It was a warm California morning. I’d been up early – the shop I had in San Diego had put on a fashion show for the Ladies Auxiliary of the Coronado Island Yacht Club. The morning had been a big success and I had a few hours to kill before I had to go back to work and close up the store.
I decided to spend the afternoon lying in the sun by the water on Mission Bay. There was a quiet spot I knew about, tucked off in a corner that few others knew. I often went there to rest and restore myself, and when I found I had these few Golden Hours I headed the car straight for my outdoor sanctuary.
I parked the car, pulled off my suit jacket, grabbed the blanket I kept in the trunk for my impulsive adventures – and found a spot on the grass to stretch out by the water.
My mind started to wander.
Sometimes, when we leave spaces in our lives, moments of personal inventory bubble up, welcomed but unintended, and such was the case for me that afternoon.
How am I? How is my life going?
My conclusion? Life was good.
Work was going well: it was stable, manageable, fun and easy – sometimes too easy. I was without a boyfriend at the time, which of course, made my personal life stable, manageable, fun and easy. My life felt spacious and satisfying. I was active in my church – teaching Sunday School, serving on the Religious Education Committee, and leading the effort to start a campus ministry at San Diego State. I was getting to dance class several times a week. I had a wonderful, sunny apartment 3 blocks from the Bay and 10 blocks from the ocean – heaven! My dog and I were happy.
I didn’t feel overwhelmed. I didn’t feel like the demands of my life were pressing in on me unfairly. My life was full and rewarding. The scales were balanced.
That period of time had some minor ups and downs, but by and large, for a couple years there it was pretty much smooth sailing.
Life is elastic. It pulls, stretches and then releases and gets slack. Back and forth we go – life pulling us in new directions, challenging our boundaries and allowing us time to recuperate.
I am not going to tell you how to live forever in the San Diego Sunny Afternoon State of Mind today. It is nice for a while, and to have moments like that are desirable, even necessary in our lives. But living that way all the time is impossible, uninteresting, boring and unfulfilling.
What we need are Sunny Afternoon State of Mind moments, periods in our lives when the rubber band that is our life is slack. In the course of my adult life there have been 2 extended periods like that, and I imagine others will come – I can even sense a time like that on the horizon for me now.
Over the course of a lifetime we have periods of recuperation and reflection.. The challenge is to notice when we are in the midst of those times and not busy ourselves worrying about times past or yet to come.
We also have those periods of rest and recuperation in our daily life. That is why you are here. To remember to rest – to remember to let your rubber band life go slack and be at ease, to reflect, to clear your mind, to rest, to pray. To hold up your life and remember it is holy.
Today is the Sabbath. The time in the week set aside for rest and renewal. How are you keeping the Sabbath in your life? This is a day that should be reminiscent of the Sunny San Diego afternoon – open time. Reflective time. Dare I say, unscheduled time after church.
Today’s culture is not built to require you to keep the Sabbath. Businesses are open. Errands and work can be done. I challenge you to apply yourself and practice keeping the Sabbath holy. Spend your Sabbath hours on things that rest, restore and delight you. Set aside sacred time for love, for family, for matters of the heart and soul. Feed yourself on the Sabbath. Read for pleasure. Have conversations for personal fulfillment. Be present in the world – really notice the sights and sounds, smells and tastes.
A few weeks ago I was following a friend down Lakeshore Drive. He is a particularly slow driver, and so as I toodled along behind him I had a chance to notice how beautiful the curves of the road were, and how pleasing it is that they are lined with trees and lighted with streetlamps that shed warm golden light onto the Drive. It was really delightful.
I took a walk with a friend earlier this week. We were both having very busy, crazy-making weeks and were downloading on each other as we walked. After a while, we decided to stop talking about that and simply walk together in silence. All of a sudden the world rushed onto the scene. Bursting into my vision were the tree branches, the sky, the buds of green, the flowering crocus and the tulips peeking through the ground. Together we saw the present moment, and we remembered we were in the world.
We can observe the Sabbath on Sunday. And we can also have Sabbath time throughout each day.
In his book, "Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal and Delight in Our Busy Lives," Wayne Muller writes:
“While Sabbath can refer to a single day of the week, Sabbath can also be a far-reaching revolutionary tool for cultivating the precious human qualities that grow only in time.” (New York: Bantam Books, 1999 pg. 5)
These are moments when we intentionally draw ourselves into the present moment and remember our connection within the web of life – remember that we are woven into the fabric of existence. Say Grace before eating. Sit for a moment in your car at the beginning or end of your drive.
It doesn’t take much, but it does require our intention. Modern life is not set up with clear open spaces and it doesn’t slow down of its own accord. Life takes a restorative turn with our effort. Not so that we can live with a sun-soaked, snail’s pace lethargy all the time – but so we can find some consistent small doses of renewal and delight.
Keep the Sabbath.
How do we do that when life can be so demanding and busy?
