostly out of your control anyway.  And see what happens.

If you are someone who goes, goes, goes: try taking a nap in the middle of the day, if you can.  See what kind of time opens up for you, what comes up in you when you stop and let yourself rest.

Play can be a kind of Sabbath—Wayne Muller calls it “engaging in purposeless enjoyment of one another.” (in Sabbath:Finding Rest, Renewal and Delight in Our Daily Lives)  Just do it with intention—delight in your friend or your partner or your kids or your neighbor.  Focus on that for a while.

And here’s another, that can be a whole family practice: At the end of the day, try lighting a chalice candle and simply asking – What was good today?  What was hard today? What do I need to let go of? What do I hope for tomorrow?  Create a few minutes of time out of time, tuning life to bigger questions.

And what about Sundays?  How is coming here on Sunday morning part of a Sabbath practice for you?  Many of us come here and have a “job” to do.  Making coffee, setting up chairs, counting the offering, being a greeter.  How might we together approach these ways of serving not as jobs, but as Sabbath practices—ones that help us to share the fullness of time with one another.  Your value here is not about how good you make the coffee or how straight the chairs are set or how much you financially contribute. Your value here is simply your presence, your wholeheartedness brought as a gift for others, so we might find freedom together.

Each week in our prayer and meditation time, I say  “until all people have access to the gifts of this life.”

A Sabbath practice helps us recognize those gifts, gifts that can’t be bought or sold, gifts that every person has a right to enjoy.  As we find the gifts, may we share them.

May it be so, Amen.