Sabbath Series Archives - Everyday Integrity

March 26, 2018

Keeping Sacred Space

How much sacred space do we find in our lives these days?

For many, not much.

Especially if going to church or hanging out in libraries is not your thing.

Does that mean we can’t or don’t keep sacred space?

I think we can. And do.

What is Sacred Anymore?

Everything!

Sacred comes from the Latin word for holy.

Nowadays, we define sacred as connected with God (or the gods) or dedicated to a religious purpose and so deserving great respect.

For some, that comes with a lot of baggage.

Sanctuary also comes from the Latin word for holy and means a sacred place. A place one is safe. A place of respect. A place to be.

Just as a sanctuary can be one’s home or favorite park, we can create sacred space and times and practices and rituals anywhere in our lives.

We set the intention, we eagerly express our love and pay close attention. Committed, respected, honored. Over and over and over again.

While these are integrated into our everyday, that does not make them secular.

In his TEDTalk and book about The Art of Stillness, Pico Iyer describes his evolving practice of a secular Sabbath.

Right now, this doesn’t make sense to me. Secular meaning “attitudes or activities that have no spiritual basis.”

For me, Sabbath and my other spiritual practices are absolutely about connecting with my spirit and the Spirit, the life force that runs through everything, and with my communities.

This divine connection is sacred and holy. And present every moment of my life.

Especially on Sabbath.

Sabbath Time

Iyer reminds us of how Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel called Sabbath “a cathedral in time rather than in space.” He further described it as the one day a week we take off becomes a vast empty space through which we can wander, without agenda, as through the light-filled passageways of Notre Dame. It’s like a retreat house that ensures we’ll have something bring and purposeful to carry back into the other six days.

“This is what the principle of the Sabbath enshrines,” Iyer said.

Sounds pretty sacred to me!

So how do we keep this time sacred?

We keep this time sacred by defining and refining what brings us closer to the Source.

“Often what seems necessary in the moment can often wait, making way for a day that is holy, set apart and different,” wrote Shelly Miller in Rhythms of Rest.

The day becomes celebratory and special, revered and desired.

And, so we set boundaries that help us and others to be in this sacred time – together or apart, as needed.

“Sabbath restrictions on work and activity actually create a space of great freedom; without these self-imposed restrictions, we may never be truly free,” said Wayne Muller in Sabbath.

Miller agrees that it’s not about specific rules, but rather boundaries that allow greater flexibility. She offers the reminder that with practice, over time, we achieve a Sabbath heart and resolve remains steadfast whatever the context.

When we can speak clearly and from the heart about why Sabbath time is sacred, is special and different, then others will understand, respect and support us in keeping sacred space.

And, if they don’t, that says a lot too!

What to Keep Out

The universal tradition in this break, this pause, this sacred time of being gone sabbathing looks different for everybody nowadays.

The main ways this time becomes holy, set apart, different is:

Not working, including paid work and informal work, domestic work, caregiving, volunteering
Being offline and disengaged from technologies like the internet, email, and often social media
Disengaging from measured time, schedules and planning

Easier said than done. Absolutely.

Especially if your spirit leads you along a spiritual path that is outside of one formal organization or community, like me.

While I have many spiritual communities, none observe Sabbath in the way that I do.

I have made this sacred time my own. As many others are doing as well.

In his book The Promise of a Pencil about his rapid and successful entrepreneurial journey to create schools in third world countries, Adam Braun talks about his own practice.

He doesn’t call it Sabbath, but given his Jewish roots, I have a feeling it is similarly inspired.

He described, instituting a personal policy of going off email from Friday night until Sunday morning. He used the weekends to rest, rejuvenate and reconnect with those he cherished most.

This was tough to do in the passion-driven and all consuming startup and nonprofit worlds Braun exists in. It required clear boundaries around work and online activity.

His email response to a colleague is a great template for explaining these boundaries to others:

“I just want to be open with you. I recently put a practice into place where I go off email from sundown Friday to Sunday morning, to make sure I stop working and spend quality time with my loved ones. I also find it makes me more energized for the next week ahead if I’m not on email over the weekend, and it help to avoid burnout.”

Now, what coworker wouldn’t understand that?

And, if they don’t, that says a lot too!

The key is to be forthright with others about when our sacred time is, what it looks like, and why it’s important, so that they can respect and honor it.

What to Keep In

Who knows, maybe they’ll want to join in?

For many, the invitation to rest and reset has never been offered or modeled.

Or there is a bad aftertaste from past experiences with organizations, rules and sacrifice. It is a sacrifice!

Sacrifice also comes from the Latin for holy. It is an act of giving up something valued for the sake of something else regarded as more important or worthy.

