Even beasts of burden must be turned out to grass occasionally; the very sea pauses at ebb and flood; earth keeps the Sabbath of the wintry months; and man, even when exalted to God’s ambassador, must rest or faint, must trim his lamp or let it burn low; must recruit his vigor or grow […]
Still Saturday: Clear Out and Cultivate
“If we are going to live appropriately in the creation we must keep the Sabbath. We must stop running around long enough to see what he has done and is doing. We must shut up long enough to hear what he has said and is saying. All our ancestors agree that without silence and […]
Still Saturday: Surrender
Sabbath requires surrender . . . If we refuse rest until we are finished, we will never rest until we die. Sabbath dissolves the artificial urgency of our days, because it liberates us from the need to be finished. ~Wayne Muller in Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest In the […]
Still Saturday: Finest of Wealth
We are stretched thin–to the point of translucence. Hold me up to the light, and I will disappear. All you will see are the things I do. I need more Sabbath keeping than moments snatched here and there. Those short patches of peace have begun to feel like stealing time. So, I let the […]
Still Saturday: Why There is No Need to Rush
“The theology of progress forces us to act before we are ready. We speak before we know what to say. We respond before we feel the truth of what we know. In the process, we inadvertently create suffering, heaping imprecision upon inaccuracy, until we are all buried under a mountain of misperception. But Sabbath […]
still saturday: enough for this day
When we breathe, we do not stop inhaling because we have taken in all the oxygen we will ever need, but because we have all the oxygen we need for this breath. Then we exhale, release carbon dioxide, and make room for more oxygen. Sabbath, like the breath, allows us to imagine we have done […]
still saturday: when the soul needs a sabbath
“May your soul be refreshed with an unexpected Sabbath, a necessary pause, a rest, a replenishing of hidden stores. May death and age be driven back another day, worry and the overload of care be banished from your little kingdom. May liberal Joy give you permission to play again, to dream, to slow the times, […]
Friday Fuel for the Weekend: Dare to Sabbath
Go nowhere to go somewhere. Do nothing to do something. Dump fuel to refuel. Stop to go. Pause to produce. The paradox of sabbath. And sabbath is what chapter 8 of God in the Yard is all about. Trusting in cycles of strength and weakness, rest and work, presence and absence (or presence and hiddenness.) […]