Inpirational

Sabbath

Not necessarily a day of sacred worship

“Backyard Sunset” — Photo taken by the author

We need to recover a sense of sabbath. Don’t get me wrong. No… I’m not saying everyone needs to observe a sacred day of worship. I’m advocating for a quiet day of rest and reflection. That quiet day is a gift humanity needs to give ourselves. It’s not about just the churchy-stuff. It’s a day for our sense of self and our place in the world regardless of belief or non-belief. We’ve lost that gift of the sabbath, that gift of rest and reflection… We let it be chipped away from us, bit by bit.

Industrialized, then corporatized work ethics chipped away at it, driving more and more of us to work on that day. Union’s fought for our right to a five-day work week… for our days of rest. Then too, that hard-won five-day workweek chipped away at it too. Weekend leisure activities soon came to overshadow those quiet days of rest. Many of us can’t imagine reveling in that old “lazy Sunday afternoon.”

We literally came to see quiet rest as lazy. We became ready and willing to fill every waking moment with something… fill it with anything not to rest in quietude. We race around in ever more hustle and bustle for leisure than in our daily jobs. Every moment must be filled. We cannot possibly allow boredom to creep in. Technology’s increasing connectivity only accelerated the trend…