As Wayne Muller said in Sabbath, “It is too easy to talk of prohibition, but the point is the space and time created to say yes to sacred spirituality, sensuality, sexuality, prayer, rest, song, delight.”

The universal tradition in this break, this pause, this sacred time of being gone sabbathing looks different for everybody nowadays.

The main ways this time becomes holy, set apart, different is:

Being, celebrating, worshiping, rejoicing, feasting, playing, loving
Giving our undivided, loving attention to those in our lives and within touch, whether partner or child or cat or garden or self
Living in the moment, going with the flow, unbound by schedules and planning

Rituals, or a series of actions, help set this time apart just as intentionally as boundaries.

Just as Miller said, as continued, dedicated practice becomes rhythm becomes tradition, these rituals become less learned and more intuited.

For many, Sabbath includes ceremonies to enter and exit this sacred time.

As well as special candles, prayers, spices and/or foods. And special activities like bathing or making love.

Inspired by Muller’s book, Sabbath, which includes lots of ideas for rituals, using a Sabbath box is something that’s new to my practice in the last year.

This box holds matches, a candle and a poem to enter Sabbath. Index cards with my fundamental precepts of what matters most, poems, a pen and special pocket notebook for capturing divine musings during the day. A bag of spices, a tiny bowl and prayers to exit Sabbath. Often, I turn off my phone and put it away in the box for the day, as I would with a watch if I wore one.

And, my box can even travel with me when I’m away on Sabbath!

Sabbath Worthy

“When I ask myself if the activity is easy and if it makes me feel lighter, my answer determines how I choose to spend time on Sabbath,” wrote Miller.

I completely agree.

I find this applies to finding restorative “activities” and especially to who I spend time with on Sabbath.

Is this person easy? Do they make me feel lighter?

Here Anne Morrow Lindbergh is reflecting on life in general within her book, Gift from the Sea, though is especially true on Sabbath:

“I shall ask into my shell only those friends with whom I can be completely honest. I find I am shedding hypocrisy in relationships. What a rest that will be! The most exhausting thing in life I have discovered is being insincere. That is why so much of social life is exhausting, one is wearing a mask. I have shed my mask.”

This begs the question: if someone is not “Sabbath worthy,” then how (and why) are we fitting them into the rest of our life, or our “shell” as Lindbergh says?

My tolerance and interest for activities and people, feelings and habits that do not align with this rhythm of balance has changed dramatically.

Sabbath has shown me what to keep out and what to keep in during my sacred time set apart each week.

And, over the years, these lessons have seeped into the rest of my days, into the whole of my life.

Join others from around the country in the next Sabbath Course as we explore and practice together, inspired by an interfaith, personal approach to this universal tradition. This 7-week course includes fun weekly activities, weekly community gatherings online and your own practice. You’ll experience what students describe as a “positive and significant impact on my personal growth and spiritual exploration.”

March 11, 2018April 12, 2022

The Art of Being, Not Doing

When I look back on the year, my favorite days were usually the ones when I was doing nothing.

I was just being.

Not just as in “barely or by a little.”

The way it seems just gets used or referenced most of the time nowadays.

Just as in “simply, only, no more than.”

But for a long time, I thought this way of being was a luxury, something only accessible on vacation.

Actually before that, I forgot that this was my favorite way of being.

And before that I forgot this was a way of being at all.

Busy Beings

But how could this be? How could one forget that we are human be-ings?

Because nowadays we feel more like human do-ings.

In Overwhelmed, Brigid Shulte interviewed a researcher who studies Christmas Holiday cards who discovered, “My God, people are competing about being busy. It’s about showing status. That if you’re busy, you’re important. You’re leading a full and worthy life.”

We have slipped into the cult of busy. I know I did.

I spent the better part of my teens and 20s being an active member.

Too many commitments and expectations, I lived back-to-back and double-booked with a ton of worry and anxiety gluing it all together.

I thought I was “living life to the fullest.” I wasn’t.

My life wasn’t full, it was just compulsively busy.

Busy doing, not full of being.

Loved for Doing

“The difficulty of always feeling that you ought to be doing something is that you tend to undervalue the times when you’re apparently doing nothing, and those are very important times. It’s the equivalent of the dream time, in your daily life, times when things get sorted out and reshuffled. If you’re constantly awake work-wise you don’t allow that to happen,” said musician and producer Brian Eno within Scott McDowell’s essay in Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus & Sharpen Your Creative Mind.

“Most of our current work and life structures have been devised to emphasize production and how much we can accomplish rather than the nurturing of the soul,” wrote Tami Lynn Kent in Wild Creative.

