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Did You Know? ...the CLF offers full-color UU posters for kids? Check them out in our CLF shop at www.clfuu.org.
BY THE REV. MARK MORRISON-REED, POINTE AU BARIL STATION, ONTARIO, RETIRED, FIRST UNITARIAN CONGREGATION OF TORONTO
Summers I spend communing with a road. It is not much to look at—just two tracks winding through the woods wide enough for one vehicle. It is not much of a road to others, perhaps, but I have a relationship with this road. I can close my eyes and describe it to you: its twist, the pitch of the grade, the vegetation on the shoulder, the outcroppings of rock, the culverts. It may seem a one-sided relationship, since I do all of the talking. And, of course, the road has no consciousness. But it has character, and what happens to me along the way is not independent of Shawanaga Landing Road.
Long ago this road was a path the Shawanaga Band members followed down to Shawanaga Bay, and this track will be there long after I am dead. To the road I am but another animal scattering sand and deepening the ruts, but for me it's become a pathway to adventure. It's a place where the unexpected happens.
You can't call what I do running. There's not much spring in my step or glide. It barely qualifies as jogging—someone called it "crawling." My feet lift just off the ground.
Along with a whistle to scare off bears—I hope—and insect repellent to ward off bugs, I carry a pocketsize notebook and a pen to capture sermon ideas as they pop into my mind. I've lost lots of these by not writing them down before the next thought crowds the last one out. As the spring progresses the trees bud, flowers bloom and there is new life everywhere. You would think that sermon ideas would flourish, too. They don't. They seem instead to follow a different gestation cycle. As soon as July arrives and the pressure is off and my mind and body begin to relax, they finally send up shoots.
Often, as I jog along, I'm not really there on the road, I just appear to be. My body is there, but my mind is elsewhere as I slow to a crawl, and then halt to scribble in my little book. Often I miss the beauty of the moment as I run along—trudge along—captivated by my own thoughts, calculating how many extra pounds I'll lose if I up my mileage, brooding over an argument, making a shopping list, or planning for the future instead of savouring all that is around me. I breathe and try again but it slips away so easily.
I breathe out. The gravel rattles and crunches; the sand makes a patting noise, or sometimes none at all. Dead leaves and pine needles make for a soft, yet almost springy, footing. Not many roots on the road, but where they break the surface they are slippery when wet. Awareness is like that, slippery. One moment the world is before me crystal clear in its glory, and in the next I'm stuck in mud of my own making.
Where do you go when you abandon this moment? Bringing my bare attention to each moment is a challenge, but despite my best intentions I am forever retreating into the past. In the past lie regrets, blame, and unending self-analysis as I revisit other roads I've been down. Gone is the one I'm actually jogging upon. I breathe in.
I breathe out. It's humid, rather than dewy, as mornings can be. Sweat condenses and runs down my spine. Beads form on my forehead. The shade feels good, but a breeze is better because it keeps the deer flies from swarming about my head. That buzzing is maddening. I swat one. I hate them all. I should give up jogging. Just like that, anger has captured my attention. Then in the distance I hear the rumble of a train. I breathe in. Just notice it all.
For me the road begins as it leads up from a sandy beach that has grown wider the last few years as the water level has grown lower. I stretch, then, moving in slow motion, begin to jog. There is a new pavilion to my right. Good thing, because it sure did rain the day we held Len's memorial service. Beneath leaking blue tarps the rain had rattled like machine gun fire. Guess that's where we'll hold the memorial service before we take his wife Eda's ashes out into the Shawanaga Bay. Jeez! The long midsummer weekend will be here soon and her family will be here. What will I say?
Worrying is what I'm really good at. How about you? Your children? Your life? The state of the world? Recently I can't escape worrying about the war in Iraq. Before that the Palestinians and Israelis preoccupied me, and before that 9/11. I don't understand how to move from hatred and fear to peace, or how I might be helpful, and so I worry instead. Meanwhile, I don't notice the world that surrounds me. I breathe in.
