Yesterday morning already I knew this is going to be a busy week -- over-ful with extra commitments-- the kind of week you hope to get through without leaving anything important undone, or if you get everything done, having some of it done poorly for lack of preparation.
In the old days, for me that would have meant determined, head-down, bull-ahead, blinkers-on work morning, afternoon and evening, all week from the get-go .. and see you when the week is done.
These days, though -- after almost 5 months of medical leave a few years ago for treatment of a number of disorders and still engaged now in recovery practices, after working calmly through the morning and afternoon, I took the evening off at home. My wife and I watched and talked our way through a Netflix movie suggested yesterday morning by her sister, called "Before I Go to Sleep." After that, while she phoned her sister to compare notes about the movie with her, I stayed with Netflix and watched another episode of Season One of the original Star Trek (I'm slowly watching my way through them). Then before bed, we ended the evening listening together to our latest CD purchase -- "Hope" by The Strumbellas.
A sabbath evening. A choice to say no to the pressures of work. Willingness to let go of busy-ness and the ultimacy of my own efforts, no matter what the demands. Agreement to trust a gracious reality greater than myself.
And the content of the evening makes me wonder about an even fuller meaning of sabbath than that -- that maybe it's about more than just rest, more than just catching our breath and giving our bodies and minds pause so we can pick up our work again with even greater energy after the pause is over.
"Before I Go to Sleep" is a wonderfully engaging thriller that by the time it is done explores the varying shades of the darkness that lives and moves and has its insidious way in every single major character of the story -- so-called "good" and "bad" alike. The Star Trek episode -- "The Enemy Within," likewise explores the interwoven presence of light and dark, of good and evil in all of us, and how it's not the absence or even the defeat of evil that makes or breaks us as human beings, but how we recognize, accept and embrace our ever-present evil side. And then The Strumbellas -- what draws me so deeply to their music is the way they sing their darkness and put the terrible -- even tragic, struggles of their soul to music. They truly give me hope of living a creative, faithful life myself, now that I know at least some of my own darkness more clearly.
Which makes me think about a fuller sense of sabbath -- that it's not just rest from work, catching our breath and renewing our energy, or even just learning to see the will of God and not just our work as the ultimate power to make the world good.
But that it's also, within the sabbath-granted memory of the grace of God, the freedom to feel our own darkness and let it be known, to be able to know and confess our own ways of evil, to not fear our shadow, and through the knowledge of our whole being as loved by God, to emerge from sabbath renewed in humility, in the knowledge of forgiveness, and in a more gracious vision of ourselves and others that focus on work, on what we can and must do, and on only the good side of our being never really allows.
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