Week Twenty of Ordinary time

by Miranda Craig

Sabbath rest, holy day blessed-

creation ceases striving.

Through the noise a still small voice

wells up, my soul reviving.

Hello, friends, and welcome to the twentieth week of Ordinary Time. 

I have a (mildly relevant) question for you: Do you drink tea? 

I do, and sometimes I get great enjoyment from the quotes included on the little tag attached to the tea bag. Sometimes they’re funny or wise or confusing. Sometimes they help inform my sabbath practice:

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. -Lao Tzu

If I’m being honest, half the reason I enjoy tea so much is because it invites me into a more relaxed mindset than the one that drives me through most days. The morning may involve a lot of coffee, but my evenings often wind down with the teapot whistling and mint or echinacea steam rising from my cup. 

Tea-tag wisdom aside, learning to practice the Sabbath is an ongoing and difficult process, and one in which I find myself becoming increasingly connected to the earth. Weather permitting, I try to take a walk outside and enjoy the world around me. It strikes me that most creatures do what is necessary for survival and then rest, moving at the pace of bodily rhythms rather than the ticking clock. Nature is not rushed because it seeks only what is necessary. I, on the other hand, run between class and work and meals made with (less-than-sustainable) ramen. My life is a bizarre cycle of coffee, go, go, go, laugh a little, read a lot, tea, sleep, repeat! Throw in a couple paychecks, some bills, and the month is all wrapped up. Why do I run around this way? Perhaps I’ve been told that life is not about having time, but about having things. If I do well in school, then I get a good job, then I make a decent amount of money, then I can buy what I want, which will make me feel happy and satisfied. With this worldview, I will never be done.

The unfortunate reality is that this way of living distracts me from both the impacts of my lifestyle on the world around me and also the presence of God in my life. An important part of my Sabbaths in recent months has been remaining outside the economy for a full twenty-four hours. On the Sabbath, I don’t buy anything and I don’t do anything for which I will be paid. I’ve been slowly learning how much it matters to cease from consumption. Taking a day off from the marketplace not only allows others to have a day off, but allows the earth to take a break. It creates a time in which our neighbors and the earth are not seen as objects to meet our needs, but as dignified parts of God’s creation. Leviticus 26 tells us that if we don’t obey the commandments given to us, we will be exiled from the land until the earth has had its Sabbath rest, the rest which we denied it in our time living there. The rhythms God built into creation invite us to cease not only from work but from extracting work from other people and living things. As I allow myself, my neighbor and the soil to rest, I encounter a stillness pregnant with the presence of God in ways that I do not during the loud rush of the week. Here, on a day blessed by God and made holy through unhurried living, we are renewed and refreshed.