I don't do this well—paying attention to the moment. I breathe out and feel the loose sand spread beneath my sneakers. I see a cluster of cattails I'd never noticed before. I breathe out. The marsh smells different from the forest higher up. The one smells muddy and the other of pines.
My route becomes longer and longer as the summer goes on. I'm an hour away from the landing when I turn back. Skerryvore Road is wider. The forest is further back and offers a wider view. I don't notice its slow uphill rise when I'm driving, but I instantly feel it when I'm jogging. I see something—some movement to my left. It's black. It's small. It's a cute little bear cub. That's bad news; the last thing a jogger wants to be near is a darling little black bear because its overly protective mother is probably nearby.
I freeze. I‘m hyper-alert. My eyes scan the side of the road. Where is this cub's mother? My heart is racing, and not from running. Slowly I take one step back and then another. The bear scampers across the road, down the right bank and out of sight. I wait. I don't know what to do. I'm no hunter: I'm a jogger and a dilettante in the ways of the wild. I wait a little longer. I put my whistle to my mouth, but do I really want to draw attention to myself? I head forward again.
Suddenly a second cub scampers over the bank and onto the road. I freeze again, but at that moment a van pulls up on the other side and stops. I can see the children pointing at the cub. We all watch it cross. Its mother has got to be here somewhere. I'm scared, but decide to use the van as cover. I run fast (for me), and as I get to the driver's window he tells me they were going to let me in if Momma Bear appeared. I smile, say thanks and keep my pace up. Their concern for me—a stranger—leaves me feeling warm and happy. But then I keep replaying the sequence of events all the way home. I cannot leave my fear behind. It is our attachments that can get in the way of living fully—attachments to the past, and our pains and regrets that keep us stuck there. Our obsession with what the future might bring and our exertion to control it keeps us from savouring the moment, as do our worries about things that may not happen. Well-guarded opinions meant to resist change. The chatter that fills our heads.
Our tendency to analyze rather than notice, and to judge ourselves and others rather than to accept.
To what are you holding on? What keeps you from letting go? Breathe in and breathe out. Don't be holding on. Let it go. Let it all go.
And so the summer passes and I keep on jogging and practicing mindfulness—clearing my mind, not judging myself a failure when I don't, but merely noticing. Breathe in. I'm wed to that old, dusty, twisty, rutted, uphill but glorious road that leads from Shawanaga Landing into life, which is but a series of moments just like this one. Breathe out.
Have a little time to fill this summer? Feel like fall is the time of year when you should be heading off to class? Check these offerings on our Online Learning Center:
This course includes both the science of global warming and the theology of a UU response to this grave threat. It will also help participants find individual and collective ways to take action to slow the pace of climate change. Taught by CLF member Harold Wood and CLF minister for lifespan learning, the Rev. Dr. Lynn Ungar, this course begins July 15th and runs for four weeks.
This course includes both the science of global warming and the theology of a UU response to this grave threat. It will also help participants find individual and collective ways to take action to slow the pace of climate change.
Taught by CLF member Harold Wood and CLF minister for lifespan learning, the Rev. Dr. Lynn Ungar, this course begins July 15th and runs for four weeks.
This course will explore the history of humanism in classical philosophy, western intellectual development, and American religious development. We will also examine the variety of institutional forms of contemporary humanism, the issues it confronts, and the unique spiritual resources that it offers in the context of our UU movement. Taught by the Rev. Drs. Kendyl Gibbons and Carol Hepokowski, this course begins September 30th, and runs for eight weeks.
This course will explore the history of humanism in classical philosophy, western intellectual development, and American religious development. We will also examine the variety of institutional forms of contemporary humanism, the issues it confronts, and the unique spiritual resources that it offers in the context of our UU movement.
Taught by the Rev. Drs. Kendyl Gibbons and Carol Hepokowski, this course begins September 30th, and runs for eight weeks.
