Exodus 20:8-11 states:

Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. ⁹For six days you shall labor and do all your work. ¹⁰But 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. ¹¹For 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. (NRSV)

We need to remember that an important part of renewal is rest – observing a sabbath.  Wayne Muller offers the following suggestions for maintaining a “Simple Sabbath”

Practices for a Simple Sabbath

Light a candle.
Set aside sacred time for a family meal, for prayer or meditation or simply quiet reading. Set a candle before you, offer a simple blessing and let the world fall away.

Pamper your body.
Take a guilt-free nap. Take a leisurely bath with music, special scents, candles. Make love with your spouse. Walk barefoot in the grass. The Sabbath is a day of delight.

Create a Sabbath box.
Put your to-do list, your keys, your wallet — anything you don’t need in Sabbath time — into the box. Or write down a particular worry or concern and drop it in. Just for now, let it go.

Turn off the telephone.
Or the computer, the TV, the washer and dryer. Create a period of time when you will not be disturbed or seduced by what our technologies demand of us.

Prepare a Sabbath meal — or a Sabbath cup of tea.
Even if you are alone, you can choose foods you love, put flowers on the table, take time to enjoy every dish, give thanks for the bounty of the earth.

Seek companionship.
One of the most precious gifts we can offer is to be a place of refuge, a Sabbath for one another. Ask for companionship when you lose your way. Give quiet time and attention to others.

Reset your inner compass.
Make a list of the values and principles that guide your life — both those you follow and those you would like to follow. Speak them aloud, alone or with loved ones.

One time, a number of years ago, I was asked to make a presentation to a group of choral musicians on the topic of avoiding burn-out and stress.  As I pondered what to say I finally realized that what we need to do – and often fail to do – is to put the “3 R’s” back into art.

I argued that all too often we try to live our lives only with “A” – our ability – and “T” our training.  Both of those are very important parts of art but without the “3 R’s” we easily find ourselves in a state of high stress and potential burn-out.

The “3 R’s” of art are – Rest, Renewal, and Retreat.  Since the beginning of creation God has reminded us that we need rest – remember the seventh day.  When we are honest, we are also aware of the importance that we continue to learn and be renewed both in our art and in or life.  Finally, there are times that we need to simply get away, be refreshed, and experience something that is not found in our usual day to day journey.  All three of these are part of the concept of Sabbath – a very important – and often forgotten – part of our living as children of God.

Look for future posts about Sabbath – something I know is important and something that I know I must be become at observing!

It seems to me that real living requires at least three strong ongoing relationships – a relationship with God, a relationship with self, and relationships with others.  Sadly the two that are most often overlooked and/or ignored appear to be the first two – God and self – and I believe that it is not really possible to have a strong ongoing relationship with others unless a person first has a strong ongoing relationship with both God (or Higher Power) and self.

Early on in my time as a musician I was taught that it takes at least three people to have music – a creator (the composer) – a re-creator** (performer) – and a receiver (listener).  I have often experienced all three of those roles during my life as a musician – in fact, on numerous occasions I was indeed all of the three people.  The process, however, is much more satisfying when others are involved because that process involves the process of living in community, and living in community is the way The Creator intends for us to live.

Many of our problems – and most certainly those that lead toward the addictive process – become present in our lives during times of personal isolation.  And those times of isolation are often the experiences that cause us to ignore our relationship with God and with self.

Earlier today I was reading more pages from Divine Therapy and Addiction* by Father Thomas Keating and Tom S.  It was a section where Father Keating is explaining the power of Lectio Divina, and he writes: “To get the full benefit of a sacred text, you need to be in the situation where somebody else is reading the text and you are just listening.” (186)

It seems to me that is also true of day to day ordinary living.  We are not created for isolation but for living in relationship.  Thanks be to God!

*Divine Therapy and Addiction based on interviews with Father Thomas Keating, OCSO, conducted by Tom S.  New York: Lantern Books, 2009.

**It is meaningful to me that re-creation and rec-reation are in essence the same word and it causes me to ponder if recreation leads to re-creation – more on that topic in a later post.

With great gratitude to Eckhart Tolle* who has profoundly influenced my thinking concerning the necessity of living in the present:

“Enlightenment conciously chosen means to relinquish your attachment to past and future and to make the Now the main focus of your life.  It means choosing to dwell in the state of presence rather than in time.  It means saying yes to what is . . . choice implies consciousness – a high degree of consciousness.  Without it, you have no choice.  Choice begins the moment you disidentify from the mind and its conditioned patterns, the moment you become present.  Until you reach that point, you are unconscious, spiritually speaking.  This means that you are compelled to think, feel, and act in certain ways according to the conditioning of your mind.  That is why Jesus said: ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do’ . . . the mind, conditioned as it is by the past, always seeks to re-create what it knows and is familiar with.  Even if it is painful, at least it is familiar.  The mind always adheres to the known.  The unkown is dangerous because it has no control over it.  That’s why the mind dislikes and ignores the present moment.  Present-moment awareness creates a gap not only in the stream of mind but also in the past-future continuum.  Nothing truly new and creative can come into the world except through the gap, that clear space of infinite possibility.” (226-227)

We will continue this discussion thread in the coming posts.  I hope you will join the conversation.

Grace and peace

*Tolle, Eckhart.  The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment.  Novato, CA:  Namaste Publishing and New World Library, 1999/2004.

A significant portion of my current thinking about living as a human being in a manner that God intends us to live can be traced back to the writing of Dr. Gerald G. May in his wonderful book Addiction and Grace.*  He begins with these great words of truth:

After twenty years of listening to the yeaings of people’s hearts, i am convinced that all human beings have an inborn desire for God.  Whether we are consciously religious or not, this desire is our deepest longing and our most precious treasure.  It gives us meaning.  Some of us have repressed this desire, burying it beneath so many other interests that we are completely unaware of it.  Or we may experience it in different ways – as a longing for wholeness, completion, or fulfillment.  Regardless of how we describe it, it is a longing for love.  It is a hunger to love, to be loved, and to move closer to the Source of love.  This yearning is the essence of the human spirit; it is the origin of our highest hopes and most noble dreams. (1)

*May, Gerald G.  Addiction and Grace.  San Francisco:  Harper and Row, Publishers, 1988.