Sabbath for all

I think I've never fully understood what a Sabbath means. It seems to me that the only time that I have ever fully "let down" is when I am locked up in a monastery on a fairly lengthy (read: more than a weekend) silent retreat. I am normally inundated with items and distractions that take my focus from one thing to another. Yes - like many I suffer from the proverbial "Shiny Object Syndrome." Actually, there is a mild dose of ADD also in the equation as well.

I think there is something to this idea about an unfocused culture. We are a culture built around distractions. From an early age we provide children with lights and sounds and pictures, we expose our children at what I think is too young of an age to media such as prolonged television exposure (this coming from a media freak I know I must sound like a heretic). Mine was the first culture to be brought up with MTV and later now that we're older VH1.

We are told of the need to create five and ten year plans. We surround ourselves with diversions to take away the stress from those five and ten year plans. We use fast food, the internet and other addictions to medicate ourselves from feeling anything that might help us connect to the fact that inside of ourselves is a looming void that we don't know how to fill - or even fix.

We don't do very well in the relationship department either. Most of us are in and out of relationships - I can count on one hand how many individuals that I know who have a long term marriage (read over 25 years). Most of my friends and acquaintances have what is now termed "serial monogamous" relationships.

Then there is seminary. For those of you who know someone or God bless you are currently in seminary such as I am you know what I am talking about. Lectures and reading and conscribed small groups can take the place of forging genuine relationships. Large amounts of reading and digesting of material, parsing scripture, exegesis not isogesis in preaching and homiletics, self reflection without the benefit of spiritual direction all add up to the fact that so many of us by the middle of a ten week quarter are sleep deprived, snapping and overwhelmed at the prospects of ever making it through the final five weeks. Add to that those quarters when you are doing Field Work and you are just one ball of kinetic energy looking for a place to discharge. Chapel? Who has time for that? Quiet time? You attempt it but there are so many distractions not counting lack of sleep that play into the success/failure of the endeavor.

Our constant movement, our constant "need" to focus on so many aspects of our world which we have conjured up as being important and necessary really distract us from the one item which we are called to focus upon. Scripture exhorts us to "Be Still and Know that I AM God." This phrase alone is enough to cause us to go into a guilt induced shame spiral. Yet the question remains, are we really too defocused? I think we are. God I believe radically calls for us to be single minded - to put the focus on God as our SOURCE for everything.

My brother in law is a chiropractor. I always laugh when I heard their answering machine ending "you're not fine unless your spine is aligned" but it always makes me pause and consider the fact that it is a matter of alignment that consistently throws my body out of whack. Too much of this, too little of that. To be still and know that God is God is giving our spiritual life a serious alignment. It's reminding us that God is the ultimate source of our lives, the author of our life and salvation. In God we live and move and have our being. Nothing comes into this world without the creative DNA that comes only from the Divine One. Yet we go through our lives being pulled one way and pushed another.

Consider this. I am now embarking on six weeks of time accrued from unused vacation. On one hand it is wonderful to have the luxury of this time to relax and become refreshed yet on the other hand how incredible is it that in the eighteen months that I was on assignment I never really took time to have a Sabbath of my own? What kind of an example was I to those I worked with, to those I ministered too?

Sabbath, I am coming to find out is God given for many reasons. To refresh our bodies, to renew our spirits , to connect with God and bring our lives back into a balance that includes the acknowledgement that we ourselves are NOT God inspite of our delusions.

I'm starting to think that Sabbath is a mind set. It is a way to incorporate that wonderful gift of boundaries into our lives. To create a rhythm in our lives that allows us daily to be reminded of the fact that we are in relationship with God and this relationship needs to have time to gestate and develop.

Sabbath for me this week is renewing my surroundings. Taking care of the laundry, the house and then beginning tomorrow - resting before God. I am going to be entering into a conversation with God about how I can realign myself so that I can live a true Sabbath life.