In her luminous book The Sacred Depths of Nature, cell biologist Ursula Goodenough shows a liberating new way to approach the vast topics of life, evolution, and death—a way that reconciles the modern scientific understanding of reality with our deep spiritual yearnings for reverence and meaning. The author presents a moving and persuasive case for a "credo of continuation" to preserve life on earth. This class will create a learning community in which scientists and mystics alike can learn, wonder, and grow together. Students will be asked to purchase the book and read two chapters per week, participate in online discussions, and do some intentional personal reflection. Taught by the Rev. Amanda Aikman, this class starts October 21 and runs for six weeks. This course will have a minimum enrollment of 12 people.
In her luminous book The Sacred Depths of Nature, cell biologist Ursula Goodenough shows a liberating new way to approach the vast topics of life, evolution, and death—a way that reconciles the modern scientific understanding of reality with our deep spiritual yearnings for reverence and meaning. The author presents a moving and persuasive case for a "credo of continuation" to preserve life on earth.
This class will create a learning community in which scientists and mystics alike can learn, wonder, and grow together. Students will be asked to purchase the book and read two chapters per week, participate in online discussions, and do some intentional personal reflection.
Taught by the Rev. Amanda Aikman, this class starts October 21 and runs for six weeks. This course will have a minimum enrollment of 12 people.
Each of these courses carries a $40 registration fee. Go to www.clfuu.org/learn to register or to learn more about how our online classes work.
BY PHILLIP HEWETT, MINISTER EMERITUS, UNITARIAN CHURCH OF VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA
Why have church? Over the years Unitarian Universalists have made a number of surveys on that very question. In one of them, the answer most voted was "intellectual stimulation," which is the sort of response one would expect if asking why people attend university extension courses or settle down with a good meaty book. The second most popular response was "community," which by the time of the next survey had moved up to the number one place. Again, one could ask whether community isn't readily available in scores of clubs and social events. Perhaps it's time to have another survey.
But instead of trying that, I have dredged up from memory (corroborated by Google) an answer that has impressed me ever since I first ran across it. According to my Oxford Companion to American Literature, Oliver Wendell Holmes was "probably the most militant Unitarian among Boston laymen" in his day. When someone asked him why he went regularly to church, he replied, "There is a little plant called reverence in the corner of my soul's garden, which I love to have watered once a week."
The more I think about it, the more significant that answer seems. But to get a full grasp of what it means, we have to take a closer look at that key word, reverence. It's a word that has fallen out of common usage in the recent past, like the word piety, though I think it is gradually coming back. Perhaps we are beginning to recognize the validity of what James Martineau said: "Whoever can so look into my heart as to tell whether there is anything which I revere: and if there be, what thing it is, that person may read me through and through, and there is no darkness wherein I may hide myself." He called this "the master-key to the whole moral nature."
I respond to that. But I still have to go on to ask, what exactly is reverence? Words can slip easily off our tongues without our having a clear idea of what they mean, and I have to confess that when I started pondering this theme I felt very much as Saint Augustine did when someone once asked him "What is time?" He found himself having to reply, "I thought I knew the answer until you asked the question!" My mind went back to ways in which the meaning of reverence has been distorted for political ends, unfortunately not a very uncommon occurrence with regard to many of the words we use to identify what is really important for our lives.
For instance, I remember that one of the first places I encountered this word was in the catechism that I had to learn in the Anglican church school I attended in my early days. In response to the question, "What is my duty towards my Neighbour?" we were supposed to reply, among other things, "to order myself lowly and reverently to all my betters." In the English class society of those days, we knew very well who our betters were. They were the aristocrats and the wealthy.
Specifically, in our little village they were the family who lived in the big house up on the hill. When they passed, we were expected to raise our caps, in the same way as the rank and file in the military salute a passing officer.
Reverence was not a mood that came naturally when one contemplated the life-style of some of those aristocrats. All this came back to me years later when I came to be addressed as "the Reverend." Did this give me some claim to be respected that I wouldn't otherwise have? I couldn't think so. Reverence might enter into the picture, but it wasn't reverence for me as a person. When I was in the military during World War II, I was taught that you were not saluting the person—you were saluting the commission that person held; something more subtle was being symbolized. A helpful distinction, but not much closer to a firm exposition of the true meaning of reverence. Better return to the dictionary.
