In the midst of this global pandemic, there are those of us who are relatively and (as always) temporarily healthy and financially secure. In the midst of disruption, stress, and even terror, some of us have found that there is an opportunity for rest and perspective. We’re working at home, working with our children at home, and/or relying on some savings to get us through until our hours are back to normal. The rhythms of life have shifted, or even slowed down.
In that shift, there seems to be a natural connection between this rest opportunity and Sabbath, at least as it has been understood in the Christian communities I’ve been around. After all, Sabbath can be understood a practice that’s all about allowing life to shift into a different rhythm, for a brief time, that individual and communal lives might be attuned to that more faithful, life-giving rhythm. I see all kinds of folks reflecting—through the various online modes in which I encounter them—on how being stuck at home for days on end has opened up space for rest and reflection.
Sabbath offers three gifts that I’ll focus on this week, though I’m well aware that wiser folks than me have enumerated many more gifts of the Sabbath. There are the gift of rest and two gifts of reflection: gratitude and clarity. In taking a period of time to step back from life as usual (often somewhere in the Friday-Sunday range), we can find ourselves refreshed (rest), appreciative of that which we take for granted (gratitude), and blessed with a more attentive understanding of the lives we live (clarity).
It seems clear to me, too, that there is a mode of rest and reflection being encouraged by various corporate powers that have so thoroughly shaped the rhythms of many of our individual lives, the complex national life of US American society, and the increasingly interwoven lives of communities around the globe. For those reading who know me—and I’ll be pleasantly surprised if anyone reading this doesn’t know me—it may be obvious that I’m deeply concerned by any trajectory of thought that might reinforce the influence of corporations on society and more deeply entrench the exploitative and violent modes of work and care that structure society. This is doubly true when such a trajectory of thought has operates on the same wavelength as the theological language we turn to in Christian communities.
I’m aware that open condemnations of capitalism can be suspicious in US American Christian spaces, especially when they’re burdened by overly academic language like all this stuff you’re reading right now. Rather than try to hide my commitments, though, I’ll instead attempt to witness to their faithfulness and trust the Spirit of love and truth to make something better of these words than I can.
So, on the one hand, it seems to me that corporations are working to shape the gifts of the Sabbath—rest, gratitude, and clarity—to prop up the systems of consumption and exploitation that sustain them. On the other hand, there are ways of embracing those same gifts of rest, gratitude, and clarity that might move us toward a more caring, just, and sustainable society.
In posts I’ll put up Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I’ll reflect on each of these three gifts of the Sabbath in order, laying out what I perceive to be deceptive capitalist distortions, and offering what I believe to be a more faithful mode of rest and reflection. On Friday, I’ll try to wrap my thoughts up into something coherent, express my frustration that I’ve never once in my life been sure I’ve done so successfully, and pat myself on the back for sticking with this for a week.
More tomorrow! Peace!