More valuable words from Wayne Muller:

When I gather with friends and colleagues for Sabbath retreats, those courageous few who manage to carve out a day or a weekend for quiet reflection often arrive thoroughly exhausted. By the afternoon, some inevitably fall asleep right in the middle of our meditations. When they awaken they quickly apologize for their spiritual transgressions; they feel ashamed and embarrassed. I reassure them it is good when they sleep. It is a sign of trust, that they feel safe enough finally to let go and surrender to their weariness.

And what a great weariness it is. Most of us do not realize how tired we really are until we go away on vacation or retreat, and cannot even keep our eyes open.

When we think of Jesus, we usually think of him teaching, healing, or being accosted by the hordes of sick or possessed who sought his touch. But Jesus would just as often send people away, or disappear without warning, dismissing those in need with neither excuse nor explanation, and retreat to a place of rest.

One translation of the biblical phrase “to pray” is “to come to rest.” When Jesus prayed he was at rest, nourished by the healing spirit that saturates those still, quiet places. In the Jesus tradition, prayer can be a practice of simply being in the presence of God, allowing the mind to rest in the heart. This can help us begin to understand one aspect of Sabbath time: a period of repose, when the mind settles gently in the heart.

Who is it that can make muddy water clear? asks the Tao Te Ching. But if allowed to remain still, it will gradually become clear of itself. The invitation to rest is rooted in an undeniable spiritual gravity that allows all things at rest to settle, to find their place. There comes a moment in our striving when more effort actually becomes counterproductive, when our frantic busyness only muddies the waters of our wisdom and understanding. When we become still and allow our life to rest, we feel a renewal of energy and gradual clarity of perception.

The practice of Shabbat, or Sabbath, is designed specifically to restore us, a gift of time in which we allow the cares and concerns of the marketplace to fall away. We set aside time to delight in being alive, to savor the gifts of creation, and to give thanks for the blessings we may have missed in our necessary preoccupation with our work. Ancient texts suggest we light candles, sing songs, pray, tell stories, worship, eat, nap, and make love. It is a day of delight, a sanctuary in time. Within this sanctuary, we make ourselves available to the insights and blessings that arise only in stillness and time (Muller, 23-26).

To these words I am only able to say “Amen” (So let it be) or in the words of the Lakota and Dakota peoples, a phrase used in all their prayers that aptly illustrates the Native American sense of the centrality of creation: mitakuye oyasin – used to end every prayer, and often it is in itself a whole prayer (For all the above me and below me and around me things) . . . it is the understanding of inter-relatedness, of balance and mutual respect of the different species in the world, that characterizes what we might call Indian peoples’ greatest gift to Amer-Europeans and to the Amer-European understanding of creation in this time of world ecological crisis (Kidwell, 50-51).

Muller, Wayne. Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives. New York: Bantam Books, 1999.

Kidwell, Clara Sue, Homer Noley, and George E. “Tink” Tinker. A Native American Theology. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001.