So I went to Webster, and was surprised and delighted by what I found. Reverence was defined as "profound respect mingled with love and awe." There it all was, in a nutshell. Except that it contained no guidance as to what you give reverence to. Again, memory helped me out. While still at theological school I joined a seminar led by an unconventional philosopher, Henry Bugbee, which looked at this subject of reverence. The starting point, in his words, "always seems to involve humility, the position of a self as participant in the infinite importance of things, in contrast to a would-be appropriation of such importance." Yes, that sounded right. You are humble enough to see yourself as a modest part of a greater whole, not the pivot around which it all revolves. Then Bugbee went deeper. "Things which inspire us with reverence," he said, "teach us respect for themselves, but reverence seems to be a matter of accepting their ultimate gift, and not reverence for them.... It might be put this way: Religious interest in things includes respect for them and transcends it in so far as it involves receiving the ultimate gift of things with reverence."
I think I've put it all together now. Reverence is profound respect mingled with love and awe. However, it also includes humility. You don't give it to things or to people, for that would be a form of idolatry. You accord them respect, to be sure; but reverence is reserved for what those things or people give us. Reverence touches us at a much deeper level, in which we are meaningfully involved as we receive their gift.
Let me go back to a person for whom I feel a great respect, Albert Schweitzer. It was he who coined that wonderfully expressive phrase "reverence for life" as the guiding rule for human conduct. That revelation came to him, so he said, as he was sitting at sunset in a boat on an African river and passing through a herd of hippopotamuses. The world of nature was teaching him truths he had never found through years of study at universities. I wonder whether the people among whom he was working at that time also had some influence upon his discovery, people who in those days were dismissed by the so-called civilized part of humanity as "primitive." But they treated the world around them with respect. They didn't leave it degraded and polluted; they accepted its gifts to them with reverence.
Beyond respect, let's look at those other two words given in the definition: love and awe. Love, of course, is one of the great key-words in religion. As Jesus said, it is the foundation of religious living. It gives depth to our reverence for life's gifts. Awe, I'm afraid, is another of those words which our culture has degraded—look at what has happened to the word "awesome." However, a real sense of awe is, I think, slowly re-establishing itself as a vital element in a full life. It is inspired by our experiences of great beauty, and beauty is something we need to discover and cultivate. In our civilization we have spent so much time in clever thinking that we have not given ourselves time to experience that beauty.
Let me be personal here. After my wife died, I spent a good deal of time in remembering the gifts my relationship to her had brought to my life. I thought of her favorite quotation, words that Saint Teresa used when instructing those coming under her religious guidance: "I do not require of you to form great and serious considerations in your thinking. I require of you only to look." I don't know how many times Margaret said to me, "I require of you only to look." I was in too much of a hurry, thinking of the next task—or if we were out together in the mountains, of getting to the next summit. She said, "Stop! You are missing everything that is here right in front of us. I require of you only to look." She was right, of course. I hope I am learning to look, and to learn awe by gazing into the heart of a flower.
Perhaps, too, I understand more fully what the plant was like that Oliver Wendell Holmes found growing in the corner of his soul. He added, you remember, that he went to church because he loved to have it watered once a week. In saying that, does he speak for us too? Or are we still at the stage represented by the answers to those earlier surveys I mentioned? Not that there's anything wrong with intellectual stimulation or community—I hope that religion can give us both—but the church's primary contribution lies beyond this. It was this feeling that caused me often to use as my closing words for a service the lines of Tennyson:
Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell; That mind and soul, according well, May make one music as before.
But I still have to go on to ask, is the point of religion some great experience of reverence? Or would we be looking in the wrong place? Years ago, I circulated a questionnaire at a service asking people whether they had ever had what they felt to be a deep religious experience, and if so, where. Most of the respondents said it was out in the world of nature—in the mountains or the fields, or in a beautiful garden. Some said it was when they had their first sight of a newborn baby, or at the death of a loved one. Some spoke of their response to great music or great art. Nobody at all said, "At a church service." I was not dismayed by that, because I don't think this is the function of a church service. Oliver Wendell Holmes didn't say that the little plant first germinated there; he said it was watered there. Here I think there is a parallel to what Wordsworth said about poetry: that it was emotion recollected in tranquility. A church service should provide the tranquility in which we recollect and appreciate our own experiences of reverence and lay ourselves open to more of them. It is also a time to look at the way others in the past, as in the present, have recorded similar experiences, so that we can learn from them.
