Sabbath Time

Alida M. DeCoster

April 27, 1997

Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church

Bethesda, Maryland

The fourth of the ten commandments is “ remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.” Beginning Thursday, I am going on a sabbatical. A sabbatical is a kind of sabbath, a commemoration of the seventh day of rest God took after creating the world. This morning I would like to reflect with you on the meaning of sabbath time. It is not just “time off,” but a different quality of time, calling for a different quality of our being in the world, a receptive, open, waiting time, a time for deep changes at an unconscious level, a time to be a creature rather than a creator. A time for sacred rest.

Now, most jobs do not provide for an extended time away from regular duties, other than vacations. I did read the other day of a company that allows long term vacations, and many professionals can arrange some time away with or without pay. But it is still a rareprivilege. In parish ministry and other intensive human-interactive occupations, the burn-out level is high. Always working evenings and weekends takes its toll. Having one day off per week plus a month of vacation and a month of sabbatical time per year actually comes to fewer days off per year than if one has two days every weekend plus vacations and holidays off. I hope this does not sound defensive, because that is not my intent. Many people work more than a five-day week in today’s economy. Many people work weekends. My argument is that more people should have the opportunity to take a longer break, not only for their physical and mental health, but because life becomes impoverished if we never have the time to reflect and take stock, to find balance, to experience the sacred.

Even if we are active in a congregation, our church experience can often come to resemble every other part of our busy, demanding lives. That is why I encourage all you lay ministers to take sabbaticals once in awhile from your church commitments as well. Pause, reflect, stop doing for awhile and just be.

Many of you probably remember Kathleen Hepler. She was interim Associate Minister here at Cedar Lane between Sydney Wilde and me. After leaving Cedar Lane, Kathleen became the well-loved minister of the Universalist Church in Reading, Pennsylvania for a number of years. Then she decided to leave the ministry. With a young adopted son, she felt a different kind of career would be better. She resigned her position and moved to California to enroll in a training program to become a psychotherapist. After several months, she decided that this was a mistake. She reversed her decision, and has been settled in a New Jersey church since 1993. When I saw her at General Assembly and she told me this story she said, “I realized that I did not need a career change. I needed a sabbatical.”

Sometimes we make hasty decisions when we are overloaded or stressed. We need sabbatical time to think things through. If you cannot arrange extended time away from regular life demands, it is important to still try to incorporate the concept of sabbath time, orsacred rest into your life. It can involve mini-sabbaticals, days away, time out. Take time out. Time out of pressures and demands. Time out of a tricky situation so you can get some perspective on it. We can avoid making mistakes if we have time to reflect deeply, to turn inward and catch our spiritual breath.

The other day, a harried mother of young children told me with great joy that she thinks she will actually be able to go on a weekend retreat, really away from her family for two whole days for the first time since the children were born. I gave her a lot of support for this, wondering to myself how she could have waited so long. I must admit that I probably have a greater need for this kind of retreat than most.

I have often sought time alone. I am an introvert on the Myers-Briggs scale. I need to pull back to reflect on what is happening. I cannot make decisions while I am interacting. I always need to think things over by myself. Extroverted personalities think best in the midst of action. I believe the Myers-Briggs personality testing of recent years has been a very helpful innovation to let us understand each other and our differing needs. Some people will more naturally yearn for sabbath time than others.

Over the years, I have taken a number of solo trips and retreats. I have a deep hunger to pull back to reflect, really, to digest things that have happened to me. At the same time, I have experienced painful loneliness when I do this. Once in my thirties, while on vacation in Minnesota, I went to a retreat center, and then to my aunt’s cottage for a total of about four days of real solitude. While I hungered for it, I was painfully lonely. Hard feelings can come up when we are alone, and I think fear of such feelings can keep many people stuck in the rat race, even when they need to get away and reflect on their lives. Loneliness is one of the hardest problems in life. Sabbath time can bring up these and other difficult feelings. It can force us to face things we are reluctant to face.

There are different kinds of sabbath experience. Sometimes it is thiskind of soul-searching sabbath. Other times it can be a purely relaxing kind of sabbath. Some sabbath time should be a time of joy and play. Most important, sabbath time is a time to encounter the divine mystery of life.

One day in March, I took a workshop at Shalem Institute. Shalem is a nationally known center for the training of spiritual directors. It is located a mile or two from here on Grosvenor Lane. Its director, Tilden Edwards, was a classmate of Ken MacLean at Harvard Divinity School. Tilden is the author of a number of books, including one whose title I have borrowed this morning, Sabbath Time. He has a quiet yet powerful spiritual presence. He and the other directors of the program, Gerald May and Sister Rosemary Dougherty, have spent their professional lives committed to spiritual receptivity. So much of the world is constantly in active mode. These teachers are providing an environment in which people can learn to receive, to listen to the still small voice, always available within, representing divine, universal truth.

The Shalem environment might seem foreign to Unitarian Universalists at first. The fundamental attitude in the spiritual direction process is paying attention: trying to discern where and how we are being led. This is not possible if we are always generating talk and ideas. It is hard to grow spiritually if we are never quiet. In order to have a receptive, spiritual attitude, it is important to let go of constant intellectual debate. The intellect is a tool. Science is a tool. Discussion is a useful activity. But entering into sabbath time, into a time of sacred rest, means letting go of these for a time. It means setting aside the active brain to some degree and listening to the heart. This can be hard for Unitarian Universalists to do, but I believe that spiritual maturity requires it.

