Being Here

I had just finished grading an essay when my friend Dr. M. appeared at my door. "Dr. Bear, do you know what you're doing this afternoon?"

Depending on the day, the appropriate answer to this question might be, "studying Kant for Faculty Reading Club" or "figuring midterm grades" or "reading poetry outside with Thursday Club." This particular Friday, however, I knew Dr. M. expected a different answer.

"I'm going kayaking," I smiled. Dr. M. had promised (or warned) me some weeks earlier than one day he would bring his kayak to campus and set me adrift along one of the inlets of the Chickasabogue that runs through our 700+ acre campus. I wasn't sure if this was some sort of new faculty rite of passage, or simply one more example of the kind of hale whimsy that seems so common here. He showed me the path down to the creek and told me to have fun. I was to make my journey, then bring the kayak back to the trail for him to retrieve that evening.

I savored the first half hour of my trip, soaking up more silence than I've known in months. I tried to name and notice: water like melted amber, sunlight warm but not heavy.

As I floated steadily forward, I began to worry about the current that had brought me so gently into this silence. Sure enough, as soon as I turned around I realized that I was going to have to fight my way back. I felt like Odysseus -- either I would ricochet from bank to bank, or I would get caught in eddies that turned me in relentless circles. It seemed to take me ages to progress even a few yards. To move past a particularly swift section of water, I had to use the overhanging trees to pull the kayak forward, bit by bit.

It had been a very, very long time since I had done anything so purely physical. I exercise nearly every day, but I rarely push myself hard enough to roar in frustration, as I did several times during my voyage on the Chickasabogue. Soon the kayak and I were covered in pine needles, bark, and wet sand. I willed all my strength into my arms, concentrating only on the hope of forward motion.

After half an hour of agonizingly slow progress, the current slackened, and soon I heard Dr. A (another friend and colleague) shouting, "I found her!" A few more stern strokes and I was around the final bend. Dr. A, her daughter, and two of Dr. M's students were playing in the shallows.

Exhausted but strangely happy after my battle, I was no longer thinking about all the reading I needed to do that evening, nor the papers I still needed to grade. Instead of hurrying home, I lingered on the bank for a while. Dr. A's daughter jumped like a bird from sand to water, water to sand, while the students swam to the opposite bank and brought back black-eyed susans for us to put in our hair. Dr. A says that when the black-eyed susans bloom, you know the summer heat has finally broken.   As the sun was sinking below the trees, I finally took the trail back up toward my office. I went home, took a shower, and then fell asleep for twelve hours.

When I woke the next morning, my first instinct was to make a parable of the whole thing: an illustration for the virtues of persistence, or nonconformity, or eating oatmeal. The adventure had been both beautiful and maddening; I was determined to make it useful, as well.

Nothing I came up with seemed quite right, and consequently, I didn't write about my experience on Saturday, as I had originally planned. "What am I supposed to do with my adventure?" I kept asking myself.

Not until Sunday did I realize that I don't need to "do" anything with my odyssey up the Chickasabogue. While there was nothing very restful about paddling upstream, there was something deeply restful in the way that journey demanded my utter and complete presence. For the past decade, I have intentionally been trying to learn to be present in conversations, locations, work, moments, but I'm still terrible at it: I put away dishes during the 30-second breaks in my weight-training routine; I make grocery lists during sermons; I drift during phone conversations; I knit during dates. Without constant effort, my mind turns to plans, deadlines, and projects which, however good in themselves, remove me from what I am supposedly experiencing.

When I meditate on the Sabbath, it seems that an important aspect of resting is presence--being fully here, without regard for the future, with attention undivided on the good things of the day. As I continue to learn to keep the Sabbath holy, I  treasure experiences that teach me to be joyfully, impossibly, irreducibly present. The list of such experiences is short but rich: Christmas, face-to-face conversations, teaching. And, apparently, kayaking upstream.