“Because of the general emphasis on production, achievement and building a career, we typically learn to create by becoming self-sufficient and actively doing whatever needs to be done.”

Our culture models and celebrates self-sufficiency, doing everything for ourselves instead of relying on help from others, which makes a lot more work or doing for us.

It’s a slippery slope to always doing as Brian Eno describes, and/or to over-doing.

Economist Juliet Schor argues that with the introduction of the clock in the thirteenth century and the rise of manufacturing time became money, as Schulte shared in Overwhelmed.

Add productivity and competition to self-sufficiency and independence and you quickly get a value for achievement.

More, faster, better, best.

This state of achievement celebrates us for what we do, not who we are.

It’s a pretty easy detour to mis-interpret this as the recipe for worthiness and love:

“As long as we are working hard, using our gifts to serve others, experiencing joy in our work along with the toil, we are always in danger…” wrote Lynne Baab.

In danger of believing we are loved for what we do, not who we are.

Loved for Being

Baab said that only in stopping, really stopping, do we teach our hearts and souls that we are loved apart from what we do.

For me, as soon as I was paying attention to the rest of the world in high school, I picked up on this message: doing = love.

I longed for love. Always had.

And always had it. But, I didn’t realize that back then.

I just sensed that I was different and misunderstood. By others and by myself.

In looking for models of love in my life, I saw the celebration of achievement – on the news, at school, at home – and I took that to heart.

Along the way, I lost track of my favorite way of being: my true nature.

Reconnecting with my being and shedding layers of achievement accumulated over the decades has been transformative. Relearning that I am loved —always— and especially for who I am has been one of the biggest life lessons for me.

I believe we all still inherently know how to be. Just as we are all loved for being. But, we are often too distracted to notice or remember.

So, first we have to stop.

Easier said than done.

Being

“The popular assumption is that no skills are involved in enjoying free time, and that anybody can do it. Yet the evidence suggests the opposite: free time is more difficult to enjoy than work. Having leisure at one’s disposal does not improve the quality of life unless one knows how to use it effectively, and it is by no means something one learns automatically,” said Mihaly Csikszentmihali.

As one of the leading researchers of flow, or that ultimate state of being, he should know.

Point taken: just being can feel lonely, boring, and/or uncomfortable when infrequent because of too much doing.

Or when one does not first feel connected and loved for being.

In her research about overwork, Schulte also explored leisure which often creates flow when practiced frequently.

“In the purest sense, leisure is not being slothful, idle or frivolous. It is, in the words of leisure researcher Ben Hunnicutt, simply being open to the wonder and marvel of the present. ‘The miracle of now,’ he calls it, to choose to do something with no other aim than that it refreshes the soul, or to choose to do nothing at all. To just be and feel fully alive.

“…a time not just for play, recreation and connection with others but also for meditation, reflection, and deep thought…Throughout the course of history, in this leisure time away from toil, elite men…came up with some of the most brilliant innovations, enduring art, and soaring discoveries humanity has ever known,” wrote Schulte.

Oh, the irony: in not doing, we find our greatest achievements.

Once upon a time, a third of the year was dedicated to days off, eg: festivals, Saint’s days, milestones like births, deaths and marriages, Sabbath and other official rest days.

Further back in Roman times, almost half the year were public festivals—days of being, not doing.

This is what I find in my Sabbath time each week.

Time to put all the doing aside with lots of space for relating, dreaming, being.

And being inspired. Some of my most original ideas have been showing up on Sabbath even as I’m trying not to think or do.

Ways of Being

When I’m just being, life is full of:

Mindfulness
Intention
Attention
Clarity

I discard what’s distracting or disintegrating me from the world.

I reconnect with what matters most and with my true nature:

Being outside or at the beach.
Reading inspiring poems and books.
Napping and dreaming.
Sitting by the fire and telling stories.
Savoring beautiful works of art.

My true nature really likes being with myself. I get recharged in solitude. I also enjoy solitude in community. And groups of people I know well.

For others, it’s different. There are many ways to access our own being.

“Sabbath time offers the gift of deep balance; in Sabbath time, we are valued not for what we have done or accomplished, but simply because we have received the gentle blessing of being miraculously alive,” said Wayne Muller in Sabbath.

Being Today

As Baab reminds us in her book Sabbath Keeping, “what we choose to do on the Sabbath needs to bring us rest and life over time. The challenge is discernment, experimenting to find what works for us and the people we love, what helps us catch our breath and remember who we are.” (italics added for emphasis)

Remembering the Sabbath each week has been an important part of reconnecting with myself over the years.

As rich as those days are, they’re only a fraction of my year. The other days contain a lot of doing.

