Fr Ronald Rolheiser
The Sufi mystic Rumi once lamented: “I have lived too long where I can be reached!” That was twelve hundred years ago, long before cell phones, the internet, computers, and social media. Today, most of us live where we can be reached all the time. While this has some huge upsides, it also has a nasty underside we have been slow to recognise. Never being able to step away from our preoccupations and involvements is weighing on our mental health. Many of us now find it difficult to step away, to stop activities, to rest, to refresh, to re-energise. To put this in biblical language, we are finding it more and more difficult to have ‘Sabbath’ in our lives.
Commandment
We have a commandment from God: “Remember to keep the Sabbath day holy”. I think we can all agree that this commandment has fallen on hard times today. It is not just that fewer and fewer people are going to their churches on Sunday, or that more and more shops and businesses are open on Sunday, or that sporting events now take up much of the Sabbath space once reserved for religion. The deeper issue is that more and more of us can no longer slow down our lives, shut down the communication machines, get away from the stress and preoccupations in our lives, and simply stop and rest.
We are living where we can always be reached and have for the most part lost the notion of Sabbath in our lives. We are now treating a commandment to keep the Sabbath day holy as an idealised lifestyle suggestion: Helpful, if you can find the time to do it.
Go to a place where, save for an emergency, you are unavailable. You might find this the hardest discipline of all – and perhaps the most important one”
With this in mind, I offer ‘Ten Councils’ for practicing Sabbath today.
- Practice Sabbath with the discipline demanded of a commandment, even as you practice the discipline of life and duty.
- Have at least one ‘Sabbath’ moment every day. Give yourself something to look forward to every day. Sabbath doesn’t have to be a day; it can be special hour, a special moment, where you step off the treadmill and treat yourself to something you enjoy.
- Go somewhere every week where you can’t be reached and have a ‘cyber-Sabbath’. Once a week turn off all your electronic communication for six hours or, better yet, for twelve hours. Go to a place where, save for an emergency, you are unavailable. You might find this the hardest discipline of all – and perhaps the most important one.
- Honour the ‘wisdom of dormancy’. Do something regularly that is non-pragmatic. Farmers know that you can’t seed a field continuously and still get a good yield. Fields require regular seasons where they lie fallow so that they can (in that seeming condition of dormancy) soak in the nutrients and other elements they need to produce. The human body and psyche are the same. We need, regularly, periods of dormancy where our energies lie fallow to the pragmatic world.
As the poet John Shea says, “borrow wonder from the children”. It is one of the few places we can still find it”
- Pray and meditate regularly in some way. There is only one rule and counsel for this: Do it! Show up regularly, and whatever happens, happens. This is a major way that we step off the treadmill and have some Sabbath in our lives.
- Be attentive to little children, old people, and the weather. Sabbath is meant to restore wonder to our lives, and today wonder has left the building. So, as the poet John Shea says, “borrow wonder from the children”. It is one of the few places we can still find it. As well, time spent with elderly people can help give us a healthier perspective on life. Also, when have we last noticed the weather as a source of wonder?
- Live by axiom: ‘If not now, when? If not here, where? If not with these people, with whom? If not for God, why?’ We spend ninety-eight percent of our lives waiting for something else to happen to us. Have some moments where you realise that what you are waiting for is already here.
- Let your body also know that it is Sabbath. Sabbath is meant not just for the soul but also for the body. Give your body a Sabbath treat, at least once a week.
- Make family and relationships the priority. At the end of the day, life is about family, friendships, and relationships, a truth easily eclipsed and lost in the pressures of our fast-paced lives. Sabbath is meant to reground us in that truth at least once a week.
- Don’t nurse grudges and obsessions. Our deepest tiredness isn’t the result of overwork, but of the wounds, grudges, and obsessions we nurse. The invitation to rest for a day includes, especially, the invitation to let go of our hurts. Indeed, the notion of the statute of limitations is based on Judeo-Christian concept of the Sabbath. For every grudge we are nursing there is a statute of limitations.
God gave us Sabbath, for our health and our enjoyment.