Take a Sabbath

“Poisoned by the hypnotic belief that good things come only through unceasing determination and tireless effort, we can never truly rest. And for want of rest, our lives are in danger.” – Sabbath, by Wayne Muller

Sabbath is more than a day of the week set aside for rest. It is an opportunity to honor our need for effortless, nourishing rest from doing. Sabbath, perhaps is an invitation to simply be. There is a phrase amongst some spiritual communities that says, “We are human beings not human doings.” But the opposite seems to be true, today.

Some of you might remember “back in the day” when retail stores closed on Sundays. You couldn’t purchase alcohol. Even parks and grocery stores closed to honor a day of rest. Yes. It was in some way rooted in religious observance. But, in my family, it was a day where the family got together. I remember having a big meal late in the afternoon. As a teenager, I was allowed to hang out with my friends after the meal. But before that, it was family day.

A lot has changed since then. Stores are open on Sundays. People go to their kid’s ball games, instead of church – or they fill the day with errands, activities, and more doing. It is like any other day of the week. As a massage therapist and spiritual counselor, I hear a lot of people singing a tune that could be called I’m So Busy I Could Cry. It isn’t funny, is it?

Many of us have bought into the idea that hard work and making money are the most important things in our lives. After all, it’s how we take care of our loved ones. So, we spend more time at work, trying to make ends meet, than we do with the families we’re trying to support. Of course, it is absolutely important to have a roof over our heads, food on the table, and a safe and warm place to sleep at night. But the systems built around money and power have led us as a society to an endless cycle of overwork. We have become so busy as a culture that life suffers, and not just human life.

In the book Sabbath, Wayne Muller says,

“Without rest, we respond from survival mode... When we are moving faster and faster, every encounter, every detail inflates in importance, everything seems more urgent than it really is, and we react with sloppy desperation.”

I don’t know about you, but I notice it in the drivers around me whenever I go out.

Call it Capitalism. Call it a work ethic. Call it whatever you wish but something in our society is broken, and it is breaking us. We have lost the rhythm of life that includes rest – effortless, nourishing rest. We have forgot the art of doing nothing or simply being.

If a friend calls and asks you what you’re doing and your response is “nothing,” do you say that with joy? Or do you hope that they have something exciting that will rescue you from the quiet, dull of nothingness you were doing?

Sabbath – effortless, nourishing rest – is calling you to slow down. It’s the whisper inside you that hopes you are quiet enough to hear its invitation: Breathe. Rest. Simply be for a while.

Then when you finally let go, when you turn within, a peace flows over you. An energy fills you. Tension falls away. Your breath slows. Your heart quiets. And you are once again able to meet the world. But now it’s on your own terms – not from the ragged survival mode, but from the inner power of taking a Sabbath.