Sabbath

A Sabbath Afternoon at My Desk

/ nagneberg48 / 4 Comments

September 19, 2023

Isn’t “sabbath” and “an afternoon at my desk” a contradiction of terms? Am I justifying work done on Sunday by calling it Sabbath time?

Good questions.

God questions.

Questions to explore and ponder.

Sabbath Morning

Sunday morning means church for us. We attend the 8:15 service, and I set the alarm for 6:30. Sunday is the only morning of the week I do that, but I don’t want to rush. I want to enter the sanctuary awake and open.

I want my whole being ready to pay attention, to honor the day and those who have chosen to also be present. My sense of belonging accompanies my desire to welcome.

I bring my concerns and my hopes, my love, my blessings, but also my need to shed my many judgments. Along with my plea for forgiveness for what I have done and what I have left undone, I remind myself of the ways I am called to forgive.

I come knowing I need to empty and make room, but also to fill more fully with a deeper understanding of the person I am created to be.

That is a tall order, but not impossible.

Sabbath time is full of possibilities.

This Sunday was no exception. How good it was to greet and be greeted. How good it was to see a stream of children march up the aisle for the children’s time. How good it was to hear a lovely girl read the lessons. Clearly she had practiced, but at the same time it felt like she was encountering the words for the first time, giving us a gift of freshness and insight.

We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.

Romans 14: 7-8

How good it was to hear Pastor Lois’s excellent sermon based on Peter’s question about how many times should we forgive. “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times,” said Jesus.

Stop counting, Nancy, I think to myself.

How good it was to receive the bread and the wine. To share the peace. To sing. To pray. To be together. Sabbath time.

After the service, I hosted the first adult forum of the year. The topic was “Building Community: Holding Each Other Sacredly,” based on a Lakota word, “kiciuzapi.” Because it was the first forum of the new program year, I wanted to set the stage for this part of Sabbath time. A time when we practice community. A time when we become more present to one another and to God’s presence.

What followed was a chance to share stories with one another, for as Wendell Berry said, “Community exists when people know each other’s stories.” Storyteller Gretchen Sage-Martinson gently guided us into the process of telling one another stories.

Laughter.

Tears.

Deep listening.

Warmth and openness.

Sincere questions.

Presence.

Sabbath time.

Sabbath Afternoon

While eating lunch on the patio, I read the NYT Book Review. The day was cool, but not too cool, and I wondered how many days I could sit there without adding an extra later –a sweater or a shawl. I thought about how to spend the rest of the day. I am reading a good mystery (more on that in my Thursday Book Report post) and spending the afternoon in its company would be delightful and restful. Or I could make some zucchini bread using a chunk of the ginormous zucchini a neighbor gave us. I certainly could get a jump on the coming week’s work, but the Sabbath feeling lingered.

What did this day offer? What beckoned me? What whispered Sabbath blessings?

Without a clear answer I walked up the stairs to the garret and sat at my desk. I had a vague notion of cleaning my email’s inbox. Yes, that would be a good thing, but a Sabbath thing?

Without thinking too much about it, I decided to move my laptop from my workspace to my desk in the snug. Just for the afternoon, a Sabbath afternoon of responding to friends’ emails in a chatty, rested, spacious, and loving way. I relaxed into reading blogs I subscribe to, online publications that interest me, and other articles and essays others had sent me because they knew I would appreciate them. I had told myself I would read them when I had the time. Ah, Sabbath time.

And as I wrote, sometimes selecting a card and handwriting a note of love and concern to someone on the prayer list, I paused now and then to watch the sidewalk traffic. The Catholic church up the street held its annual county fair all weekend and families walked by on their way to rides and games and food. The fall day was perfect for the fun. Sabbath fun.

I noted how the trees are entering the new season, a reminder to me of my own movement into this season of my life. Sabbath season.

I moved steadily, mindfully through the overflowing inbox. Now and then I made a note to myself–an idea for a future writing prompt or a resource for my own writing. None of this felt like work. Instead I was in a Sabbath rhythm.

I like what Dan B. Allender says in his book, Sabbath, “Sabbath provides a weekly marker for the contours of life. It is the moment to receive all time and to allow the past and future to congeal, to thicken into ripe, holy fermentation.” pp. 56-57.

That’s just how the day’s unfolding felt.

Sabbath Evening

We met our daughter and grandson for casual supper at our favorite neighborhood bar. Unfortunately, our son-in-love was not feeling well, so didn’t join us. The four of us, however, had a good catch-up. I left feeling like I had experienced a Sabbath Bonus.

Once home I reunited with the mystery I mentioned and read contentedly until bedtime.

A good Sabbath day. A very good Sabbath, indeed.

An Invitation

What does Sabbath mean to you? I would love to know.

Note #1

An essay I wrote, “My View From Here,” has just been published in a lovely online publication, Sage-ing, The Journal of Creative Aging. You can read my essay –and, in fact, the the entire publication at this link.

http://www.sageing.ca Let me know what you think.