That, I suggest, is what watering the plant means. It doesn't always happen, of course. I remember uneasily what a professor of mine once said about clergy who tried "to sweeten the powder of unwanted religion with the jam of current entertainment." There are lots of places to go for entertainment, but this doesn't water the plant. Reverence is hard to cultivate in an atmosphere of carnival—which doesn't mean at all that it is devoid of the spice of humour. There is a right way and a wrong way to do the watering, as any gardener knows. A preacher (not, I think, a Unitarian Universalist) always used to embellish his services with colourful metaphors, and one day got carried away in his extemporaneous prayer. "O Lord,' he prayed, "if there be any spark of reverence in this congregation, O Lord, water that spark."
Time set aside for worship and contemplation—for church—can achieve what Oliver Wendell Holmes felt it did for him. Watering this plant is essential to our survival in a world that has become more and more threatened as a result of massive irreverence. Perhaps we are, after all, a community of gardeners.
Have you ever made a baked good for a church fair? How about canning pickles? Perhaps you have volunteered at the fair boutique table. I purchased the use of a landscaper at the church auction, while others went in together to purchase an exotic dinner for ten. My bricks and mortar UU Church hosts a few coffee houses throughout the year. Plus, there's the occasional musical revue. I buy tickets to these events all the time.
Here at the CLF, fundraising for our church is different:
For every bag of flour you have not had to buy, For every pot and pan you have not had to wash, For every hour you have not had to stand at the boutique table, For every item you have not had to purchase from the auction, For every coffee house concert or music revue you have not had to attend….
Please consider translating this wonderful quality of life into a financial donation for the CLF.
Price of cucumbers, vinegar and canning jars? $42.57.
Donation to CLF?
Priceless!
There are several easy ways to donate to the CLF. Go to www.clfuu.org and Make a Contribution. Or send a check in the reply envelope in Quest. Or set up an automatic donation by using your online banking service. Or call Lorraine at the office: 617-948-6166 and she will take your credit card donation over the phone.
by Mr. Barb Greve and Kelly Weisman Asprooth-Jackson, intern ministers
Surprisingly, amazingly, and perhaps unbelievably, we have come to the close of our time with the Church of the Larger Fellowship. After months of life with and among you, stooped over our keyboards and poised at our writing desks; after a year of getting to know you by phone, e-mail, postal mail and all the electronic networks at the CLF's disposal; after all that we have been through together, it is time to say "goodbye."
It has been a gift to be with you in the year now passed. You have taught us the power of connection and correspondence. Some of you have shared your struggles and joys in life with us, teaching us the power of life and ministry. Some of you have reminded us of the importance of Quest. And some of you have quietly received the ministry of the Church of the Larger Fellowship, reminding us of the importance of a religious life.
We go now to repay that gift to the world, in the work of this movement, this hope called Unitarian Universalism. We will remember you; do not forget yourselves. You are the nomads and the fire-tenders, the ambassadors and the lantern-bearers of a faith, which this planet sorely needs. Stay brave. Stay open. Never stop questioning. Never stop dreaming. Never stop working, in all the capacities that your spirits may provide.
So, "Shalom, havayreem." Farewell, friends. And "As-Salamu Alaykum." Peace be upon you.
Photo: Cheryl Bowlan, Starr King School for the Ministry Front: Kelly Weisman Asprooth-Jackson and Internship Supervisor, the Rev. Kim Crawford Harvie. Back: Internship Supervisor, the Rev. Jane Rzepka and Mr. Barb Greve.
