It was almost a month ago that I was struck - with an almost physical trauma - about how profoundly impoverished my practice of "Sabbath" is. Listening to Lauren Winner about a month ago I re-encountered some of her reflections on Jewish Sabbath. She tells a story of staying in the home of an Orthodox Jewish couple in New York. Finally, after succumbing to frustration Lis Harris, the woman of the story, asks over dinner "why God cares whether or not she microwaves a frozen dinner on Friday night." The response:
What happens when we stop working and controlling nature? When we don't operate machines, or pick flowers, or pluck fish from the sea?... When we cease interfering in the world we are acknowledging that it is God's world.This Lent I am rethinking Sabbath, and as a first, small step I am "ceasing to create" vocationally in its space: not writing, not reading, not debating or meeting about policy, politics, philosophy, theology and more. A very small step. I wonder what other practices of Sabbath exist here that I could learn from, in this Lenten period of reflection?
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