Be Where You Are
Dallas Willard famously said that “hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day.” We are so accustomed to walking through our lives hurrying towards a goal, staring at our feet, lost in thought, that we often forget to be present where we are.
Every week, the Sabbath is like that person at the front of the line shouting: “Everybody stop and look up! There’s something beautiful here you’re missing in your rush to get to the top! Slow down and appreciate the beauty enveloping you along the way.”
Is This the Path of Love?
What if we started with a different metaphor for time, a metaphor steeped in the character and values of Sabbath instead of the marketplace? What if, instead of an economic metaphor that sped our life up, we embraced a relational one that slowed us down and helped us be more present? What if time is love?
A time-is-love approach is slow instead of fast, at ease instead of hurried, abundant instead of scarce, kind instead of cruel. “Time is love” is invitational and personal, it is inherently abundant. Love has all the time in the world.
Sabbath and Childlikeness
We ask kids what they want to be when they grow up. Why don’t we ask each other how we plan to become more like children as we age? Maybe a better question would be: “How do you plan to be a kidult today?”
The capacity of children to live in the present moment is an invitation to us adults who have forgotten how to live our lives fully awake to the sheer miracle of existence, and instead live our lives under the burdensome weight of regrets, responsibilities, obligations, worries, busyness, and bills.
Sabbath and Juneteenth
In 2021, President Biden declared Juneteenth a national holiday. Juneteenth marks the day (June 19th, 1865) on which the final slaves, living in Galveston, TX, learned that the Civil War had ended and heard the Emancipation Proclamation for the first time—two and a half years after President Lincoln had delivered it. Like the Sabbath, Juneteenth is also a seed of shalom, planted but not fully grown.
Delight For Its Own Sake
Maybe I’m over-analyzing here, but I hear in Hoagland’s poem a grace-full invitation to wonder, delight, and presence for its own sake. Be present to what brings you delight simply because it brings you delight. Immerse yourself in the book or the coffee mug or the stir fry or the conversation or the quiet walk in the park or the rowdy evening bathing ritual with the kids simply for the joy it offers you at the “sheer miracle of life,” as Brian Doyle once described it.
Overcoming Familirritability
It is almost universal that spectacular things lose their power through familiarity. Like the second time I went to the Grand Canyon and thought, “Huh, I remembered it being bigger.” Familiarity often breeds, if not contempt, a kind of irritation—either with the familiar thing, or with the wonder and awe of others who are beholding it for the first time. We might call this irritation by way of familiarity a case of familirritability.
We often speak of being desensitized to violence, but what about being desensitized to beauty and wonder, to the sheer miracle of life itself?
Learning From Sea Glass
The rush of delight when your eye catches a glint of blue or green in the sand. The way my eyes are learning to differentiate glass from colored rocks and mussel shells. The shared delight of showing each other the piece we just found. It serves no other purpose than infusing our walks with joy, of lifting our spirits, of opening our eyes to the presence of beauty and light and the myriad gifts lying in wait at our feet.
Sabbath is a Raqi’a in Time
On the second day of creation in Genesis 1, God spoke into the chaotic waters and created a raqi’a. Traditionally translated as “firmament” or “dome,” the raqi’a is essentially a boundary holding the waters at bay. With the raqi’a God created a protected area—a clearing—in the center of the chaos, which created the conditions within which life could flourish.
The Sabbath is a raqi’a in time.