I write, speak, invest, network, and question to stimulate fruitful conversation. Let's talk about human flourishing! It begins with freedom. Holy leisure is the key to human being, freedom and generativity. Please join me in the adventure of realizing Christ!
SAR 3: Be a Place
- Someone who is powerless has still the value and dignity of being a human person., bearing the image of God. He doesn’t have to do anything but be, in order to possess that personhood. Sabbath is ordered to this essential dignity, to man’s being, rather than to his power to exert himself, or to have an impact on the world.
- It is possible to see other people as objects – maybe helpful ones, maybe obstructions, maybe objects we value – whose value is something that relates to us, to our evaluation of their impact, or worth for us. But to say someone is ‘You’ and not ‘It’, is to acknowledge that he is a person whose value points not to you, but to his Creator. The difference is in your sense of reverence for the mystery and dignity of that person.
- The rested soul seems to relax and ‘open’ the way the eye’s pupil dilates when you see someone you love. Because God is invited to act upon you, and you give Him sanctified time just for that purpose, you grow in interior freedom, or ‘spaciousness’, or capacity for Christ.
- If I reject someone, I shut him out of my heart, or defend myself against him – against being affected by him (hurt, or moved, or challenged…). To some extent, then, he is displaced. My heart breaks for the great numbers of people in our world today who are ‘displaced’ because they do not have ‘place’ in anyone’s heart. No room at the inn, so to speak…
- Busyness and laziness both distract us from true, human, holy leisure. Because neither is oriented toward the human person (busyness is oriented to task accomplishments and external stimuli; laziness is oriented away from reality – to amusement, indolent sensuality, self-centered disengagement), neither builds him up in his capacity to ‘bear the weight of glory’ of his own humanity. I speak of extremes, as, obviously, there are plenty of times when I am very busy accomplishing a bunch of tasks, or lazily indulging in plain-old non-doing. The problem is with staying in either mode, or letting either one of these become so characteristic of one’s whole approach to life that there is no room for Sabbath – no ability to shift flexibly into or out of an extreme. The tendency is for them to become more and more binding upon us, which is one reason the regular Sabbath observance is so powerful to keep either from getting ‘too sticky’. In case you’ve never observed it, I can tell you there really are people who simply cannot stop the busyness – one woman who had panic attacks if she tried to take a day of vacation, for example. And, certainly, we’ve all known people so stuck in inertia that they couldn’t seem to get their act together to accomplish anything, face a problem, improve any aspect of life. That’s acedia in spades: inability to move yourself toward spiritual goods; lack of power to wield yourself rightly…sad.
- The well-rested soul, the restful soul, is more ‘open’, more ‘transparent’, because it has a greater capacity to bear tension without dis-integration of the Self. Not walling off problems, or self-protectively hardening the heart, the rested soul is more fully present – to Christ, to Self, to others.
- The Blessed Sacrament is Jesus in perfect, patient repose. He has relinquished all action, and remains perfectly present to each one who will come to receive Him. The Sacrament, like the Sabbath, acts to recall man to himself whatever the direction he has strayed. As Christ is formed in us, we become beacons recalling men to Truth and Light from every direction!
- People who are dis-integrated, or in disequilibrium, may have opposite symptoms, but since they all need to get back to the same state (well-rested, spacious wholeness), they all need Sabbath rest. Sabbath acts like a tonic, restoring a variety of different symptoms to a centered balance. It brings man back to his essential humanity, to his senses, to his own being, no matter which direction his disintegration has taken him.
- I think you’ll know your Sabbath practice is working for you if you begin to look forward to the next Sabbath during the week. Next, you may find the ‘sense of Sabbath’ percolating into your daily life more and more. I hope you’ll feel a greater sense of interior spaciousness and ease. As you use your ‘creativity muscles,’ you’ll begin to think of new and authentic, creative ways to keep your Sabbath holy – ways that delight you and increase your freedom.
- The Blessed Sacrament is Jesus in perfect, patient repose. He has relinquished all action, and remains perfectly present to each one who will come to receive Him. The Sacrament, like the Sabbath, acts to recall man to himself whatever the direction he has strayed. As Christ is formed in us, we become beacons recalling men to Truth and Light from every direction!
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