Tag Archives: sabbath

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Friday Link Love

Just a few this week:

Shakespeare in Celebrity Voices (youtube)

This has been making the rounds—impressionist Jim Meskimen does Clarence’s speech from Richard III with a few dozen voices. It’s just fun.

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Tinkering in the Studio

Neat picture of Buckminster Fuller, and some fun thoughts from the Improvised Life folks on tinkering, which has been a Sabbath activity for our family this year.

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Ten Mindful Ways to Use Social Media

Good list. One example:

5. Experience now, share later.
It’s common to snap a picture with your phone and upload it to Facebook or email it to a friend. This overlaps the experience of being in a moment and sharing it. It also minimizes intimacy, since your entire audience joins your date or gathering in real time. Just as we aim to reduce our internal monologues to be present, we can do the same with our digital narration.

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America Avoids Vacation

Some 25 percent of Americans and 31 percent of low-wage earners get no vacation at all anymore, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

and yet:

Performance increases after a vacation, with reaction times going up 40 percent. Vacations cure burnout, the last stage of chronic stress and something very difficult to shake. Burned-out employees are a major liability to effective performance.

She also argues that many people avoid a truly restorative vacation (as opposed to a go-go-go one) because of the emotional upheaval and examination that can occur when we stop and spend time with our crazy selves. She gets dinged in the comments for this, with people saying “I don’t take vacation because I don’t have the option to do so, it’s not some bogus woo-woo spiritual thing!” I think both can be true—many people don’t receive vacation benefits, and others receive them but don’t feel like they can take them. But I also think there’s a lot of numbing going on.

What’s your experience? Do you receive vacation benefits? Do you use them all? If not, why not?

Have a good weekend everyone!

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Were You Hurried as a Kid?

I put this query on Google+ but thought I’d put it here too.

As most of you know, I’m writing a book about our family’s weekly Sabbath practice and how that works in the midst of a very busy life involving two careers, three kids and their various activities, etc. Part of our interest in Sabbath is to help our kids not have a completely go-go-go childhood. Yet even with this practice and intention, I feel like I’m regularly shooing my kids out the door to get somewhere.

In contrast, I’ve been thinking about my own childhood — there were four of us kids, and we were involved in all kinds of activities, but looking back, I never remember feeling rushed. But nor was I late to stuff. So I wonder, am I just not remembering the hurry and the scheduling? Or did my mother cultivate a more relaxed attitude than I feel like I do? :-)

And here’s what I want to know from others: did you feel rushed, or busy, as a kid? Do you have memories of being hurried and/or overprogrammed? If so, what was that like? And if you can’t recall those experiences, do you think that’s a function of memory, or were things really different back then? Or both?

Feel free to e-mail me directly if you’d rather not comment here: maryannmcdana (at) gmail (dot) com.

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Monday Miscellany

Long-form blogging just ain’t gonna happen this week, so here are some random tidbits as I head into some busyness:

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On Thursday I leave with Caroline, Margaret and my mother (a Unitarian who doesn’t mind Jesus) for the Wild Goose Festival. I’m excited that the girls’ first camping experience will be a girl-power affair—Robert will have a boys’ weekend with James. They’re thinking about a train museum in Pennsylvania, plus Cars2. I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed at the logistics.

I haven’t camped in at least a decade, our equipment is scattered all over our house and in variable states of repair, and whereas *I* would be happy relying solely on food vendors for sustenance, I don’t think that’s going to cut it for our somewhat pickier children. So: campstove and simple meals.

That said, Woo! Wild Goose! Woodstock for Jesus hippies! I can’t wait.

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Remember when I wrote that Caroline was a dedicated swimmer but not likely to break into the top tier of swimmers? Ahem. She won a blue ribbon at her first-ever “A” meet on Saturday, in breast stroke, which she’d DQ’d  just a week earlier at time trials. She is elated. It was funny the way it happened—she was in the middle of the pack time-wise, but every other girl in her age group DQd. It’s a very hard stroke to get right, apparently. This is SO Caroline, who is not the speediest, but is persistent, and she works hard to make her strokes clean and precise.

