Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

A Sabbath For Our Time

Reverend Darcey Laine
January 23, 2005
Palo Alto, CA

When I was in 2nd grade, I went for a while with my Friend Suzanne to her Presbyterian Sunday School. That year I won a scroll for memorizing the 10 commandments. I was a little put off by the commandment to keep the Sabbath. I was raised in a good Humanist UU church, and was suspicious of anything we were supposed to do because God commanded it. I lived in Pennsylvania at a time when blue laws kept stores closed on Sunday, and this seemed inconvenient and silly to me.

Then I got a job. It only took one Memorial Day shift, sitting in an empty restaurant while my family went to a picnic, counting the $1.67 an hour I would make while the tables sat empty to make me realize that I would gladly eat at home a couple of days a year so that waiters and waitresses could have a day with their families. When my local grocery store announces it will be open until midnight on New Year’s eve, or that national department store chain advertises that it will be open on Thanksgiving day, I don’t feel grateful that I get some extra time to shop, I feel sympathy for all the staff who will be required to work instead of taking time with their community.

The famous commandment in Exodus says:

Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; 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.

When I look at the commandment with an eye towards justice, it begins to make sense to me. One day a week, even your slaves, even the ox that pulls your plow gets the day off. Remember the labor movement? In the 1930s states began passing laws limiting the work week to 6 days. Today California law says that "most employees must have one day of rest per seven days, unless a union contract provides otherwise. Similarly, many New York employers must allow 24 consecutive hours of rest and must designate the period before operating on Sunday."

Sociologist Juliet Schorr reports that actually we are losing ground. We are working longer hours than any American workers since the industrial revolution. Hourly employees can be required to work mandatory overtime. Exempt employees, like managers, often have no protections. Moreover, since our minimum wage does not bring a full-time employee out of poverty, these protections are of no help to those working 2 or 3 jobs.

So it is time to ask ourselves- do we believe that rest has value? Do we believe that our quality of life improves if we take at least one day a week for renewal and reflection?

Think about our reading this morning from the book Leviticus.On the seventh year the fields should lie fallow. Some Conservative and Orthodox Jews in Israel take this very literally. Every 7th year they will not plant or tend their fields from new year to new year. This is called "shmita" [ SHMEE-tah]. But there are secular versions of this practice common to agriculture.

It is theorized that as farming evolved, people found that after a few years of planting a field with the same crop, it stopped producing, and the people would have to find new land to farm. They also found that after a while when they returned to that land, they found that self-seeding plants had started to grow again. During the middle ages farmers would rotate perhaps 3 different crops and 1 fallow year, to allow the land to rest. and extend the life of the land. Perhaps they would pasture their animals on the land during the fallow years, which also improved the content of the soil. Then farmers found that some crops, such as clover, restored nutrients to the soil. All farmers have to consider this question of whether they will try to farm in a sustainable way, or whether they will think only of the short term and leave the land barren, or somewhere in between.

So what about our lives? Do they follow any of the same principles as the land? I believe they do. I was told at a Franklin Covey time-management seminar that leaving one's desk for lunch increases productivity for the afternoon. They also claimed that productivity drops off at the end of an 8 hour day.

But as much as I love my work I also believe that there is more to life than being productive. I know that in my own routine, my family relationships get strained as the week goes on. By Friday, my day off, It takes me a couple of hours to remember what I do when I'm not working. Some weeks I don't remember, and I take the efficient pace of my job right into the home: paying bills, cleaning, running errands, until the day ends before I remember that my son had a new game he wanted to show me, and that I had been tired and wanting rest.

So I try to slow down, but it takes an effort. It's hard to patiently stack blocks with my son when the energy of busy-ness is still driving me like an inertial force. On the weeks I remember to slow down, I sometimes finish my long breakfast feeling kind of weird. All the feelings I haven't had time to feel all week are there just beneath the surface. If I had a tough day on Wednesday or got some bad news, the busy-ness of my life has acted as a shield from the reality of my own challenges and losses.

Because of my personal experience, I would like to suggest that this is an important use of a day of rest: to rebuild and restore oneself and ones relationships. I remember that when Barbara George, our church administrator, died about a year ago, I was so caught up in preparing the memorial service and supporting the congregation, that when I took my first full day of rest after her death, I was completely overwhelmed by grief. It was rough, entering that wall of grief without the crutch of busy-ness, but without that time, how could I have begun to integrate that loss in a healthy way?

So one reason to regularly take time away from work is healing. Healing ourselves, healing our relationships. Time to cry, to sleep in, to call your mother, to play playdoh with your nephew or grandson. Connecting to others and to the earth.

Another way to use this time is for reflection. What's going on in our lives? What happened this week? Are we living the life we intended to live? Journaling, meditating, staring blankly into space.

Learning, is also something we don't always have as part of our daily routines. Especially learning things that don't have anything to do with your paid job. This is a time to read, study, follow a line of inquiry, experiment.

And finally using your creativity. Some of us have jobs that allow and even encourage our creativity, but many do not. So we need to carve out time to paint, sculpt, plant a garden, write a novel. To use our imaginations and watch our own ideas become manifest in the world.

