Above Photo by Francisco Antunes. Photo Below by Prakhar Amba.
Over the past several weeks, I’ve been feeling out of touch with myself spiritually. I really needed to push everything aside and give myself some time to reconnect. If you haven’t guessed it by now, my recent absence is due to this reason. Despite writing about spirituality almost everyday, I’ve realized that alone doesn’t make me feel spiritual. I needed a time without distractions to focus on my spiritual well-being. It isn’t easy finding that time, but it is important that we each try to do so.
Although there are many important advantages to our culture becoming more secularized, there has been one important disadvantage - the loss of the Sabbath day. Whether you attend church or not, I think everybody can appreciate a full day of rest. Not only did this day serve as a time of spiritual reflection, but also served as a chance for family members to reconnect. We are an incredibly busy people; without a mutual day of rest we have the tendency to lose touch with the people we care about.
For me, that means losing touch with my wife. I didn’t have off this Valentine’s Day and I knew that lately we haven’t spent as much time together. This offered me another compelling reason to give this blog a rest for a few days. More importantly, my resistance to the idea of letting go of tending to my blog for a week signaled for me that I was becoming increasingly sucked in by the digital world, while neglecting the intrinsically human experience of spirituality.
And it isn’t just the on-line world that sucks away at our souls; television, video games, music, work, and even books or literature can serve to distance ourselves from our friends, our family, and the self. At times it is necessary to push all of this away, cut ourselves free from our preoccupation with entertainment or success and focus on each other. Too much of anything can have a negative impact on our lives and reliance on any one thing as an escape from reality can become an addiction.
All these reasons show why in the book of Genesis God rests on the seventh day of creation. The writers of Genesis were setting an example for humanity to follow. We humans, as a society or as individuals, make a thing holy or secular; the Sabbath day was once holy and can be again for those who choose to make it so. However, it would take the agreement between many different spiritual paths, including those who are not religious, to make a mutual day of rest a reality again. That isn’t likely to happen again for a long time; such is the marching beat of progress.
Can we, however, hold one day a week holy just for ourselves? We each only try for ourselves.
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February 18th, 2008 at 10:07 am
Dear John,
Your post this morning strikes a chord in me too. One of the things about ministry is that we are providing spiritual nurture to others and have to find it for ourselves in a different way. You are wise to notice your need for it early in your journey. Sabbath is a valuable gift to give ourselves, and in ministry, our Sabbath is hard to schedule!
One thing that helps me keep my spiritual life nourished is to have a daily, even hourly, spiritual practice. For me, it’s prayer—spontaneous prayers of gratitude or for help and courage whenever I need them and a nightly ritual of chalice lighting and spoken prayer in which I review my day, being as honest as possible and not shuffling off responsibility for missteps, asking for forgiveness and ways to make amends to those I may have hurt, expressing gratitude for the lessons learned, and asking for love to support those I am concerned for.
I’m a pretty committed religious humanist, but prayer works for me. I may say “Dear God” but I’m not thinking of an omnipotent being who changes the universe to meet my needs, I’m communing with the sacred in me and the sacred in the universe, which I call into my life and ask for the lives of others.
Hope that makes sense!
February 18th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
Quite a bit you give readers to think about here. The thing that struck me the most is the idea that the Sabbath is not only a time for spiritual reflection but a chance to reconnect with loved ones.
We are indeed busy. So much going on. It would be interesting if there was one day where we knew everyone would be free. Free from work and all obligations but family.
February 19th, 2008 at 4:08 am
Hi John,
I try to make Saturday my day of rest - even from blogging!
The other thing I have found is that the Israelites were wise to start the sabbath at sunset. Working ’til late means the next day is much less of a sabbath.
February 25th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
Hello Ms. Kitty,
I personally find the need to be alone in nature… which is sometimes harder to do than it sounds. Thank you for your praise of my post. Yes, that makes perfect sense.
Hello Julian,
I hate to say it, but there is one thing that the conservatives got right: the importance of family. That does not mean that I agree with their idea of “Family Values” so I guess they’ll just have to settle for an “D” letter grade.
Hello Evan,
Ah, yes… the Jewish people can be a wise bunch. Too often I am sleeping off a long work day on the first day of my vacation.
Namaste to you all.