Schulte asked and I often wonder as well:

What, when you really come down to the quotidian details, does it look like every day to have time to do good work, to spend quality time with your family and friends and to refresh your soul?

To be in flow throughout life and not only one day a week, I imagine life needs to look differently. A lot less doing, I bet.

And also probably a different kind of doing: less effort and more energy.

More of the art of being—in our true nature, a state of integrity—everyday.

March 9, 2018August 21, 2018

What Matters Most

This was the moment when I really felt it: this.

“This is bliss.”

“This is what matters most.”

Why?

Because it was a combination of what’s important to me and how my soul glows.

These moments used to be fewer and farther in between. Accidental connections to my truest nature. I wanted more.

Nowadays, I have found the words to define my personal guidelines for living a whole life. Living wholly and soulfully. Not accidental, but intentional.

That doesn’t mean life is perfect. Far from it.

I am always practicing and I have a light to guide the way: my personal guidelines for the day-to-day and my inner guide for when things get really tricky.

Everyone has this light, though not everyone has the words.

How does one learn what matters most?

By preparing for the answers: keeping sacred space, knowing your inner guide and asking the big questions, and then, living into them.

Start with Perspective

In one of my favorite movies, About Time, the lead character can time travel.

He doesn’t need a machine like Bill & Ted. He can just close his eyes, focus on a moment, and go there.

The most powerful thing he discovers? He has do-overs.

He can go back and re-do every day, savoring the moments:

Acknowledging the clerk at the market with a smile.
Noticing the beautiful windows as he’s running to catch his train.
Greeting his crying, messy child after work.

Eventually, he stops time traveling and literally only lives in the present.

Feel free to stop reading and go stream it (it’s so good).

Then, you can come back to this post and learn about how to live this way.

Why isn’t life only about what really matters?

According to the movie, life is only about these precious moments—what really matters—it’s just about our perspective on it.

Yes, and, you might be thinking.

There’s actually a lot in our lives that doesn’t matter. More so for some people than others.

How do we know what does and doesn’t matter?

“To discern what is truly essential we need space to think, time to look and listen, permission to play, wisdom to sleep, and the discipline to apply highly selective criteria to the choices we make. Ironically in [our] culture these things—space, listening, playing, sleeping and selecting—can be seen as trivial distractions,” wrote Greg McKweon in Essentialism about the disciplined pursuit of less.

How do we find space and time and permission and wisdom?

We practice.

Keeping Sacred Space

I find the best time for me to practice creating sacred space is when I’m backpacking, when I’m on retreat and when I observe Sabbath, my “weekly retreat.”

In his book, Sabbath, Muller writes, “Sabbath is an incubator for wisdom. When we allow the rush and pressure of our days to fall away, even for a short period of time, we are able to discern the essential truth of what lies before us.”

Poet Wendell Berry, who has a longstanding practice of Sabbath, wrote:

During the Buddhist Sabbath, lay people and monks gather to recite the precepts that govern their practice. There are hundreds of these precepts for monks, concerning everything from how you meditate to how you eat your food and how you wash your bowl.

But more than the specific precepts, it is a time to reiterate what is ultimately important, sacred. Whether the Eightfold Path of Buddhism, the Five Pillars of Islam, or the Ten Commandments, most religions consider certain precepts to be guiding lights to help us find our way through darker times.

Berry often writes poetry about what’s ultimately important, sacred, on the Sabbath. There is a sense of divine inspiration in his observations of the world and its interconnectedness.

“Sabbath is a time when we retreat from the illusion of our own indispensability. We are important in that we are part of something larger,” adds Muller.

Something larger that’s often hard to comprehend without some guidance.

Knowing Your Inner Guide

“Whether we choose spirituality or religion, we need a system of experiences and beliefs that is true to our own experience. We must once again look at our own lives and discover what we already know,” says Cecile Andrews, author of The Circle of Simplicity: The Return to the Good Life.

Anthropology Professor Roger Walsh wrote:

“We know more than we know we know. The inner source has been called by many names: for example, the Hindu’s “inner guru,” the Tibetan Buddhist’s “personal diety,” the Christian Quaker’s “still small voice within,” or the psychologist’s “higher self.” Whatever the name, the implications are the same. We have within us remarkable wisdom that will guide and help us if we learn how to recognize and draw on it.”

Just that simple.

Ultimately, yes, and…

From my experience the learning how to recognize [and listen] and draw on it, is a lifelong quest for the monks and us lay people alike.

Over the years, I’ve come to know and listen to this.

My inner guide is the filter for what is true to me, at any given time, on my path.

As I’ve quieted and settled what Walsh describes as “the outer self” of surface emotions, habits and personality, and then “the inner self” of secret hopes and fears, self-image and beliefs, the listening grew easier, the voice grew louder and clearer.

