Sabbath-keeping
"I go down to the shore"
I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall...
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.
- Mary Oliver
Here, if there is such a thing as time, it surely cannot be linear. Einstein shattered our complacency when he showed us that light itself can bend, and time along with it. Can this be truly news? Everything begins and ends, and begins again, says the preacher in Ecclesiastes, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.”
The most recognizable quality of creation is this rhythmicity. The pulsing light and dark, expand and contract, cycles of growth, dormancy, death, and regeneration are characteristics of all living things from smallest microbe to largest galaxy.
When we know the seasons of things, we can feel their timing, their readiness. There is less pushing, more waiting to see what is necessary…All our work is fruitful in its season…There is deeper timing at work, a kairos, a fullness of time.
When we live without listening to the timing of things—when we live and work 24-hour shifts without rest—we are on war time, mobilized for battle. Yes, we are strong capable people, we can work without stopping…But remember, No living thing lives like this. There are greater rhythms that govern how life grows, days and seasons, as small as hormones or as great as the seas and stars. We are part of the creation story, subject to all its laws and rhythms.
Many scientists believe we are “hard-wired” to live in rhythmic awareness—to be engrossed and then detached, to work and then to rest. The commandment to remember the Sabbath, then, is not a burden imposed, but a reminder of how things are, the rhythmic dance to which we unavoidably belong.
Excerpted or summarized from SABBATH: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest, Wayne Muller, 2000
Practice: The Sabbath Walk – A walk without any purpose simply to let your soul catch up with you. For thirty minutes walk slowly and silently—preferably outside in nature, but it can also be done indoors—without trying to get anywhere. It is an amble; let your senses guide you. When called to stop, stop; when called to begin again, begin. At the end of thirty minutes, notice what has happened to your body, your mind, your sense of time.
Stream Of Life
The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and dayruns through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.
It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earthin numberless blades of grassand breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.
It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birthand of death, in ebb and in flow.
I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.
And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.
by Rabindranath Tagore