Kinda reminds me of her mama, who continues to do C25K yet is still tortoise-like.

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The commitment to Sabbath continues, though its look and feel have really changed over the months. It’s gotten easier and harder. It’s become more and more essential for my sanity, and there are also more and more things tugging at it, trying to make it not happen. One of my twitter followers was kind enough to tweet this page, which is a listing of all of the Sabbath-related posts I’ve written over the months. I need to get back to that. I’m writing about Sabbath all the time but a lot of it is still rough notes.

My manuscript for The Sabbath Year is due in October, and because of Chalice’s long publishing cycle, it won’t be published until Fall 2012. In the meantime, this blog is the place to be for sneak peeks and updates.

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We’re starting a new sermon series at church called “Postcards from the Bible.” We will look at different significant places in the Bible—archetypes, such as garden, valley, mountaintop, city, beach—and explore what they represent for us spiritually. This approach appeals to the English major in me: we talk all the time about the plot, characters and themes of Bible stories, why not setting? Besides, it’s a way of traveling without leaving the sanctuary.

In addition to being a fun series, and one that builds on some earlier work I’ve done in print, the series is a way of addressing the travel bug that has invaded my life once again. But the bug is not appeased by this series; I’ve started dreaming of a trip to Cuba in January with members of this presbytery and Iona over the summer with Robert and the kids. We’ll see.

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Things are busy on the writing front. In addition to writing several articles for the new Feasting on the Gospels series, I’m also writing the liturgy for the Sunday worship services at Montreat Conference Center. It’s been fun to get messages from friends saying, “I was at Montreat this weekend and we used your stuff in worship!” And I’ve got articles coming soon on Religion Dispatches and catapult magazine.

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I also recorded a video for Bruce Reyes-Chow’s We Are PC(USA) project. I will let you know when that project kicks off. It was fun and frustrating, a stretching experience, to be sure. As a recovering perfectionist, I had an ideal look in my head, and what came out is far from it. But it’s a start. I can now add video to my grab bag of tricks.

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What’s keeping you busy and hopefully bringing you some joy?

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Sabbath Verbs

Last week I was talking to some folks about the different verbs that I’ve heard associated with the act of Sabbath. I spent a little time this morning with my imagination (and with dictionary.com) exploring some of these words. I wonder which verb sounds most gracious to you. Which one opens up a different understanding? What verbs would you add? Whether you’re into Sabbath practice or not, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.

What I notice is how active and volitional these verbs are for something that is, at its heart, a “non-doing.” But I am finding this year that it is not that simple—it’s not just a matter of stopping. It really takes an act of will.

This isn’t a particularly elegant poem, but I’m counting it as one anyway for National Poetry Month.

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To keep the Sabbath:

to clutch it,
to possess it,
to hold it close to one’s heart.
to not let anyone take it away.
to hold it for a period of time.
to guard it jealously.
to store it,
to maintain it in good condition.
to hold in custody,
to save it, reserve it.
to tend it, as a garden.

(to work for one’s keep: for one’s subsistence)

A keep is also a tower or fortress.
Make the Sabbath a keep,
a place to retreat to,
a place that is strong and fortified,
a place in time.

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To observe the Sabbath:

to watch it,
to regard it,
to pay attention to it.
to show reverence for it,
to perform duly.
to inspect.
to obey or comply with.
to perceive.
to notice.

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To remember the Sabbath:

to recall,
to bring to mind,
to remain aware of,
to have something come into mind again,

(to mention to another as sending kindly greetings—remember me in your prayers)

to re-member: to put back together what has been dismembered.

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To practice Sabbath:

to do it again and again,
to perfect one’s technique,
to set new goals as one improves.
to do something as a habit,
to train or drill to give proficiency.
to follow as custom.
to exercise or pursue as a vocation.

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Sabbath

Yesterday’s poem of the day from Knopf was Marge Piercy’s “Wellfleet Shabbat.” So nice. My favorite verse:

The sweet beeswax candles flicker
and sigh, standing between the phlox
and the roast chicken. The wine shines
its red lantern of joy.

