Sabbath
Rest
“When
we rest, we can relish the seasons of a moment, a day, a conversation. In
relationships, we sense the rhythms of contact and withdrawal, of giving and
receiving, of coming close, pulling away, and returning. To surrender to the
rhythms of seasons and flowerings and dormancies is to savor the secret of life
itself.”
Wayne
Muller (Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest, p.69; Bantam Books, 1999)
We
humans have a rhetorical question we ask upon meeting each other. We say hello
and then, “how are you?” Most of the time, the other person responds, “I’m fine,
and you?” It’s a ritual like Namaste, Shalom, or the Japanese bow. But lately,
that is, since the pandemic, the response has become almost universally, “Tired,”
and it’s usually followed by “but…” Tired, but I’m okay; tired, but I keep going;
tired, but… I wonder whether you’ve noticed that too. Either we’re all zombies or something in today’s zeitgeist is causing relentless
fatigue.
The
pace of life has picked back up, and so has the level of stress that we are
under. For one thing, the pandemic is still with us—yet another variant is
making the rounds. And now, we are watching a ground war unfold with daily
images of little kids and mamas getting on packed trains or sleeping in subway tunnels.
Bombs dropping, buildings blowing up—wait, haven’t we seen this before? Most
recently in Syria—same action, different location. And, because this war
happens to be in Europe, it’s like watching World War II on an endless loop. We carry an accumulation of too many years of war—even though it’s on the other side
of the planet, it feels as though we are in the middle of it. Just keeping up
with it is tiring, and yet, we cannot look away.
Most of
the time, we carry on as though we are exempt from the horrors of war. Our
conscious awareness can compartmentalize the battle in Ukraine—but our body and
our soul cannot. Since all humans are connected, all life is connected, we
are involved at an emotional and energetic level. In other words, we feel the
war in our bodies just as if we were there. We have compassion fatigue, and
simple exhaustion because of the length of time we’ve endured the stress.
Today
is Sabbath. Maybe just for this one day, we could light a candle, say a prayer
for our war-torn world, and then acknowledge our need for rest. Wayne Muller
reminds us in his beautiful book, Sabbath, that rest is a commandment,
not a suggestion. Not because God wants to control us, but because rest is part
of the natural cycle—the “rhythmic dance to which we unavoidably belong.”
(Muller) Remember the Sabbath today and keep it a day of holy rest.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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