This so-called voice lies within our “deep self,” or soul.

For some this conversation comes through deep, committed practices with meditation or yoga.

For me this conversation comes mainly through intentional practices of:

Going on a personal retreat almost every season from 2007-2017, as well as solo backpacking trips since 2015.
Digesting and listening each week on Sabbath since 2015. In the absence of work, of plans, of internet, of emotions and habit, and of self-image, I hang out with my soul.

It is in these sacred spaces and times when I’ve become acquainted with my inner guide, my deep self, my still small voice within.

It’s always been there, I just hadn’t asked or hadn’t really listened before.

Asking the Big Questions

Listening starts with asking. The curiosity to receive whatever shows up.

Questions like:

What inspires me?
What is it like when I’m “in my element”?
What is love?
What do I believe?
What do I fear?
What’s always been important to me?
What connects me to Source?
When do I feel whole?

I’ve been amazed at how often it’s in the most minuscule moment of awe, perhaps examining a worm slithering through the soil, that my inner guide reveals my deepest knowing, the answers to these questions.

“Sabbath honors this quality of not knowing, an open receptivity of mind essential for allowing things to speak to us from where they are,” wrote Muller.

It is a lifelong conversation to recognize our own wisdom.

There is a difference between knowledge and wisdom.

In Essential Spirituality, Dr. Walsh said:

Knowledge informs us, wisdom transforms us.
Knowledge is something we have, wisdom is something we must become.
Knowledge is expressed in words, wisdom in our lives.
Knowledge empowers, wisdom empowers and enlightens.

Wisdom is our deepest knowing.

As such, often our most heartfelt questions are more of a feeling than a thought.

They don’t always formulate into neat, little sentences.

Because it’s not about figuring things out. That’s knowledge.

This is about feeling things out as our being connects the dots and then the answer emerges.

Wisdom.

The wisdom, courage, and clarity we need are already embedded in creation—in nature, in the world, in our lives. The solution is already alive in the problem. Thus, our work is not always to push and strive and struggle. Often we have only to be still, and we will know, wrote Muller.

The Tao Te Ching asks us:

Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?

In other words, until the right answer arises by itself?

Moments Matter Most

Once you start having the conversation, you can discern what is truly essential, what matters most, as McKweon describes.

You’ll know what is important to you and how your soul glows.

You’ll know what this feels like and you’ll be able to start putting the words together to define your personal guidelines for living a whole life.

Once you name it, you can live it even more intentionally. Remembering and practicing these fundamental precepts each week, they become your every day.

“When I am fully aware of clouds moving, birds trilling, insects buzzing and downy feathers floating on the still lake, I lean into the portal from this moment, beyond next week, and into the grand scale of things, weighing the collection of meaningful moments holding my life together,” wrote Shelly Miller.

This is living life to the fullest.

February 1, 2018

Gone Sabbathing

Just as a fisherman makes new bait and packs up his tackle box so that he has what he needs to peacefully sit in his boat and do nothing while he’s “gone fishing,” I’ve noticed that preparing for Sabbath makes the time so much sweeter.

Over the years of observing the gift of Sabbath there have been days when everything was ready and days when everything was in disarray.

And even a day or two when I skipped Sabbath because I wasn’t “done” with the week yet.

The following week was even harder to get through, not easier.

Happy (& Unhappy) Sabbath

When my cottage has piles of good intentions and undone to-dos scattered around when the weekend arises, I’ve ended up in a vegetative state of “rest” on Sabbath.

I’d watch movies or read for hours on end.

Technically, I’m not doing anything, so still “sabbathing,” right?

Yet, the following day I’ll feel empty and drained instead of full and invigorated.

Other times, I’ve escaped the mess, spending the day out exploring in the world. I return feeling full, but still a bit spent.

I understand the intention behind many traditions having specific guidelines (or often very specific rules) about how to enter Sabbath.

It’s true, the day is more accessible and sweeter when my life is ready to take a break.

And, interestingly, my mindset matters more than the mess.

When my body is ready to take a break as well, when I’ve emptied my mind and heart of grievances and concerns, then it doesn’t bother me as much.

Acts of Service, Acts of Love

As Shelly Miller writes in Rhythms of Rest, “when we run errands early in the week, clean up the house, prepare food for the weekend, these are acts of love at the root.”

She says that preparation is an act of love and rest is an act of faith.

I usually think of errands, cleaning, cooking etc. as acts of obligation.

But, when they are in preparation for something special, like a holiday or a holy day, they do take on a different motivation.

I sense the devotion to myself and my loved ones as I double down on the housework or email.