Reason is always part of the picture for us. And I believe this is our genius. We have historically promoted freedom, reason and tolerance in religion. We believe what makes sense to us. We live by conscience. We see the terrible distortions that can happen in the name of religion. You could say that a cult leader listened too closelyto a still small voice in his or her heart, and took a group of followers down a terrible path. The problem there is that the followers were only too ready to give up their own truth for the truth of someone else.

We Unitarian Universalists trust the inner voice of our own conscience. We know we must follow our own truth. We employ reason in our religious lives to avoid being duped, and to challenge hypocrisy. This is important and right, yet sometimes there is a dimension of religion we miss. Sometimes we do not experience the richness and depth that are possible when we can set aside reason for a time. Beyond the level of reason, there is a mystery none can fully fathom, a mystery which can be understood as our divine parent and our eternal guide. To many observers, honoring this greater mystery is something we UUs do not do enough. I think we should do it more. Moving into sabbath time is a way of finding balance, a way of beginning our deeper journey of faith that can transform us as human beings. Regular periods in sabbath time can bring us insight and comfort, can lead us to courageous acts of love, can inspire us to change ourselves and our world.

In the workshop I attended at Shalem, I was learning about the spiritual directors training program, a program I have considered applying for for many years. The more I know about it, the more interested I am. During my sabbatical, I will be initiating the application process for this program. I want to learn to sit receptively with others, as they try to discern their spiritual path. This takes a commitment to entering sabbath time on a regular basis. Entering receptive mode, listening to the deep wisdom welling up inside, and trusting that wisdom. It is keeping an open attitude, an openness to divine wisdom, which is always active and present if we can learn to tap into it.

I am never sure how receptive you will be to God language. I know you are more receptive than many Unitarian Universalist congregations, not as comfortable as some. Over my years here, I have continually tried to interpret God as a divine mystery, the sourceof life and being and truth, the voice of wisdom that we can perceive when we listen to our deepest selves. God is the lure to greater good, greater love, greater truth. In God there is male and female, in God, all opposites come together, as the Taoist symbol for yin and yang portrays.

Sabbath time is the time for listening to the divine voice within. It does not reveal truth about the lives of others. It is for our own personal guidance. Sabbath time can be solitary retreat. Sabbath time can be wasting time with God. Sabbath time can be joyful play, for its own sake. In sabbath time, we honor the great and marvelous gift that is life. In sabbath time, we are re-energized to return to our ministry in the world. The deep nourishment that comes in sacred rest gives us the refreshed commitment to be agents of love and change in the world. We cannot do effectively if we never let ourselves be.

I believe that Rebecca Parker, president of Starr King School for the Ministry, is one of the strongest, most eloquent prophetic voices we have in our Unitarian Universalist movement today. The reading I gave earlier contains a hard-hitting message about our world and what is required of us as people of faith. She refers to the need for conversion and transformation to heal a very broken world. She tells of the need to enter on the journey through our pain and loss to a place of healing. Spiritual maturity requires this. Spiritual maturity takes us into sabbath time, into the comfort and challenge of turning inward, of receptivity, of living deeply through the crucible of our lives. And Parker urges us to celebrate the sabbath, singing, sharing, eating together. While there is the interior quest of sabbath time, the shared sabbath day is a time to build community, to support one another, to be together in our time of sacred rest.

Tilden Edward’s book provides interesting history about the sabbath, comparing Puritan and Jewish traditions. He outlines the triumph of the analytic approach to life in the intellectual history of Europe and the subsequent diminishment of the contemplative tradition in Western history. This contemplative tradition is being rediscoveredtoday in the context of our hectic, dehumanizing contemporary world. Both Rebecca Parker and Edwards call for an antidote to the dominant world theology that defines individuals as purely economic beings, individualistic, competitive, in a world ethic that prevents us from living as though people and the earth matter. The dominant economic ideology must be effectively challenged by ethical and religious communities which affirm the holiness of life. Taking sabbath time keeps us in touch with the sacredness of life and gives us rest to gather our strength to witness to a healthier view of life.

Another point Tilden Edwards makes in his book is that it can be very helpful to take a sabbath around the time of major life changes, such as birth, marriage or death. To integrate these transitions at a deep level, we need to focus our energy on the new shape our life has taken. This is why people take honeymoons. It is saying, let’s get used to this! As you know, I am getting married in a few short weeks. I really need to digest this major change. I need to pay attention to my new husband, my new self as wife, our new life together, to the voice inside which guides me.

I have many things planned for the time I have off from regular duties between now and September first. I hope I do not do them all, because that would be too much doing and defeat the spiritual purpose of sabbath time. I will waste time with God. I will explore the world and my own heart. I will rest and sleep and dream. I will return refreshed for ministry, and, I hope, wiser and more loving and more open. Next year, I hope to begin training in spiritual direction so that I can be a resource to the congregation in that way. Thank you all for supporting my growth as a person and as a minister. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the love and support you have given me and Perry as we begin our life adventure together. Thank you for the incomparable gift of a hand blocked quilt, expressing so much care and delight. Thank you for the immeasurable privilege of ministry among you here at Cedar Lane. May you find sacred rest when you need it, and even when you don’t.

At the suggestion of a Cedar Lane member, let us take an extended period of sacred quiet and rest before our final hymn, as a mini sabbatical together - about five minutes. Let us be together now attending to the divine within and all around, in joy and in gratitude......

Amen

Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
9601 Cedar Lane, Bethesda, Maryland 20814-4099
Tel: 301-493-8300    Fax: 301-897-5713
e-mail: office@CedarLane.org
Sunday Services at 9 and 11 a.m.
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