Sing like never before

As an unredeemed six-year-old, I disliked all the music that happened in church. I could happily scribble during a sermon, but when it came time for singing, my mother would haul me to my feet, forcing me to exchange pen and crayons for a cumbersome hymnal.

I didn't like the music because it compelled me to participate in what was happening around me, interrupting my plans.  Years later, on the other hand, I discovered other teenagers who knew the hymns I had grown to love, and this shocked me into a deeper understanding of what it means to have a common faith. (You can read an account of that discovery here.)

The beauty of music can be a testimony to God's grandeur, consolation to a grieving spirit, or a way to express joy that passes understanding. At the same time, it is worthwhile to consider how strange it is for any number of grown people to gather in a room and sing. Most people, religious or not, listen to music as performed by professionals, and some people join choirs or bands because they enjoy making music. However, the practice of regularly gathering in a large group to sing is one of many unusual things Christians do on Sunday mornings.

Singing makes me feel particularly vulnerable among strangers, and yet I have found myself in this new city, week after week, making music alongside people I hardly know. Why would I do such a thing?
I haven't had a voice lesson in years, I may not like the instruments this church uses, or I might grumble to see  a PowerPoint screen instead of a hymnal. And yet I sing.

Yesterday I visited yet another new church. Unfamiliar building, unfamiliar people, unfamiliar song. But the strange song soon grew precious: common faith, shared hope, one Father.

For amateurs and aliens, singing doesn't make much sense. But it can help make a home.

Freedom from, freedom for

Laura Ingalls Wilder was not allowed to sew clothes for her doll on Sunday. Reading this in the Little House books as a child, I realized that not everyone loved Sundays as much as I did.  Until I was in second or third grade, I was convinced that "Sunday" was so named because the sun was always bright on church days (this is a rather strange conclusion for a child of grey midwestern winters, but then, induction has never been my strength). As my parents and I would walk to church, I would imagine that the birds sitting on the telephone wires were arranging themselves upon avian pews in preparation for worship.

Not everyone who grows up in a Sabbath-keeping household has such fond memories of Sundays. I have a friend who is reluctant to call home on Sundays for fear that she might let slip that she did her laundry after church. Even as a grown woman, she fears the disapproval of her sabbatarian parents. Even without irksome memories of keeping a Sabbath, many Christians seem ready to dismiss the idea of sabbath-keeping without any discussion, much less any prayer.  "That's just legalism," I've heard more times than I can count. Or they will invoke Mark 2.27: "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath."  I don't contest that Jesus challenged many of his culture's rigid ideas about keeping the Sabbath holy, but I think it is worth considering Mark 2.28, as well: "So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath."

I cannot claim to understand all of what Jesus means in Mark 2, but I do know that Christ came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it (Matt 5.17), and the command to keep the Sabbath holy is one of the central laws God gives to his people.  As I have tried to show in other posts (here and here, for example), keeping the Sabbath as a day of worship and rest is both discipline and liberation.

Because I know that Sabbath-keeping has a tendency to turn into rigid rule-keeping, I have not yet provided a list of practices for keeping Sundays as a holy day.  However, I want this to be a blog that integrates ideals and practices. What I offer here is not a prescription for a holy Sabbath, but a glimpse of my own small, evolving habits of consecrated rest. Next Monday, I will discuss habits that I do not yet practice, but which I hope to begin observing.

On Sundays, I free myself from....

Professional obligations
     I love my work, but come Saturday night, I set aside my lesson plans, my grading, my research, and my writing. During seasons when work is stressful, Sundays are days to have faith that "when God made time, he made enough of it." At times when work is satisfying and joyful, Sundays are days of release and humility: I remember  that all my work, no matter how eloquent or moving or lasting, will one day pass away.

Getting and spending
      Except in emergencies, I do not shop or spend on Sundays, nor do I research possible purchases nor update my budget spreadsheet. I let go of my instinct for gathering, focusing instead on contentment with what I have.
      I try to extend this practice to eating out, as well. Whether or not the employees at a restaurant are Christians, I don't want to support markets that thrive on Sundays. This can be tricky, since many people use Sunday lunch as a chance to build relationships with friends from church.  Once I am established in a church community, I try to suggest alternatives to eating out, such as a potluck in my home. However, of all my practices, this is probably the one I most often set aside.

