The respected Jewish philosopher and theologian
Abraham Heschel described one such reference point: “In the tempestuous ocean
of time and toil there are islands of stillness where man may enter a harbor
and reclaim his dignity. The island is the seventh day, the Sabbath, a day of detachment
from things, instruments and practical affairs as well as attachment to the
spirit … The seventh day is the exodus from tension, the liberation of man from
his own muddiness, the installation of man as a sovereign in the world of
time.” (Heschel, p. 29)
Notice the significant and relevant phrases in
that statement. “The tempestuous ocean of
time and toil.” Do you ever feel like a
little boat being thrown around and battered by the winds and waves of life?
Your boss with her incessant demands is someone you can never please. The
politics at work drain you. Your kids’ activities seem nonstop and wear you
out. Your bills pile up, your bank balance plummets. You wonder how you’ll ever
stay ahead. Your life seems to be passing away right in front of you and you
still don’t feel like you’ve accomplished many of the things you wanted to when
you started out. Life often feels like a tempestuous ocean.
Imagine being able to enter “a harbor [of] stillness” in the
midst of the storms. A place where you can “reclaim
your dignity.” Picture yourself steering
your battered boat out of the hurricane winds, behind the strong breakwater
rocks and boulders and solid pylons. The water becomes smooth and placid. You
tie up in one of the secure slips. Your boat is still. You sink back into the
couch in your cabin. Your heart begins to slow, your mind stops racing, the
adrenaline ebbs away, your muscles relax as you lean your head back on the
cushion. Time seems to stop as you sip a hot drink. An island of stillness, a safe
harbor.
You start thinking about your life. What are
those forces that so often attack you and steal your sense of dignity, those
people or frequent circumstances that batter your sense of security and
confidence in who you are? Those places in time when you begin to doubt
yourself, when you’re challenged and fought against and humiliated and disrespected.
Those times when you get huge dents in your armor and you feel like nothing or
nobody.
Imagine finding a place in the midst of all that
chaos where you’re empowered to “reclaim your dignity.” A place where you
rediscover what makes you a person of worth and value. How does that happen?
You enter a day, a space in time, where you “detach from things, instruments,
and practical affairs.” In other words, by you carving out some boundaries for
this time, you remind yourself that you are more than simply a consumer, production-maniac,
protector and stockpiler. You are more than what you do. You are more than your
failures and successes, the busyness of your life, your activities. Your value
and worth are not based upon what you produce or consume or protect or stockpile
but based simply upon who you are as a human being.
But it’s not only a time of detachment. It’s
also a time of attachment to the spiritual. You carve out this space in time to
reconnect with the eternal, the divine presence, your deepest, most core values
that drive who you are as a human being. The gift of stopping the rat race for
this period of time enables you to spend priority time, to engage in intentionality
about the deep issues of your life, who you really are, who God is, where
you’re heading, how aligned your behavior is to your core values. It affords
the opportunity to reengage with the people most important to you, to rekindle
the significant relationships, to reestablish and rebuild love and compassion
and service to others.
This Harbor is “the exodus from tension.” Think
of all the things in your life that produce tension. Think about how you
manifest tension, your body response, your emotional symptoms. Experts tell us
that 80-90% of all visits to physicians are over symptoms that end up being
primarily stress-related. Dr. Archibald Hart, dean-emeritus of the School of Psychology
at Fuller Theological Seminary, states that each person has a physiological weak
link that gets triggered when the body is under high stress, especially for a
prolonged period of time. In other words, the body breaks down in specific
places (different places with different people) when experiencing great stress.
So imagine experiencing an “exodus from tension”
on a regular basis. Heschel is using an intentional biblical metaphor
especially significant to Jews when he refers to an “exodus.” The Jews were
held in bondage and slavery by the Egyptian kings (pharaohs) for 400 years,
oppressed, maligned and victimized mercilessly by their masters. Then God had mercy
and stepped in to intervene. He called Moses, a Hebrew slave raised by the pharaoh’s
daughter as her very own child but then banished from the empire over an act of
violence. And Moses became the liberator of his people as he led them out of
slavery and bondage, across the vast desert and wilderness, into the promised
land. A literal exodus from tension.
So Heschel uses this story to convey the
powerful reality of hope and liberation afforded by the Sabbath, every seven
days one enters this sacred space, this special day carved out intentionally
from the stress and tension of the other six days of work and labor, to experience
God’s peace and a liberation from the bondage of our relentless responsibilities,
from the hype and noise of our culture which demands our loyalty and buy-in,
from the temptation to see ourselves as simply consumers and products.
Imagine spending one day every week slowing
down, allowing your body and mind to experience peace and quiet, reconnecting
with the deepest part of you (your soul and spirit), and spending intentional
time realigning yourself to your highest values. Imagine taking time to build
your most important relationships, to pay attention to not only your own heart
but the heart and lives of those closest to you.
Imagine placing yourself regularly in a space
where you’re reminded who you really are instead of who the culture says you
are. Heschel calls this “the liberation of man from his own muddiness.” Experts
point out that we are living in an age of profound identity confusion and
crisis. People are being confronted incessantly with conflicting paradigms. The
marketing gurus through infinite advertisements say one thing (we are what we
buy and consume), our employers say another (we are what we produce), our inner
tapes shout others (we will never measure up or be good enough, we need to
perform better, our failures define us, our successes aren’t enough). And the
bombarding messages continue unabated.
No wonder we live in such confusion and conflict! And because we’re so busy
trying to succeed or survive, we never stop long enough to question or push
back on those identity messages.
But imagine what the Sabbath can provide, an
uninterrupted day in which we confront the truth about ourselves by reminding
ourselves of where our true worth and value reside. And herein lies the
powerful beauty of this Sabbath gift.
No comments:
Post a Comment