A couple of weeks ago Maribel and I went to Shabbat service at Temple Judea with our friend Anne Freedman.
It was a joyful service. How could it not be? The temple band calls itself “Rhythm and Jews.” As we worshiped together, I felt great delight at feeling welcomed and at home at a house of worship I had never been before but that felt familiar because of the warmth of the people gathered and the positive energy created by those chanting ancient scriptures of liberation, communal dreams, and aspirations for the fulfillment of human potential.
In the days after our visit, I kept thinking about our experience at the Temple and the practice of the Sabbath, of resting, of enjoying creation–of just being rather than always making, striving, and looking for the next thing. Every spiritual tradition offers the world gifts that if seen as such can draw us closer to our heart’s desire of living in our fullness. Judaism definitely has many gifts and Shabbat stands out as one that has powerful implications and application.
That Friday night, I took with me the gift of Shabbat. Sabbath rest is something I know I don’t practice as I would like. The always on culture is hard to resist. For me, even while not working, my mind often wonders and works, creates, rather than just relaxes.
This need for always doing seems to stem from a fear that we will cease to be if somehow we stop. But busyness, which sounds much like business but is not exactly the same thing, slowly eats away at our capacity to be fully human. Busyness and the constant mental chatter that accompanies the distracted mind not only leads to physical burnout, but more significantly, to a diminished ability to experience and sense what is sacred (holy), what is Other than ourselves.
This notion of the sacred or holy is often relegated to religious experiences, but doing so misses an opportunity to open up ourselves and loosen the knots that enslave. To make holy or sacred can be seen and experienced as the process by which we separate and set apart the common aspects of our lives and offer those in a form of celebration to life itself (you can replace the word life here for one that makes sense to you.) To fail to separate or sanctify our lives disrupts or makes much more difficult our ability to make sense of the world around us. Itislikewritingwordsandleavingnospacebetweenthem. The meaning making process becomes so much harder!
The practice of the Sabbath for me is a reminder to practice holiness. This term has some heavy baggage too often associated with some sort of self-righteous, self hating, world denying practice. But it does not have to be this way. Holiness, in a broader sense, has to do with profoundly appreciating life because we can see distinction in our days.
We work some days and rest on others. The practice of holiness allows us to align ourselves with the rhythm of life rather than machines or the work of our hands. This is more important today in the age of social media dominance. The constant notifications on our phones lead not just to attention deficit but also to a snuffing out of our ability to step into wonder and awe hastening the death of the imagination and ultimately the death the soul.
Losing the ability to practice Sabbath rest means that every single day is just like every other. Shabbat is a counter cultural and powerful antidote to what ails us. As I think of this, I see my own need for a renewed and reinvigorated Sabbath practice. This is definitely one thing I want to embrace more fully this coming year.
But we don’t have to wait for the year to come, as we move into the holidays, we are once again invited into to mark the passing of time with celebrations that originally were meant to help us come back to our sense of wonder and rest. Holidays are holy days–days set apart from the rest. We can easily become absorbed by the commercialism of this season or we can resist this impulse and somehow re-imagine something more satisfying.
I often write to figure out what I’m thinking, so everything I have written in this post is meant for me. I invite you as I also invite myself to take up the ancient practice of setting apart the days and seasons. Use the holidays to slow down, notice the good, and step into the wonder of sacred rest in order to enjoy fully your one precious human life and the communion of beings that make it possible.
Shabbat Shalom.
Happy Winter Solstice – Happy Hanukkah – Merry Christmas – Happy Kwanzaa