Today, just a couple of lines about today’s Sabbath time. Today was not a complete Sabbath—Robert ended up working on taxes for a couple of hours in the middle of the day. I’m sure it will all end up as book fodder, but I lack the mental energy to put it all together right here and now. So here are a few images from the day.

The day begins—
not with bells and stumbling rapidness,
but with little feet padding in,
little bodies folding themselves into the bed.

And then, a day spent nibbling on this and that,
a buffet in time:
the newspaper,
knitting and beer brewing,
card games and a dollar movie.
Squabbling over two sinking helium balloons.
Colored paper Easter eggs, hidden in plain sight
for a little brother.
Waffles for dinner.
At bedtime, another chapter of The Secret Garden—
Mary finally made it inside the locked door
and the girls don’t want to stop.

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Lent: You’re Probably Doing It Wrong

I’ve been reading some discussion regarding this article by G. Jeffrey McDonald. McDonald laments the way that Lent is frequently observed within American Christianity and says:

We’re remaking [Lent] as a type of spiritual self-help whose effectiveness is measured by how well it entertains us and affirms what we already believe. Since Americans love parties and hate to do without, Christianity is evolving to deliver. The diminution of Lenten practices illustrates the trend and highlights what’s lost when religion becomes a consumer commodity.

I don’t deny elements of truth in what McDonald is saying. In fact the article strikes me as a very satisfying read for us church leaders, what with its hand-wringing, self-righteous tut-tuts and in-crowd high-fives.

It bugs me to tears, actually.

Please don’t misunderstand me. Consumerist Christianity is a big issue. And certainly the church has a prophetic duty to call people to deeper authenticity and radical discipleship. But this article smacks of caricature. McDonald characterizes Lent as a “joke” based on one comment from a friend. And “sumptuous” fish dinners on Fridays? This is the normative American Christian experience?

This kind of “you’re doing it wrong” carping is not productive. All of this reminds me of the discussion we had on this blog back in December about singing Christmas carols in the church during (gasp!) the season of Advent. I argued back then that maybe, just maybe, some people feel drawn to the music of Christmas during December not because they are worshiping the gods of Best Buy and Wal*Mart, but because they desperately need to immerse themselves in a message of Joy Right Now, to soak it up, because the world is a pretty dark place. Can we treat people like grownups and say that perhaps they have a good sense of what their hearts and spirits need without us telling them?

Why don’t we spend our time helping people connect their Lenten practices, whatever they might be, to the presence of the living God, rather than diagnosing those practices as inadequate? I know a woman who committed to run each day during Lent. I guess I can chide her for disrespecting Lent as a season for “spiritual self-help”… or I can help her make the connection between that practice and stewardship of the body, which Paul calls the temple of God. Heck, daily physical exercise sounds like a struggle to beat the sin of sloth, which last I checked was one of the seven deadlies! What could be more Lenten than that?

(BTW, this is part of the tension within the Sabbath stuff. Lots of people take time off for R&R and don’t call it Sabbath. Good for them. So my job isn’t to say “Well unless it’s got the Sabbath imprimatur, it’s only second best.” Instead, maybe I help them see ways that their practice of rest and play doesn’t just recharge the batteries, but connects them to a deep wellspring of joy and grace that [I believe] is a gift of the Holy.)

I appreciate these two posts on the Christian Century blog, both of which bring some much-needed nuance to the topic. I found the latter especially on point:

Is “true deprivation” really the point of fasting, or is true fasting measured by the extent to which it turns us toward God? Deprivation for deprivation’s sake could easily become competitive or self-aggrandizing. Biblical writers frequently make the point that God isn’t interested in displays of piety but in justice and love.

Amen.

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Baggage about the Sabbath

As I continue to work on The Sabbath Year, I’ve been collecting a list of objections people have to the idea or practice of Sabbath. These are things I’ve heard personally, statements I’ve read in other books on Sabbath, or things I’ve even told myself as our family engages and resists this strange weekly rhythm we have chosen to adopt. I hope to address some or all of these in the book in some form or another.

Do any of these statements resonate with you?

What would you add to this list?

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Sabbath is so legalistic.

It’s not relevant for our time. Sabbath is a relic of a bygone era.

I don’t have time.

