"And on the seventh day God finished the work that God had done, and God rested on the seventh day from all the work that God had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that God had done in creation."
– Genesis 2:2-3, NRSV
This past Saturday I attended a day-long retreat at a nearby farm led by my spiritual director. When I first signed up for it, I told my spiritual director that I viewed it as a “pre-sabbatical retreat,” only semi-joking. In truth, in all these nearly twenty-seven years of ministry, I’ve never had a full sabbatical. And I am very much aware that outside of the ministry and academia, most people never get a sabbatical in their working lives, so I am deeply grateful for this opportunity. For those of you who might not know, I will be on sabbatical from March 1 – May 31. However, I may be a bit unprepared for it.
How do you just suddenly put down all that you’ve been doing? How do you put your relationships with your co-workers and parishioners on hold? If, upon returning from vacation, you have ever encountered the mountain of emails and other ‘to-dos’ that have accumulated in your absence and wondered whether vacation was actually worth it, how do you avoid coming back to that after a much longer time? I think there’s a reason why the second and third verses of Genesis 2 are almost identical. If rest and sabbath are important to God, they should be important to us as well.
Two of the elements my spiritual director included in our retreat were the song “Slow Me Down,” by Emmy Rossum and the poem “Sweet Darkness,” by David Whyte. I encourage you to look them both up if they are not already familiar to you. Rossum’s song is an invitation to step out of the (sometimes manic) momentum of our lives and into mindfulness. Whyte’s poem likewise acknowledges our need to step aside and simply abide so that we can remind ourselves (or perhaps discover) who we really are and whose we really are. When I read this poem, I feel as if the darkness/night is God just holding and hugging me, like a mother cradling a child. This then leads me to think of one of my favorite prayers which is part of Night Prayer in the New Zealand Prayer Book. I think, with substituting the word “sabbatical” for “night,” it is perhaps my guide for this upcoming sabbath time:
Lord,
It is night (sabbatical).
The night (sabbatical) is for stillness.
Let us be still in the presence of God.
It is night (sabbatical) after a long day.
What has been done has been done;
what has not been done has not been done;
let it be.
The night (sabbatical) is dark.
Let our fears of the darkness of the world and of our own lives
rest in you.
The night (sabbatical) is quiet.
Let the quietness of your peace enfold us,
all dear to us,
and all who have no peace.
The night (sabbatical) heralds the dawn.
Let us look expectantly to a new day,
new joys,
new possibilities.
In your name we pray. Amen.