Holding a Sense of Sabbath

I’ve been thinking, reading, and posting a lot lately about the importance and indeed, the ethical responsibility for self-care, or as a what Donna Schaper, author of “Sabbath Sense: A Spiritual Antidote for the Overworked” called the “Sense of Sabbath.”

In our often hectic and overfull lives, it can be difficult to dedicate an entire 24 hours to putting away our devices, shutting off the need to get things done, and simply resting in the divine with our beloveds. Yet this has been a tried and true method for holding balance for thousands of years. It may be worth making the effort.

Yet, we can also simply engage our Sabbath sense in shorter time-frames and that will absolutely help us hold that balance and stay resilient in our work. Shaper suggests, “Sabbath Sense may be the chair we sit in when we come home, the coffee we enjoy once we get to work, the clothes we put on for a special occasion. Sabbath may be the breakfast out we have with each of our children before going to work on Friday. It may be simply a moment of memory at “off” times during the day or year.”

This poetry from a Panhala email felt like it says it well:

Any Morning

Just lying on the couch and being happy.
Only humming a little, the quiet sound in the head.
Trouble is busy elsewhere at the moment, it has
so much to do in the world.

People who might judge are mostly asleep; they can’t
monitor you all the time, and sometimes they forget.
When dawn flows over the hedge you can
get up and act busy.

Little corners like this, pieces of Heaven
left lying around, can be picked up and saved.
People wont even see that you have them,
they are so light and easy to hide.

Later in the day you can act like the others.
You can shake your head. You can frown.

~ William Stafford ~

(The Way It Is)