Sometimes, I free myself from being awake.

Housework
     I dedicate time each Saturday night for cleaning house, not only because I don't want to do the very real work of scrubbing, washing, and arranging on Sunday, but because waking to a clean, tidy space on Sunday morning is one way I welcome the Sabbath as a treasured guest.

Sorrow
     Rarely do I listen to the news on Sunday, and I am careful not to watch movies or read books that will make me sad. This might seem like escapism, but it is not: it is my challenge to the hard news, shocking realities, and brutal facts I let break my heart six days a week. On those six days, I ask God to show me how I can fight the darkness, but on Sundays, I surrender my feeble weapons, trusting that it is God who truly gives victory.

On Sundays, I free myself for....

Celebration
     As a Baptist girl, I did not grow up with any knowledge of fasting and feasting as spiritual practices, but as an adult, I use a number of weekly "fasts" to set Sunday apart as a holy, joyful day. On Sundays, I sweeten the hot tea that I have drunk plain all week. On Sundays, I often serve meat and make desserts. On Sundays, I wear my prettiest dresses and watch movies. During the winter, I end my Sundays with a long, soaking bath instead of a quick, conservation-conscious shower.

Silence
    I love the hymns, testimonies, and sermons that constitute most Baptist worship services, but after church, I try to set aside at least part of my Sunday for cultivating silence. Remembering the faithful patience of the Quakers, I turn off my music, shun my phone, and close my computer--sometimes for a quarter of an hour, sometimes longer. Sitting in my own home in such silence changes my perception: the light always looks a little different, and without the flow of sounds I have chosen (such as music), I hear new things--train whistles, children, neighbors, rain.

Fidelity
   During the week, my attention is almost always divided. Even as I focus on one task, the day's to-do list continues reeling across my mind's eye. I get distracted while reading by plans for the next day, or I forget something from my grocery list because the long-hunted word for my thesis interrupts my search for brown rice or tomatoes. On Sundays, I attend to one thing at a time. I don't plan for the week to come, even if the plans are happy ones. I exchange my computer, with its ever-alluring tabs and windows, for the relative austerity of a letter-paper. I go for a walk and pay attention to what I am seeing, rather than what I need to do when I return.

Remember, I see these habits in terms of freedom, not force.  As human practices, these observances are only holy insofar as they make me more like Jesus. I would not force them upon any brother or sister, but I have invited my friends to join me in seeking ways to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.

Will you join me in discussing and practicing what it means to follow "the lord of the Sabbath"? What, if anything, do you free yourself from or for on the Sabbath?

Is going to church necessary?

Yesterday I worshiped in my home church, First Southern Baptist Church of Terre Haute, Indiana. As an adult in a culture where I can choose to worship any place I like, there is something bracing about returning to a church I did not choose. My parents began attending this church when I was an infant, and as I grew up, we remained there because the Bible said that we should not forsake gathering together with other believers (Hebrews 10:25). The sermon at First Southern was on 1 Corinthians 8, and the pastor emphasized the first three verses: concerning knowledge that puffs up and divides, and love that builds up the church and its people.

In religious life, the knowledge that divides us can be doctrinal. However, other kinds of knowledge can prove a more subtle danger. If I know that some churches orchestrate their services with care, skill, and beauty, it can become difficult for me to worship in a service that does not come with a detailed outline and unswerving schedule. If I know that some buildings have stained glass, I might regret the plain sanctuary of a less affluent congregation. If I know that some Sunday school classes provoke lively, thoughtful discussion, I might resent other styles of teaching.

During his sermon, the pastor of First Southern mentioned a passage from C.S. Lewis's God in the Dock. In this essay, Lewis answers a number of questions about the Christian life. His response to the following question about the role of the church reminded me how important it is to humble knowledge--even right knowledge--to love:

 Question 16.
    Is attendance at a place of worship or membership with a Christian community necessary to a Christian way of life?

