August 2007 - Radical Sabbath

Radical Sabbath

From the Executive Director, The Rev. Anne S. Howard

Dear Friends,

It’s August. My friends are at their lake cabin, Congress is adjourned, (or trying to adjourn), pulpits are peopled with guest preachers, our Beatitudes Summer Fellows have finished up eight great weeks of work at social change agencies (you will hear all about that in our September newsletter!) and I have a new Zero-Gravity chair in my backyard.

It’s a chair I found in a gardener’s catalogue, designed for ultimate ease?just the thing for a hot August afternoon. But I haven’t spent any time in it yet. Well, yes I did, once: I found it to be a fine place to catch up on email, to commune with BB, my little BlackBeast who brings me the world in the palm of my hand.

Why this rambling about Zero-Gravity and BlackBeast? Because The Beatitudes Society is all about providing seminary and divinity school students with the tools and training and resources they need to become agents of social change. We exist to help these students prepare for years of heavy lifting as they go out into the world to turn it upside down. And that Zero-Gravity chair is a symbol (maybe even a sacrament, “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual truth”) of one of the most important tools in the activist’s toolkit: Sabbath.

Sabbath is not so much a tool as a practice, a profoundly radical, world-changing practice essential for the work of social justice, essential for saving the world and saving our souls.

To adopt this rule for radicals, to remember the Sabbath, as that fourth commandment commands, is to remember who we are as part of God’s dynamic creation. Sabbath gives us a chance to see that all of nature reflects a rhythm of work and rest, ebb and flow, dormancy and growth. Birds do it, bees do it, so do waves and winds and even, we pray this week, California wildfires and Mississippi river currents. Only human beings, within the last several decades of life on this planet, do not do it: instead we have created the unholy, idolatrous concept of “24/7,” the world that doesn’t stop.

In a 24/7 world, the practice of Sabbath is nothing less than radical revolution. Just as it was a revolutionary act for worker justice for those early Hebrews to take a day of rest from Pharaoh’s brick ovens, it can be the same for us. As Wayne Muller writes in Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in our Busy Lives: “Sabbath time can be a revolutionary challenge to the violence of overwork, mindless accumulation, and the endless multiplication of desires, responsibilities and accomplishments.”

Sabbath says stop, for a day, or an afternoon, or even just a short sweet hour. Sabbath is not the negative “do not” one might associate with a stone tablet commandment; it’s a delectable gift to savor, a delight for your spirit. Give yourself some refreshment. Grab a copy of Muller’s book, or try Joan Chittester’s Wisdom Distilled from the Daily. Unplug and give yourself and the planet a break (it’s a two-fer, turning off those electronic devices lessens your carbon footprint!)

September will be here in a minute, and lots of plans are underway for the third year of The Beatitudes Society: the launching of new chapters, the inclusion of some new social networking features on our website, a student and faculty membership drive, the expansion of our Summer Fellowship program, a January scholarship opportunity, plans for the March Service Learning trip, and much more.

The list is long, the harvest will be plentiful, and a little bit of Sabbath now can give us all the creativity and energy we need for all the good work we are blessed to do.

In Christ's Peace,

Anne

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