In his book, The Five Love Languages, Gary Chapman describes this as Acts of Service: “doing things you know ____________ (name of someone you love) would like you to do.”

In other words, Chapman says, you seek to please them by serving them, to express your love by doing things for them.

And, I think this starts with ourselves.

But, I think the idea of self love is misleading. Self love doesn’t exist.

There is always love there.

A love that is whole and keeps me whole. Because, the whole cannot be whole without all of me.

But, when my devotion is lacking, when there are holes of fatigue or hurt or disappointment or fear, it is harder to do these acts of service, acts of love.

This is where the faith comes in.

Preflight Checklist

Knowing, from wisdom and intuition, what will make things better for later.

Knowing that the satisfaction, joy, elation later will be far greater than the effort now.

And, it can be even more effortless when done already feeling joyful anticipation.

What will make Sabbath easier?

This list can get very long, but I’ve noticed that there are usually a few key things that really matter.

If undone, they’ll hang over me or get in my way. Or create a gap that jerks me out of my flow.

Like not having anything in the house to eat.

Everybody’s checklist of priorities is different.

For me, it is:

An empty sink,
A tidy home,
Groceries and optimally pre-made meals,
Critical emails sent

And, if I’m really in a groove, what will make the day after easier?

Errands run
Quick look ahead to following week
And in my current routine, my next blog post done and newsletter prepped

Acts of service go beyond showing devotion to ourselves and to others, and include receiving service.

Which begs the question: Who can help with these preparation priorities?

Asking for and receiving help may actually be the greatest form of satisfaction, joy, elation.

And this is all before Sabbath!

Weekly Wind Down

“As I prepare on Saturday by cooking meals and completing chores, the process becomes a door slowly closing on distractions in order to be fully present with my people. The day is aromatic with anticipation as the kids hover around me in the kitchen, salivating over the smells simmering on the stove top and bread baking in the oven. Joy is an undercurrent of Sabbath when we make the day celebratory. And rested people make for a peaceful home,” writes Shelly Miller.

Whether Sabbath falls on Saturday or Sunday or some other time of the week, whether it’s seen as the end of the week or the beginning of the week, it is a transition.

A way to digest what was and pause before entering what will be.

In order to more fully pause, it is an opportunity to digest, process and release.

Worries, misbeliefs, concerns, joys, questions, discoveries.

And that opportunity starts in the preparation.

In Jewish traditions, varying greatly per movement and especially between Orthodox and Reform from what I’ve learned, there are specific rituals or steps to Sabbath preparation.

For example: shopping for ingredients then cooking, baking or picking up the challah, bathing, cleaning and beautifying the home with flowers, for example.

There is a bit of hustle to it, but these steps go beyond effort, they slowly get one out of the mind, into the body and back into the soul.

January 17, 2018

The Cult of Busy

I was a full-fledged member of the cult of busy. We all are.

I don’t recall when, but it probably began before I started using a planner in high school (that I designed for optimal homework, goal and activity tracking).

Or was voted “Most Involved” in the yearbook our Senior year.

And it just got worse from there: overcommitted, overachieving, overwhelmed for the next 15 years. Welcome to “adulthood”!

A vicious cycle of apps to optimize my time and practices to mitigate my stress.

Constantly acknowledged with awe and trepidation by others: “I don’t know how you do it all!”

I had become the epitome of a busy body filling in my life with busy work.

But as Henry David Thoreau asked in the 1850s, “it is not enough to be busy (the ants are busy), we must ask: what are we busy about?”

Why was I so busy?

Compulsive Busyness

“…much of the busyness that we see around us everyday is compulsive busyness. Somebody is avoiding something…[The busyness] can involve us in the most worthy of good works only to distract us from entheos and deny us the privilege of being really useful,” wrote Robert Greenleaf back in the 1970s.

That’s a mouthful, but it is exactly how I was living before I started this blog. How?

I was “compulsively busy” – constantly doing to be doing.

Multiple service and leadership commitments, multiple client projects, running a business, spending time with my family and so many friends – all over the country, traveling all the time, personal growth projects and groups, extensive spiritual practices, hyper-organized home, baking from scratch, driving friends to the airport and the list goes on somehow.

Still “Most Involved” in seemingly the most worthy of good works.

Living life to the fullest, right?

Then, what was I avoiding?

Entheos, the Greek word for the God within, the way the divine creative energy moves through us toward what the world really needs.

In other words, my personal mission: I am in the world to change the world with my creativity.

And as Greenleaf says: the privilege of being really useful.

Everything is Work

What does really useful look like?

My sense is it has little to do with time or effort or money. The resources we measure our lives in.