Lewis:
    That's a question which I cannot answer. My own experience is that when I first became a Christian, about fourteen years ago, I thought that I could do it on my own, by retiring to my rooms and reading theology, and I wouldn't go to the churches and Gospel Halls; [...] If there is anything in the teaching of the New Testament which is in the nature of a command, it is that you are obliged to take the Sacrament, and you can't do it without going to Church. I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on I saw the great merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit bean peeling off. I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren't fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit. (God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994. 61-62)

How would you answer the question Lewis tackles? Is attending church and belonging to a Christian community necessary for the Christian life? 

Wonder and Scorn

“What can this mean?”

“They must be drunk.”

Backwoods Galileans begin speaking in the languages of the vast world, telling stories of God’s mighty deeds. Rumors of a rushing wind and tongues of flame flicker through the crowd, and the witnesses respond with wonder--what can this mean?--or with scorn.

Peter the Apostle answered both the amazement and the scorn of the crowd, explaining that he and his provincial friends were swept in the power of the Holy Spirit, fulfilling the words of the prophet. 

This is the legacy of Pentecost, the birthday of the Christian Church. As children of this Church, wonder and scorn are our birthright.

Discussing this passage in Sunday School, our teacher asked, “Are you living your life in such a way that it makes no sense without the Holy Spirit?”

Throughout worship, and even during the quiet, companionable hours of my Sabbath rest, this question haunted me. When I have seen men and women who handle money, organize time, enter relationships, refine professions in ways that cannot be explained in any terms other than “She has been baptized in the name of Christ Jesus?” or “See in him the words of the prophet fulfilled?” Does my own life manifest such holy nonsense?

It is not too difficult to come up with dramatic examples--MotherTeresa’s brilliant labor in Calcutta, for example, or Lottie Moon’s apostolic work among the Chinese. But I spent more time pondering how we should be amazing the world in our own ordinary times. When the wind is still, the flames have vanished, and my tongue knows only in its faltering English, does my life provoke wonder? Does anyone ask, “What can this mean?”

Have you ever known anyone whose life could only be explained in terms of his or her faith? What are some “ordinary” ways you hope your life speaks of God’s mighty deeds?

"...not a way but a place"

There is a day
when the road neither
comes nor goes, and the way
is not a way but a place.
(Wendell Berry, "1997: VII" from A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997)

For those of us who still wander in time and space, the idea of home is inseparable from the experience of a journey, or, for some, a pilgrimage toward something sacred.  Concepts of place and journey, movement and stability shift and slip.  Wendell Berry imagines our ultimate hope in terms of our journey ending: the transformation of a time-bound journey into an eternal home.  But "There is a day"--a Sabbath--in which we can find ourselves at home even as we wander, quest, or climb. 

This Sunday, I traveled out of town with my friends Wyatt and Katie.  Wyatt was preaching at the country church where he works as youth minister, and after worship, we three spent the afternoon losing ourselves at a nearby state park. 

Mother Neff State Park, Texas

We found a path and followed it, walking and resting and enjoying the brilliant Texas wildflowers.  It was a very Sunday sort of walk: no hurry, no schedule, no destination beyond a return to where we began.  We were talking and taking pictures the whole way, at home in our good company as much as if we had been settled in our houses. 

Mother Neff State Park, Texas

No matter how far we walk, we will never, in this world, find a place that satisfies our desire for home in any settled or lasting way.  Instead, we find our tastes of that satisfaction in the moments when eternity slips into time: in returning seasons, consecrated hours, traditions, habits, and Sabbaths. 

"There is a day...."

"It pleased the Lord to touch a small feather..."

"Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy." In The Sabbath, Abraham Heschel writes that during our six days of labor we strive to control space--exploring, crafting, and controlling the material world.  On the Sabbath, however, we attend to time, learning to recognize time as eternity in disguise.