All these things: healing, connecting, learning, creating are higher functions on Maslov's hierarchy of needs. They come long after eating, drinking, and running from tigers. But these are the things that turn surviving into living. Robert Reich, form secretary of labor under Bill Clinton, believes that one of the 3 fundemental principles of our democracy is that people have the right to develop themselves. William Ellery Channing, one of our Unitarian forefathers also held that self development was a basic human right. It is part of our liberal religious heritage to believe that we are called to grow, learn and become our best selves.

But this is not the message we get from our culture. You are almost never going to hear your boss or client say; your life has become too focused on doing, go rest and renew yourself. I hear members of our congregation saying that they are afraid to take the time they need for themselves, because the client expects the work right away, because corporate culture rewards those who work 6 or 7 days a week, because they fear they will be swept away in the next round of layoffs if they really preserved some time for rest and renewal. I hear parents and children say that the pressures of school and band and sports don't allow this kind of time.

Last year when our Junior High class was studying Islam, they had a chance to speak with a Muslim man and ask some questions about his life and faith. The students and teachers were all struck by the fact that this observant Muslim prayed 5 times a day, every day. One of our bright children asked "What if your boss didn't let you stop work to pray"and the guest responded "I would have to find a new job." This man believes that his religion requires him to take time every single day to pray, to reconnect if you will. He takes this assumption as a basic given in his life, and shapes the rest of his life from there.

Terry Goldstein, who wrote the Essay Sylvia read for us this morning, feels she has the option of choosing the commandment to observe the Sabbath, and has built her life around that. And I wonder, would you believe me if I told you that your religion offers this commandment in the same spirit? As a religious and observant Unitarian Universalist, you have the same authority to take time to reconnect with others, with yourself, with the earth (and for the theists, God as well). Could I give you the courage to say to your boss "as part of my religious observance, I will no longer be calling in to check messages or e-mail one day a week. I will not be available for meetings or overtime on that one day.

But once we remove the structure and fulfillment that work provides, then you would have to ask yourself, what is it that really renews, heals and inspires me, that balances the work that I do the rest of the week? Because maybe it's a day shopping and watching TV, but I doubt it. What are the things you do that remind you of your best self? Could you set aside some period of time that pops up automatically in your auto-repeating calendar time to really do those nurturing inspiring things?

This church went one step further. In addition to writing a day off into my contract, they also included a sabbatical- one month for every year served. They used to follow the biblical model and offer it every seventh year, but they found that they just couldn't do without a minister for 7 months, so now the ask us to take it a little earlier. Some disciplines like ministry, or academia, have instituted this tradition realizing that the fields of the mind and soul become barren if the same seed is sown there year after year. The teaching becomes stale, the preaching becomes uninspired. So on February 1, I will begin my sabbatical. I have chosen to enroll in the Sabbatical program at the University of Creation Spirituality in Oakland to provide challenge, nourishment and structure to these 4 months. I signed up for classes in theology, cosmology, spiritual direction, building sustainable communities, and deep ecology, all good things that I can know will be useful when I come back to work this Summer. but my advisor said "you have really been pouring yourself out at the church, please consider taking an art class to access those parts of your mind you have not been using as much." I thought: painting? Clay? These are things I have never done, and will probably never do again. But the more I thought of that, the more I realized that might be just the thing to wake up my imagination and challenge my sense of who I am.

The hope is that my absence will also help the congregation feel it's own power and creativity. I know several congregations who have experienced their sense of empowerment and ownership grow while their ministers were on sabbatical. I wish this for you as well.

But I also wish that all people would have the same opportunity I have. I told a friend that I would be starting my sabbatical soon and he asked "what's a sabbatical, and when do I get mine?" Believe me, I know how lucky I am to have a paid sabbatical. Some people have periods of reflection and study that are self funded, others that are forced upon them in the form of a severance package. Many can't afford to take even the 2 week vacation their company promises, much less several months for reflection and renewal. And so even as I commend this congregation for being a model of progressive employment practices, and even as I look forward with great anticipation to my own sabbatical, let us vigilantly protect the opportunity for all people who do all kinds of work to have time each week and each year to rest and renew. Whether by writing our representatives when new legislation threatens to expand the work week, by encouraging our local companies to provide sufficient vacation and leave, or by supporting employees who take the leave they have earned.

Because I believe that these commandments from the Jewish scriptures get at something important. "Remember the Sabbath day" it says "and keep it holy" the etymology of which refers to Middle English meaning "healthy" or "unbroken". I believe that rest is important, that health and wholeness are important enough to shape your life around. If we don't make a commitment to this, if we don't create habits for a lifetime that incorporate this ideal, the busy-ness of our lives, the unreflected doing and shopping will steal our precious time, our lives.

Work, whether paid or unpaid, is important. Each dish we wash, each time we diaper a child, we help create this world we share. And as the Judeo-Christian creation story models, after 6 days of creating, comes a time of rest. This is part of what it means to live a balanced life: work and rest, action and reflection. Whether we structure our time to reflect the 6 days of work and 1 day of rest in the biblical model, or one in keeping with your own natural rhythms for health and balance what is important is only that such a balance is a part of your life.

way you and I may strive to create a healthy rhythm of work and rest may not be a literal interpretation of the Sabbath laws in Exodus and Leviticus, but I believe both grow from a common human need for balance shared even with the ancient culture that wrote those laws. As the great poet Wendell Berry writes.

"Then workday And Sabbath live together in one place. Though mortal, incomplete, that harmony Is our one possibility of peace."