I think it has to do with our other main resource: our energy.

Or as Julian Gresser describes as our “creative emotion or vitality” when speaking to the relative value of these four resources in Piloting Through Chaos (time, effort, money, energy).

In his TEDTalk and book about The Art of Stillness, Pico Iyer shares that after a 30-year study of time diaries, two socioligists found that Americans were actually working fewer hours than we were in the 1960’s, but we feel as if we are working more (underlining added for emphasis).

Perhaps because everything is “work” nowadays.

And/or we approach everything with the attitude that it is work, that it is labor – taking time, requiring effort, costing money. And draining energy.

In preparation for a session about work and spirituality I was leading in 2015, I audited my own work.

All of it. Paid work, unpaid service, leadership and pro bono work, domestic work (including caregiving and housekeeping) and informal work (including favors). Pretty much anything that didn’t feel like play or leisure.

I was shocked.

Adding in caregiving, housework, volunteering, commuting, grooming etc. and it seemed like 80 percent of my life was “work.”

For some, sleep is the only time they’re not “working.”

No wonder I constantly felt depleted, my energy in frequent flux of high highs and low lows, and completely burning out every few months.

Why did everything feel like work – so effortful, instead of effortless? Or simply neutral?

I was drawing my energy from an empty well.

Like one researcher who studies Christmas Holiday Cards discovered and shared in an interview with Brigid Shulte for Overwhelmed,

“My God, people are competing about being busy. It’s about showing status. That if you’re busy, you’re important. You’re leading a full and worthy life.”

Taking a Break

“Without time to reflect, to live fully present in the moment and face what is transcendent about our lives, we are doomed to live in purposeless and banal busyness…It creates this ‘unquiet heart,’ as Saint Augustine said, that is ever desperate for fulfillment,” said another researcher in an interview with Shulte.

It was a few years ago when I was asked, “But, when do you rest?”

In a quick, instantaneous audit of my life, I could only think of one example.

Going away on retreats every few months.

Cherished times of being, of following the divine energy, of feeling full, of feeling whole.

I saw these times as an exception, not accessible in “real life,” on a weekly or a daily basis.

So deep in the belief that busyness was the way that I was being really useful.

I needed more time to reflect, to live fully present in the moment, to face what is transcendent about life.

I needed a break.

And on a regular basis.

As I started to peel away the worthy distractions and set aside time for not doing each week, it became more clear how I was called to be. How I have always been called.

But, had also come to most fear: creating, writing, designing, teaching.

Resting the Whole, Resting the Soul

“In the 1950s, some prominent thinkers predicted that the post-World War II boom in productivity and the ever-rising incomes and standards of living for Americans and the industrialized world could only mean that we were entering a new age of unprecedented leisure,” describes Shulte.

“All our basic needs would be met. Free from toil, we could begin to savor its fruits. True to the Greek ideal of the good life, we would spend our time cultivating the mind and the soul.”

It was just over a year ago on a Circle of Trust retreat facilitated by The Center for Courage & Renewal when I was asked, “What in your life needs a pause? A break? A rest?”

I had been giving my life a break each week, a whole day of stepping out of the busyness, for several years by then.

The question seemed familiar and yet a completely fresh perspective.

But, this question seemed bigger, broader.

Taking a day off per week away from routine and schedules had started giving time a break. And I had been taking a break from money for almost a year by then. And I had started to step back from commitments and focus my efforts.

So, what in my life needed a break?

My soul. My life force. My energy.

Not a break from being (not sure that’s possible), but a chance to simply be without all the resistance.

I am paying especially close attention to my energy. Devoted to being in the sweet spot.

There is still some resistance, and thus tensions, but now it’s to the rest of the world’s busyness, not my own.

Things are feeling more effortless, including doing my “work.” The other work is still work, though I have way less interest in it, so there’s a lot less of it and now feels more neutral.

Not a one time fix. Now, I commit to this intention everyday.

As Naomi Shihab Nye writes in her poem, Red Brocade, from 1952:

No, I was not busy when you came!
I was not preparing to be busy.
That’s the armor everyone put on
to pretend they had a purpose
in the world.

January 8, 2018

Your Path to Rest

I had been on my spiritual path for nearly a decade and never asked myself this simple question: when do you rest?

The question showed up one day back in fall, 2014.

I had just signed a big contract with Nike for a 3-month gig. I was in the first year of self-employment and this was way too good to refuse.

But, I had three other consulting projects already, plus service commitments and the rest of life. It added up to 60+ hour work weeks. 80+ if you counted housekeeping and caregiving.

I knew something had to give. And it wasn’t the work.

It turns out it was the Rest.