I’m fine. I’m happy. I don’t need to do that.

We observed the Sabbath when I was a kid. It was SO boring. I swore I’d never do that again.

I’d rather not spend a day doing faith-based activities, quietly reading the Bible, etc.

My kids would never agree to it.

My teenagers would never agree to it.

We’re not Jewish and we shouldn’t co-opt their practice.

I already make time to rest from my work and don’t need a fancy title for it.

People who have time to take Sabbath rest obviously don’t have enough to do.

The problems in the world go on—there is too much to be done already, how can you sit around and “be spiritual” while there is suffering happening that you could be a part of the solution for?

You can rest when you’re dead. Life is too short.

The seven-day week is a false construct. Rest when you need to, not when the calendar tells you to.

Technology means you can work when you want and rest when you want—taking a whole day is a false construct. Be more fluid and intuitive about when you need to work and rest.

It shows a lack of sensitivity to the needs of others—face it, sometimes people need you on that day. The vast majority of the world doesn’t observe Sabbath—they’re just going to see you as selfish if you’re not available.

Sabbath is a practice of privilege—other people have to work at those times—how can you enjoy that time of rest when other people don’t have that luxury?

Sabbath just creates more work. I spend the day before getting ready for it and the day after cleaning up from it.

Of course you can do this, your kids are young. They aren’t in that many activities yet.

Your kids will miss out on opportunities to play sports, do drama/speech team, marching band, etc. They won’t get into college because you’ve had to say no to these extracurricular activities.

That’s what vacation is for.

That’s what retirement is for.

Kids are constant work, so you might as well embrace it. Life with kids is work no matter what you do.

My kids are very active and energetic. They’d be in all kinds of mischief if we all just sat around all day.

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Parable of the Scissors

From time to time over the next several months I plan to put short drafts up on the blog that I’m writing for the Sabbath book. I worked on the following piece this morning. Feedback is appreciated, keeping in mind that it’s a first draft.

I have a pair of red-handled scissors. They’ve been mine since seventh grade, when I took a home ec class. They’re fabric scissors, with which I cut out material for a simple elastic-waist skirt (blue plaid) and made throw pillows for my sister that spelled our her name. K-A-T-I-E. But I don’t sew anymore, so these scissors now live in our kitchen junk drawer and are used for paper, clothing tags, evil clamshell packaging, and even the occasional stray wisp of hair. They’re left-handed scissors, so they’re precious to me. They are as tight and precise as they were when I was 12.

I wrote my name in Sharpie on the inside of one of the blades when I first got them. MaryAnn McKibben. When I got married I crammed “Dana” on there too. They have been with me for some 26 years.

They’re gone now.

I think.

But this is not about the loss, or the nagging silly grief of missing something I’ve had for so long.

Friday my kids and I had a flurry of a day, getting errands done to get ready for Saturday’s Sabbath and for a visit from friends over the weekend. We grocery shopped, we shoe shopped, we took cardboard to the recycling center. Margaret and James handed me boxes (squabbling over whose turn it was) while I slashed through old packing tape to make everything flat and compact.

As I slammed the back hatch of the van, I turned to Margaret and said, “Please put these back in the junk drawer for me.”

She did not do that. And we have no idea what she did with them. I suspect that she absent-mindedly threw them in the trash can—a likely occurrence since she did the same thing that night with the spoon she used at dinner.

But this is not about the peculiarities of the five-year-old brain.

I discovered they were gone because the weather stripping is coming off the bottom of our front door and I wanted to snip off that flapping tail, just really quick, so it wouldn’t flop around every time we opened or closed the door. The realization of the missing scissors led to a brief but fruitless search and a short interrogation of Margaret, who had no idea where she’d put them.

I discovered they were gone on Saturday, our Sabbath day, the day we don’t cut loose weather stripping from the front door, except that we do. I do. And I was reminded they were gone at least twice more on that supposed day of rest. A new box of cat litter—the cat boxes could use a top-off. A stubborn plastic tag on the previous day’s clothing purchase from Target–would really like to wear that today. But no scissors. It wasn’t my Sabbath commitment that stopped me from completing those tasks, it was the lack of proper tools.