NOTE #2

I will take a bit of a break from posting: Tuesday, September 26 through Tuesday, October 3. I will return with a post on Thursday, October 5.

Breaking the Sabbath to Keep It Holy?

/ nagneberg48 / 4 Comments

September 27, 2022

“Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” Exodus 20:8

Sunday afternoon I cleaned the kitchen. All afternoon.

I emptied the refrigerator, throwing out what was no longer edible, and scrubbed the inside. I rearranged some of the cupboards, moving what is used most frequently onto the lower shelves and what is used less frequently onto higher shelves. I finally tackled the space under the kitchen sink where I keep cleaning supplies –a task that had been on my list for a long time. I sanitized the garbage can, scoured the microwave, re-organized the pots and their covers in the oven drawer. I moved methodically from one area to another, shining and cleansing and tidying and finished by washing the floor cloth first and then the floor.

I enjoyed every minute of the process.

In fact, when I stood in the dining room looking into my small kitchen, I felt refreshed.

This feeling of refreshment felt like my version of a “Sabbath exhale.”

Without the Sabbath exhale, the life-giving inhale is impossible.”

Sabbath, Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight In Our Busy Lives by Wayne Muller

Sunday Routine

My Sabbath started more traditionally the night before–taking a shower, washing my hair, deciding what to wear to church the following morning, and getting a good night’s sleep. We had missed church the previous Sunday when we were staying with friends in their northern Minnesota lake home and that was its own kind of Sabbath, but I was eager to return to the Sunday morning ritual.

How good it was to sit in the sanctuary before the service started–to take a deep breath and release the busyness of the previous week. How good it was to close my eyes, to pause, to remind myself to be there, only there, to listen to the music and prepare myself for the gifts of that time. How good it was to be in community, to witness the baptism of a beloved baby and to receive the bread and the wine. I sent blessings to each person who came to the table.

How good it was to greet one another and to rejoice in this gathering, both during worship and during the education hour.

Sabbath time, and I felt refreshed.

Our tradition for many years, beginning when our children were young, was to go out for lunch after church. More than giving me a break from fixing a meal, although that was greatly appreciated, Sunday lunch in a casual restaurant was a time to relax with one another. To check-in. To remind ourselves of who we were as a family. To pause before moving forward into what was sure to be another busy week often of conflicting and complicated schedules and responsibilities. My husband and I have continued the tradition throughout our empty nest years. Now, I confess, we take the NYT with us, but it is a time of ease, an in-between time.

This past Sunday our grandson Peter joined us. He had been staying with us for a few days while his parents were out of town. He is a good conversationalist and oh how good it was to have him all to ourselves.

Sabbath time, and I felt refreshed.

Paying Attention

Once home I continued my Sabbath–by cleaning the kitchen. Yes, by cleaning the kitchen. Doing that felt like a kind of rest because I didn’t approach it as drudgery or something that needed to be done or something to cross off my too long and too dictatorial TO DO list. No, one of my spiritual practices is hometending, and cleaning the kitchen that afternoon was a Sacred Yes. I entered the time with joy and gratitude for the privilege of living in a lovely home, for the delight of sharing my life with my husband of 51 years and in remembrance of all those who have crossed our threshold and in hopes and expectation of future gatherings.

Sabbath time, and I felt refreshed.

Here’s a warning–mainly to myself. How easy it would have been for the pleasure to have turned into obsession. To clean out all the cupboards and drawers. To clean the inside of the oven, and yes, it needs it. To polish all the copper pots hanging in the window. And then to push myself to continue into a cleaning frenzy of the first floor.

The refreshment could easily have become exhaustion. And that would not have been Sabbath rest.

Dinner was easy–only leftovers. I spent the rest of the day reading in the snug.

The day had been “a piece of time that opens space for God.” (Dorothy C. Bass)

I realize my Sabbath rest may not have been a literal or traditional way of keeping and remembering the Sabbath, and many Sundays I attempt to be more intentional about resting, but this past Sunday I paid attention to my own rhythm, and I felt refreshed.

An Invitation

What does Sabbath rest look like for you? I would love to know.

NOTE:

Here are three resources about the Sabbath from my library:

  • Sabbath by Dan Allender (2009)
  • Sabbath Keeping, Finding Freedom in the Rhythms of Rest by Lynne M. Baab (2005)
  • “Keeping Sabbath” by Dorothy C. Bass in Practicing Our Faith, A Way of Life for a Searching People, Dorothy C. Bass (editor) (1997)
  • The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel (1951)
  • A Sabbath Life, One Woman’s Search for Wholeness by Kathleen Hirsch (2001)
  • Sabbath, Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives by Wayne Muller (1999)
  • The Sabbath World, Glimpses of a Different Order of Time by Judith Shulevitz (2011)