Welcome to the second part of this experiment in meaning-making! Today I’m going to say a little bit about rest, how capitalism is working to distort our sense of rest, and how we might embrace a more faithful form of rest in these days.
Before saying more about rest, though, I want to reiterate that I’m under no illusions that this can be any kind of time of rest for everyone. Many folks can’t find rest right now because of their work. Some folks are working day after day because they know they’re holding their community together, keeping the machinery of our towns and cities running, keeping people fed, getting people where they need to go. Others are working because they’re quite literally saving lives every day (and were already, but won’t let a pandemic stop them from doing so now). Many others are out working in unsafe conditions because they simply cannot afford to take time off of work. And lots of us (myself included) are working from home because we care about what we do and need to keep getting paid…or are working at home caring for loved ones in a more intense and intimate way that they usually have to, even if they’re full-time caregivers.
Not everyone can even pretend that they’re being offered an opportunity to rest, but then some of us are being offered just that.
Capitalist Distortion
That offer of rest takes a particular shape as it’s distorted by capitalism. We could be invited to take a break, pick up a hobby, enjoy some leisure, and appreciate the time we’re spending with family. We’re invited, in other words, to pretend that whatever’s going on out there, it’s a temporary disruption to an otherwise functioning system. We’re invited to find rest by simply enjoying whatever it is that we have within reach, to recharge as we await the resumption of business as usual. We can, effectively, treat whatever containment measures our communities adopt as surprise “staycations,” secure in the knowledge that on the other side of this pandemic is a return to a more regular usual work-life balance. And, of course, we are invited to eagerly anticipate the end of this rest, as our prolonged rest threatens the very foundations of civilization. Should we rest too long, the economy will collapse and the world will fall apart around us. That is, we’re invited to act as though the continual encroachment of paid work into every aspect of our individual and communal lives is a normal balance, and that what we have right now is an unnatural absence of such paid work.
Faithful Rest
There’s a more faithful, life-giving form of rest that we can embrace. That rest isn’t a temporary reprieve from normal life, an undeserved gift of time away from work we should be doing. Sabbath rest redefines normal life for us. Sabbath rest is a reminder that we are God’s beloved creatures, that the core of our being is the reality that we are good and that our well-being is holy. Sabbath rest reveals that a system that drives us to work to exhaustion, that extends its reach into every aspect of our lives, and that cannot survive if we stop working for a month or two is anything but normal. If we recognize that whatever space for leisure and connection (however strange or technologically assisted) we can find is not a disruption, but is a window into a world in which the well-being of humans is placed before the well-being of banks, we can find a more faithful form of rest in these times.
Tomorrow, I’ll shift to the topic of gratitude. For now, I hope you can find rest, know that you aren’t stealing it from whoever usually pays you to work, and realize that whatever goodness you find in that rest is something it shouldn’t take a global emergency to find time to embrace.
Questions for consideration (or even discussion!)
How much rest do you deserve?
Why don’t you rest more?
What would fall apart if we all rested more…and is it worth preserving?