BY JANE RZEPKA, SENIOR MINISTER, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP
Out of every hundred people, those who always know better: fifty-two. Unsure of every step: almost all the rest. Ready to help, if it doesn't take long: forty-nine…. Able to admire without envy: eighteen…. Those not to be messed with: four-and-forty. Living in constant fear of someone or something: seventy-seven. Capable of happiness: twenty-some-odd at most. Harmless alone, turning savage in crowds: more than half, for sure. Cruel when forced by circumstances: it's better not to know not even approximately…. Balled up in pain and without a flashlight in the dark: eighty-three, sooner or later. Those who are just: quite a few, thirty-five. But if it takes effort to understand: three. Worthy of empathy: ninety-nine. Mortal: one hundred out of one hundred— a figure that has never varied yet.
by Wislawa Szymborska, translated by Joanna Trzeciak, excerpted from The Atlantic Monthly, May 1997
Unitarian Universalists are known for our upbeat religion. Our babies are not born into original sin—we believe children are terrific from the get-go. When the cycle of life completes itself, we're up-beat still. Our tendency is toward memorial services, where the dead are not present, and life is celebrated as much as is possible, given our loss.
So when we hear a poem like "A Word on Statistics," as I did in a worship service by one of my colleagues, Jay Leach, maintaining the decidedly un-upbeat viewpoint is tough. The poem's statistics are not the statistics I want to believe. I want to see "Capable of happiness," way up in the 90s. And couldn't the poem please give "Ready to help" at least a 95, or even the full 100? I want to see high numbers for "good" and "wise"; low for "cruel" and "balled up in pain."
In fact, it's in our religious communities where I most want my wishful stats to be true. Wouldn't it be great if the CLF could be one place where everything is perfect? Where we admire and empathize and always are just? Where all lives are happy and wise, where spiritual emptiness is filled? A congregation where everyone finds meaning and purpose, where every dream, every plan, every expectation or vision of life pans out—a congregation of perfect people, a heavenly place on earth, peopled with saints?
Our ancestors tried this plan. It didn't work out. In one branch of our Unitarian Universalist religious family tree we find the Puritans, from whom we broke away. And the way the Puritans had it figured, there were two kinds of people: the good people—themselves—and the bad people. The Puritans didn't much like the bad people, or sin, or wickedness for that matter, and so in 1630, there in England, they packed themselves up and took off for a hemisphere that was pure.
But somehow, after living in the Massachusetts Bay Colony for awhile, everyone was not pure, and it wasn't completely obvious which people were the good people and which were the wicked ones. If you want a church full of only perfect people, "visible saints," they called them, you have to devise a test. Which, by 1640, they did.
Say you want to join the Puritan church. You interview with the church elders, who examine your religious knowledge and religious experience. If you are ignorant, graceless, or scandalous, you are turned back then and there. But if you pass that test, all the church members begin to ask around about you, to snoop, to uncover possible moral offenses. If, after all that, you can get church members to testify to your good behavior, you have the opportunity to describe to the gathered congregation the way in which God's saving grace came to you. Then you are questioned by the congregation at large. Once that's over, you make a public profession of faith, in your own words. Then there's a vote. (One fellow I read about got nearly all the way through, then heard himself say that saving grace had come to him "while he was enjoying a pipe of the good creature tobacco." He was, as they say, history.) All that—that was the "test."
We didn't stick with this strategy of visible saints. One of our forbears of the period, John Eliot, thought that purity of membership was for the birds; he believed we have a responsibility to mix with, as he put it, "sinners and heathens." He figured churches should admit everyone, "so as to keep the whole heape of chaff and corne together."
We have adopted John Eliot's position, "chaff and corne" together, some of us taking the role of corn one week, only to have a week as chaff the next. Of course that's not how we've come to see it—corn and chaff, good and bad—but rather people together, a religious community of folks who understand the pleasure and pain of living on this planet.
We have come to understand that Szymborska's numbers, at least the ones at the very end, are worthy of our attention and our embrace. "Worthy of empathy: ninety-nine." "Mortal: one hundred out of one hundred—a figure that has never varied yet."
BY LYNN UNGAR, MINISTER FOR LIFESPAN LEARNING, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP
"What are you doing?"