Perhaps that is why we commanded to remember the Sabbath, rather than to build a monument to it. After two decades of practice, I am fairly good at relinquishing work and worry on Sundays. Recently, however, I have felt convicted to learn how to remember the Sabbath in more intentional ways.  Too many Sundays I have let "rest" mean sleeping far too late, rushing to church, then coming home to glut myself on seven hours of Netflix. 

This spring has been better than those greedy Sundays, in part because my friends and I have had more conversations about Sabbath-keeping than usual, and so I have been more intentional with my days.

In future, I may articulate some of my principles for keeping the Sabbath holy, but for now, I will describe the Sabbath I kept yesterday.  It was quiet and bright and good.  As always, you are welcome to join me in this rest.

I began the day with the "Prayer to Welcome to Sabbath" from Common Prayer:

Lord of Creation,

create in us a new rhythm of life

composed of hours that sustain rather than stress,

of days that deliver rather than destroy,

of time that tickles rather than tackles.

 

Lord of Liberation,

by the rhythm of your truth, set us free

from the bondage and baggage that break us,

from the Pharaohs and fellows who fail us,

from the plans and pursuits that prey upon us.

 

Lord of Resurrection,

may we be raised into the rhythm of your new life,

dead to deceitful calendars,

dead to fleeting friend requests,

dead to the empty peace of our accomplishments.

 

To our packed-full planners, we bid, “Peace!”

To our over-caffeinated consciences, we say, “Cease!”

To our suffocating selves, Lord, grant release.

 

Drowning in a sea of deadlines and death chimes,

we rest in you, our lifeline.

 

By your ever-restful grace,

allow us to enter your Sabbath rest

as your Sabbath rest enters into us.

 

In the name of our Creator,

our Liberator,

our Resurrection and Life,

we pray.

 

Amen.

 

 Then I went to church, where our youth led worship with such grace and wisdom. After church, Kt came over and we sat, talking about future lives (Virginia, Alabama, rural churches, backyard chickens).  She was knitting, I was writing an icon. After she left, I took up my own knitting project and watched the last two episodes of Doctor Who: Series 6.  

I love spending Sunday afternoons knitting and sewing with Kt and friends.

By this time the daylight was fading, and the house was still (Grant and Jenn were away).  Had there been enough daylight, I would have taken a walk, but lacking that, I decided to watch a recent German film on a woman who captured my imagination and affection when I was fifteen.  Vision is based on the life of Hildegarde of Bingen, a twelfth-century composer, abbess, naturalist, and mystic.  The film is beautiful, featuring many of Hildegarde's haunting musical compositions.

"It pleased the Lord to touch a small feather  - it flew aloft in wonder. And a strong wind did carry it, so that it did not sink." 

These were the final words of the film, and they have stayed in my mind all day today.  I hope that all my Sabbath pursuits, from the holy (church-going, praying) to the merely happy (Doctor Who), are shaping me into such a feather. The Sabbath should make my soul so light that it can fly on whatever good winds God sends. 


Do you have any Sabbath-keeping practices that help you remember the day and keep it holy?

Sabbath Home

Out of the days through which we fight and from whose ugliness we ache, we look to the Sabbath as our homeland, as our source and destination" (Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath. 1951. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005. 29-30).

The idea of home, like all our most precious and fundamental ideas, is supposed to be sacred--that is it should consecrate and illuminate our identities, relationships, and work.  However, sacred is hard, and without care, reflections on sacred ideas can become saccharine and unreal.  I have kept this blog for more than a year now, and I have enjoyed discovering along the way how my sense of home both resembles and differs from those of my readers.

Today--and for most Mondays to follow--I want to begin exploring a practice that is fundamental to my understanding of home--remembering the Sabbath and keeping it holy.