My Path to Jack

Several women in my interfaith women’s group saw the same spiritual director, Jack Kennedy. At first, I didn’t really know what a spiritual director was, but I had seen therapists and shaman, so it seemed in the ballpark of familiarity.

I got his phone number, called to set an appointment and showed up at the house where he rented a room for his sessions.

Nestled into the the antique striped couch at my first meeting, I explained why I’d come to see him and what was on my heart: the heavy work load, running a business, volunteering, family, the upcoming holidays.

He listened for 15 minutes until I reached the end of my laundry list and this question: How was I going to do it all and not get burned out?

“Well, when do you rest?” he asked.

Not power naps. Not quick breaks between meetings. That’s just more doing.

He meant time and space for deep, restorative being in rhythm with my own body, the world around me and something bigger. He meant Sabbath.

I was speechless.

Sabbath Keeping

It was not something I had experienced yet in my everyday life.

But, as he described Sabbath, it sounded a whole lot like my magical times at the coast on personal retreats.

And I could have some of that magic every week? I was in.

That fall and for the last 3 years since, I have set aside one day a week, usually Saturdays like in the Jewish tradition, for rest and renewal.

Sabbath has become my weekly retreat.

An ancient practice, Sabbath is the fourth commandment. “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.”

It comes before family, before murder, before adultery and more.

Overwhelm and overstimulation are newer human conditions. But, hard work is not new. Labor is not new.

Many call it a merciful gift. Compassion for all this labor. In other words, it is a day that has been given.

There are many ways that different religious traditions remember or observe the Sabbath, including Christian services on Sundays and Buddhist monks’ recitation of precepts.

Barbara Brown Taylor describes her experience in Leaving Church:

“Observing the Sabbath is saving my life now. For the first time in my life, I can rest without leaving home. With sundown on the Sabbath, I stop seeing the dust balls, the bills and the laundry. They are still there, but they lose their power over me. One day each week I live as if all my work were done…Now, when I know the Sabbath is near, I can feel the anticipation bubbling up inside of me. Sabbath is no longer a a good idea or even a spiritual discipline for me. It is my regular date with the Divine Presence that enlivens both body and soul.”

Finding My Spiritual Path

Just as Barbara says, Sabbath has become a highlight of my week.

It is not simply a day to set everything aside, to stop doing and simply be. But a “regular date” to reconnect with what grounds me and inspires me, something bigger than myself.

My path to rest did not start with this practice in 2014. I think it actually started in 2007 when I went to a spiritual community gathering, the first step toward spiritual development I’d taken since leaving home at 18 years old, seven years prior.

Or perhaps I’ve been on the path my whole life?

I was raised in a “new age” household by a former Roman Catholic mother and a former Episcopalian father (more by label than by practice for both of them) who found more inspiration in the outdoors than in the church.

My parents started their own spiritual journey in their 20’s soon after getting married, leading them to a new, broader sense of spirituality (though heavily influenced by the Judeo-Christian traditions).

Growing up, my only exposure to religion was tagging along with friends and most of it was “too churchy” compared to our hikes and seasonal gatherings.

While organized religion was not to their taste, looking back now I see that ritual, ceremony, values, and beliefs were baked into my very spiritual upbringing.

I distinctly remember in high school having a discussion about this with my parents – about not having any religion. Their response?

We were to chose our own religion.

My response: “Huh, well I won’t be doing that.”

Nowadays, I worship at a Unitarian Universalist church, I commune with the Sacred Fire Community outside around the fire, I find fellowship with interfaith, intergenerational women at BBB, I observe Sabbath, I am again practicing yoga in a nearby studio.

While I did no choose a religion yet, I am religious about my portfolio of communities and practices, along with many tools, that help me navigate the world.

It has been a journey of seeking what’s true to me. As well undoing dysfunctional beliefs that I created along the way.

24/6

Some of the dysfunctional beliefs I still struggle with directly conflict with Sabbath.

Rest is earned not given.
Taking naps is being lazy or childish.
Doing creates a worthwhile day.
Living life to the fullest means doing many things at the same time.

These are the beliefs that make me forget Sabbath.

So, how do I remember the Sabbath?

I remember that rest means more than simply being tired.

I remember that rest is a break, a pause.

I remember that rest is an important note in music.

I remember that when I step out of the grind I find space for reflection.

I remember that when I find space, I find perspective.

I remember how I’m connected to everything. Everything.

And over the years of remembering, observing, practicing Sabbath, I have also started showing up differently in the other six days a week.

I am:

more present
more connected
more energized
more focused

While the path getting here has not been easy – the path to rest never is – I bet it would have been a lot easier if I had always remembered the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.

Moving forward, I do.