I tell myself that I let a little work creep in to the day of rest to get ready for our guests. Hospitality is a virtue too, even on the Sabbath… not that our friends care about a flap of weather stripping or an additional half-inch of cat litter. But it’s not really about that either. Because the work always nags on the Sabbath. Always.

I don’t regret this experiment. The fact that I anticipate the arrival of each Saturday with the giddy relief of a kid at Christmas suggests that there’s something right about it. But the impulse to tidy, to beautify, to make it all better, is overwhelming.

And that’s what this is about. This is about a commitment to do something simple, but not easy: To stop changing things. To stop controlling the chaos for one blasted, blessed day.

This is about my inability to stop that completely. This is about my inability… but also my ability, my incredible ability, to tame chaos. My sharp eye toward a stray sock on the floor, which gets dispensed with a quick toss down the laundry chute (aka basement stairs). The efficient way I sweep the discarded stuffed animal into my arms for a trip down the stairs where it belongs.

Maybe it doesn’t matter that I “cheat.” These are trifles. Nobody’s grading me. I get to define the parameters of this thing. But I wonder what it would be like to really and truly stop. To look at the mess and not try to fix it. To let the chaos be a gift for a single day.

If this were a blog with all the answers, and a different view of how God works, the scissors would show up, miraculously, the following day, gleaming as if with a special holy polish.

But they’re still gone.

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Staring into Space

Once when I was in seventh grade Spanish class, I heard my teacher calling my name, looking at me with a worried expression. I looked around and noticed that everyone but me had cleared their desks and were clutching their pens expectantly. Obviously the teacher had just given them instructions to prepare for a quiz, but I hadn’t heard a word she’d said. I have no idea how I could have failed to hear her instructions. I felt confused and embarrassed that my desk was piled high with books with me in my own little world.

After class she pulled me into the hall and asked, “Are you OK? Are you feeling all right?” I felt fine… didn’t I? I started to wonder. I’m rather introverted, so I can tune people out pretty well, but I’d never been so out of it in class before. I must have really been on overload.

I felt that same discombobulation this afternoon when a text message dinged: “I was asked to check on you to see if you are still on your way to clergy group.” I received this message while sitting in my chair upstairs at home, working one some church stuff, oblivious to the time. And the day, for that matter, and this meeting… that’s every month, after all. Oops.

I’d looked at the calendar earlier this week, knew this meeting was coming—had even received a reminder notice from one of the facilitators. With all those redundancies in the organizational system, there’s no reason why it would have flown out of my mind like it did. It feels a little like a deliberate sabotage on the part of my brain. Ooh, I know what’ll get her attention!

This year the DC area has been in a “snow bubble”; we’ve gotten very little as people around us get socked. I’ve been feeling cheated. Some folks think that’s crazy of me, and have offered to let me shovel their driveways. OK, that part’s not great. But as my friend Liz wrote on Facebook, “I wonder if snow days are God’s way of saying, ‘If you won’t take a Sabbath for yourself I’m going to enforce one with this cold manna-type stuff. Have some cocoa and relax, will ya?’”

I actually take Sabbath regularly—every week, in fact. But I still reach the saturation point sometimes. I didn’t think I was there, but a part of me apparently feels differently.

I think I’ll sign off and make some cocoa.

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A Word on Busyness

Thanks to my friend Suzanne for sharing a blog post by Tara Gentile. This quote in particular spoke to me:

When you tell me how busy you are, that’s not what I hear you say. I hear you say that you’re afraid to stop, to try something different, to pause for no reason, to reflect, to jump forward. I hear you say that you fear you have no original ideas, that the world won’t accept your true passion, that the world will fall apart if you don’t just keep moving.

Now, there’s more that can be said about busyness that’s not all shadow side. When we live a life of connectedness and relationship, that costs us something in time and energy. People depend on us for real, tangible things. A person who’s not needed by anyone else is living a sad existence.

But there’s something in this quote that both describes me, and is also everything I fight against in my life. This is why I think, write, preach and live so much about Sabbath.

Maybe that’s why this E.B. White gem is forever one of my favorites:

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

Read Tara’s whole post here.