"Nothing."
How many times do you think that particular conversation has happened between a parent and a child? A million? More? Now, I know, as a parent, that sometimes "Nothing" is shorthand for "I'd rather not say, because you're probably not going to like it." But I also know that there are lots of times when, although we're probably doing something, we really don't know quite what it is we're doing. And what's more, we don't really care.
I also know, as a parent, that it's easy to get mad at kids for doing nothing, or what gets called nothing, when they're supposed to be doing their homework or getting ready for school or putting shoes on when you're already late for an appointment. But I think summer is a good time to point out that there's a lot to be said in favor of doing nothing.
Did you know that doing nothing is one of the Ten Commandments? You've probably heard of the Ten Commandments—the rules that God is said to have given directly to Moses on Mt. Sinai. They became the most basic laws of the Jewish religion, and of the Christian religion after that. They include big, important rules that pretty much everyone can agree on, such as "Don't lie." and "Don't murder." And number four, right up near the top, right before "honor your father and mother," is "remember the Sabbath day."
What's the Sabbath day? Well, the commandment goes on to explain: "Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day…you shall not do any work." There it is. The Sabbath is a Do Nothing day. Doing nothing is so important that it's built right into one of the most important documents in all of religion. Actually, that's not even the full sentence. The sentence finishes up: "you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns."
Hmm…well, I imagine the first thing you might notice is that there's stuff in there that you might not expect to see, like slaves. This was written a really long time ago, in a time and place when people thought that having slaves was OK. Obviously, we don't think that any more. But what's interesting to me is that the commandment is designed to be totally clear that once a week absolutely everybody is to Do Nothing. People—regardless of whether they're treated like property, even people who aren't Jewish and just happen to live among Jews—everyone gets a day off. Even the animals get a day off. To do what? To do nothing.
Or, at any rate, to do the kind of things that people do when they're "not doing anything." If you are forbidden to work, then you have the time and space to daydream, and get lost in your imagination. You have time to sing or read or make mud pies or sit under a tree or let sand run through your fingers. You can stare at bugs or spin in circles or notice all the different colors of green that light makes on a tree. You can roll down a hill or stand on your head or stop and smell the roses.
Why did the Jewish religion come up with this invention of a "Do Nothing" day? Well, that's there in the commandment, too. It says, "For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it." In other words, even if you have the power to bring all of creation into being, you still need a chance to rest and chill out. In fact, the chance to do nothing is so important that God blessed that day of rest beyond the other days, making it a special holy day. In Judaism, the most important holiday isn't Yom Kippur, the great Day of Atonement. It isn't Passover, the celebration of freedom and the founding of the Jewish religion. It certainly isn't Hanukkah, which only gets a lot of attention because it falls so close to Christmas. No, the most important Jewish holiday is the Sabbath, the holiday which comes every week. So the biggest deal in the whole religion is the chance to do nothing.
That's how important it is.
I'm hoping that if you're on summer vacation you have a chance to really honor this opportunity for a Sabbath—a place with enough empty space in it that you can let your mind wander. And if this is winter for you since you live in the Southern Hemisphere, or if you have year-round school and not a lot of time off in the summer, then I still hope that you find places and times of Sabbath, when you can do nothing more than bless and be blessed by the wonderful world around us.
I never want to be so busy that I don't notice morning rain on cobwebs, a snail wandering up the side of my house and heading towards the roof, a baby trying to catch its own toes…. I'm going to pause and say, "Good morning spider, thank you for weaving such silver perfection outside my front door. Hello there, snail. I hope you enjoy the view when you get to the top. If you look over towards the two big red chimneys you should be able to see Dun Laoghaire from here." It's been a long time now since I climbed a tree, so I'm going to. I'm going to get the 42 bus out to the woodlands in Malahide and find a nice easy one. When I get to the top I'm going to stay there for a while and listen, and I'm not coming down again until I hear a seagull scream.
by Bill Darlison, minister, Dublin Unitarian Church, from his sermon, "The Many-Splendoured Thing"
Last updated July 1, 2007
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