Reclaiming the Sabbath

“A world without a Sabbath would be like a man without a smile, like a summer without flowers, and like a homestead without a garden. It is the joyous day of the whole week.” ~ Henry Ward Beecher

I am continually fascinated by the “discovery” of practical, real life wisdom in religious traditions that we in Western Culture have rejected. More and more often, in this post-technological age, we are reconnecting and recovering an understanding – on a body level – of the value of various rites.

In the case of a dedicated Sabbath, I think we lost the connection to the why. Going to church and visiting with family and neighbors had become a “have to” and we were going through the motions without those actions having meaning. So when the stores started to be open, and we had to go to work, it seemed like an opportunity to put a little more cash in our pockets and move away from religious institutions that no longer worked for us.

Today, more than 30 years later, I think we are beginning to see what we’ve been missing. To have one day in our busy weeks when we can connect to our deeper selves and nature, when we can tend to our community, and make contact once again with the larger picture now seems an unbelievable luxury. It seems a luxury – but what it really is is a necessity. We crave it like our body craves oxygen – we don’t expect the car to keep going if we never fill the gas tank, and yet we push ourselves to do just that.

I’m not advocating that everyone go back to church – our ways of reconnecting and recharging are as beautiful and varied as we are as beings. For some, organized religion works, for others God/Goddess/The Universe/whatever can be found in watching the dance of light on water, listening to the strains of a far off saxophone, tasting the perfect pumpkin ice cream, running, dancing, laughing…

What I am suggesting is that we make some time on a regular basis to recover our smiles, tend to our emotional/spiritual flowers, and reconnect with JOY!

Happy Sabbath!