It is precisely when life is busy and demanding that we need Sabbath time the most. Here at the church, in juts the past 2 months attendance has grown 35 or 40%. The impact on our volunteers and staff is great. At the staff meeting last week I gave the staff a new assignment. It went like this: The next 5 months are going to be crazy. We are growing like mad, preparing to move to 2 services and creating programming to meet our growing needs. It is going to be hard and stressful. A lot of work. Therefore, I am going to insist that you begin your day here in the office not by turning on your computer, but by taking some time to center yourself first. Before anything else. I don’t care what you do: read a poem, pray, journal, or walk around the block, but start your day here with reflective, open time. Allow the presence of the Divine to be felt more keenly, by quieting yourself and making space for the holy. Only once you’ve done this should you begin your work.
I know the staff and I have the luxury of working in sacred space – which balances with the reality that they are woefully underpaid and on call 24-7 – but it is easy, with the scope of the demands on us to forget that dimension of our work. Most of you will never have a supervisor make this demand of you, but this does not mean you can’t carve out the time yourself. When I worked in retail I sat in my car for 5 minutes before I went into work. It made a huge difference.
How might you create open space in your daily life? I begin my day here with prayer and reflection and I end my day with Scripture reading. Those are the touchstones that ground me. This week I had a houseguest and I still kept my daily practice.
Does such a commitment mean that I begin each day with a deep sense of peace? No!! Sometimes I have so much before me that the anxiety hovers in the room while I pray, while I read the scripture. But what would I feel like if I didn’t take a moment to unwind? I’d wind up tighter and tighter until, finally the rubber band would break. (The consequences for neglecting this aspect of our lives can be significant. More than one colleague of mine will collapse from exhaustion, or become ill with some opportunistic infection because they neglected to balance Sabbath and work.)
We need Sabbath time because the pull of the myriad of demands on us can stretch us too thin.
This past year was a difficult one for me personally. I moved to a new city, my marriage came to an end, I had to move out of an apartment I could no longer afford and find a roommate, and I started a new job. In the midst of all this my mom was diagnosed with cancer and 3 beloved members of our congregation died. It was an exhausting year. My prayer life fell apart. My contemplative time became almost nil. I spent little time outdoors and no time at dance class.
When we lose our commitment to rest and reflection, when we forget the Sabbath, sometimes we need help getting back on track. So I asked for help from my friends and colleagues.
And if taking Sabbath time is new for us entirely, sometimes we need help then too. We ask a friend to come with us when we start looking for a church. We take a class or read a book on prayer and meditation.
You are already here at church, so here is a crash course on prayer and meditation:
Prayer 101:
Address your prayer as you are comfortable. Mother, father of us all. Spirit of Life. God of our Hearts.
Confess your needs.
Ask for help.
Offer thanks.
Say Amen.
Meditation 101:
Sit comfortably either cross-legged or on a chair.
Sit up straight – we don’t address the holy with lazy posture.
Keep your eyes open – Unitarian meditation, if something happens we want to see it with our own eyes.
Focus on your breath.
Count backward from 10 to 1 over and over again.
Try a few minutes at first and try to add more until you can sit for 20 minutes.
Is your life too full?
Add something. Add the Sabbath. You might even try a whole day!
Greet the holy each day. In prayer, in journaling, in meditation, reading or walking.
One last point. The point of Sabbath is not to transform your life into a floating, ethereal out of body event. Life isn’t like that even for the monks. They clean the bathrooms too.
Keeping the Sabbath energizes our work. Fuels our lives with new depth and energy. Opens up new opportunities. Sabbath and work balance one another. Hard work and a full life and not the enemies of happiness. Lack of balance is.
Muller writes: “A successful life has become a violent enterprise. We make war on our own bodies, pushing them beyond their limits; war on our children, because we cannot find enough time to be with them when we are hurt and afraid, and need our company; war on our spirit because we are too preoccupied to listen to the quiet voices that seek to nourish and refresh us; war on our communities, because we are fearfully protecting what we have, and do not feel safe enough to be kind and generous; war on the earth, because we cannot take the time to place our feet on the ground and allow it to feed us, to taste its blessing and give thanks.” (pg. 2)
“If busyness can become a kind of violence, we do not have to stretch our perception very far to see that Sabbath time – effortless, nourishing rest – can invite a healing of this violence. When we consecrate a time to listen to the still, small voices, we remember the root of inner wisdom that makes work fruitful. We remember from where we are most deeply nourished, and see more clearly the shape and texture of the people and things before us.” (pg. 5)
When our commitments pull our rubber band too tight and there is never rest, the rubber band snaps. This is what over-commitment and workaholism does to us.
But when the rubber band is slack for too long, sloth can result, so can depression. This is what sometimes happens when someone becomes ill, or loses their job, or even retires and does not find a way to engage with life in a new way.
Balance with work and rest bring more harmony to daily life and to a lifetime. In the open spaces we clear new insights and reflections arise, and we are led on a path in life that has intention. A path that is in conversation/dialogue with the Divine.
You might even find yourself lounging on the grass on a warm, sunny afternoon, by cool water, knowing great peace and satisfaction with things as they are.
Blessed be.
Amen.