Like many aspects of my childhood home, resting on Sundays might have looked like a rule-based practice from the outside.  Growing up, I did not do homework or go to movies on Sunday. We did not go shopping or spend money in other ways. My mother would do only minimal cooking (usually something in the Crock Pot for lunch, and leftovers for supper). And of course, we would go to church.  However, the actual experience of observing Sunday as our Sabbath was one of extraordinary freedom. I would watch my parents, who normally worked from sunrise to sunset in their ministry to college students, sink into hours of quiet sleep. No one answered the phone, or put away laundry, or cut the grass.  We might walk or read, but never run nor study.

Because of these practices, I went to college with the expectation that I would rest on Sundays -- no homework, no Wal-Mart runs, no committee meetings.  It was here, however, that I first realized how strange it was that I kept a Sabbath at all. I knew, of course, that none of my friends from high school observed a Sabbath, but most of them were not Christians, so I hardly expected it of them. At Carson-Newman, however, I was surrounded by young men and women who knew the songs from the Baptist hymnal, prayed before meals, and went on mission trips. Yet they did not rest on Sundays. When we talked--rarely--about resting on Sunday, my friends would say, "That's fine for you, Bethany. You can always get your work done by Saturday night."  For the most part, I accepted this explanation. I was diligent six days a week, and Sundays were my reward for being hardworking and clever.

When I began graduate school, however, I was forced to reexamine my self-congratulating conception of Sabbath-rest. Suddenly, I no longer felt capable of working hard enough to "earn" Sundays off.  Suddenly, the idea of Sabbath changed from receiving a reward for my labor, to an act of faith.  Choosing not to work on Sundays during graduate school has been one of the most difficult choices I have made as a Christian.

I was thinking about all this last Thursday, when I attended a panel on "Keeping Sabbath in the Academy" hosted by the Baylor University Graduate School.  After the panelists shared their views on why Sabbath-keeping is an important--indeed, a non-negotiable practice of Christian life--the familiar questions began. "How do you prevent Sabbath-keeping from becoming legalistic?" "To what extent are we as Christians supposed to follow Jewish ideas about the Sabbath?" "How do you keep Sabbath when churches schedule meetings and activities all day?" For me, however, the most poignant question came from a grad student from the school of music.  "Everyone in our program expects us to practice every day," she said. "How are we supposed to keep a Sabbath if it harms the quality of our work?"  One of the panelists said--rightly, I think--that the student may find herself a better pianist if she learns to enjoy a weekly Sabbath.  However, I know from experience that the benefits of keeping a Sabbath might not be so directly correlated with her professional work.  I piped up and described my own struggle with that choice: how I realized, during my first year, that keeping a weekly Sabbath might be an obstacle to becoming a top scholar, and that I chose rest anyway. It is not a choice I made lightly, or without anxiety, but while I can find lots of admonitions to holiness in the Bible, I find few verses commanding me to strive after success in the world's sense--including success in the world's academy.  Yesterday, as I returned to Abraham Joshua Heschel's The Sabbath--a moving and beautiful account of Jewish ideas about the Sabbath--I found a passage that speaks directly to this anxiety:

"Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work (Exodus 20:8).  Is it possible for a human being to do all his work in six days? Does not our work always remain incomplete? What the verse means to convey is this: Rest on the Sabbath as if all your work were done. Another interpretation: Rest even from the thought of labor. (32).

Keeping Sabbath is a way of telling God that we remember our own finitude, and that we put our hope in his infinite and effective work on our behalf.

I mourn the fact that so few Christians have a vibrant, joyful conception of Sabbath-keeping. I cannot claim complete knowledge of how and why we should observe the Sabbath. In the weeks to come I will examine some of my own practices, and I may discover that they are unworthy or insufficient for a holy day.

I do know, however, that I greet each Sunday as one greets the arrival of a beloved friend. My heart lifts up when I think, "Sunday is coming." I want to share that joy with you.  

How do you "remember the Sabbath and keep it holy?" Do you think it is important for Christians to observe Sunday as a day of rest, and if so, how should we do this communally and individually? What are some of the challenges to setting aside a day of rest? What questions about Sabbath-keeping would you like for me to explore in future posts?