One day a week for total life transformation?
Friday evening, there’s nothing like the feeling of lighting my shabbat candles.
The work of the week is done: patient charts closed, messages replied to, meals planned, groceries shopped, dog walked, exercise done, bills payed, budget updated, writing written, videos recorded, edits made, floor vacuumed, laundry laundered…
The noise fades in the gentle light of those two candles.
Peace.
Rest.
For the next 25 hours, nothing must be done.
Of course, you don’t have to approach the practice of a sabbath from a religious perspective.
The Jewish sabbath asks observers to refrain from all work — things like cooking and cleaning, yes, but also those activities we undertake to bring the material world into alignment with our vision of it. Creative activities, writing, etc. Spending money. Business of any kind…
The strictness of practice varies person to person, even in religious circles.
Whether you’re someone who doesn’t touch an electrical switch or simply turns off work notifications for the day, the benefits of keeping a day of rest, separate and sacrosanct, are tremendous.
Grounding
If you’re anything like me, your mind is busy. You’ve a list of tasks you missed yesterday, plus the ones for today. You’re trying to remember if you took the chicken out of the freezer for dinner, and oh shoot, I forgot, what will we have instead? Or you’re thinking of how to correct a mistake at work, or tackle a difficult call. That meeting got moved to when I was going to work out… when else can I get to the gym?
We have a tendency to get lost in it all, our minds surrendered to the chaos of modern life.
On Sabbath, daily chaos is relinquished.
I need to make sure I…. uh uh uh! Not today you don’t.
And so there’s space to take a breath and simply be.
This space allows you to anchor, ground yourself back in what really matters to you. The concerns of the world put aside, you’re left with your own thoughts, feelings, curiosities. You’ve the opportunity to ground yourself in the experience of right here and now.
Luxuriate in the morning spent over coffee and toast and your favorite section of the paper, or that novel you’ve been wanting to get to. Enjoy (or at least let be) the messy play of a family together at breakfast. Check out a new trail, or have a long nap, or just sit around and daydream as the case may be.
On Sabbath, you get to remember the joys of your heart, and enjoy them.
Refreshing
Have you ever hit a wall while working through a tough project? Maybe you’re overtired, or perhaps it’s just a really gnarly problem you’ve come to. Perhaps you stepped away — went and let the dog out, or made a cup of tea, went to bed or had a walk. Often, returning to your problem or project, a solution seems to appear out of the air.
The constant press of modern life is intense. It is easy (inevitable?) to get crushed under if you’re not careful.
Taking a sabbath break once a week refreshes your ability to handle what life serves up.
Stepping away from the daily routines and responsibilities, body, mind, and spirit have the opportunity to reset.
Stepping back into daily routines and responsibilities, energy, resilience, creativity, courage are improved.
Enhances work throughout the week
Many folks don’t want to take a break because they’ll miss out on doing work that has to be done!!!
If you’ve ever gone on vacation, you likely wondered at how much you got done before you left. WOW, I powered through so much!
A regular sabbath practice produces a similar effect.
If you set up your sabbath to exclude work (which, imo, you should), you’ll be shocked how much you’ll start to accomplish on work days… because you have to.
If your sabbath is a non-negotiable-I’m unreachable-good luck to you-I’ll get back to you when I can kind of day, you take extra care during the week to use your time well. You get better at prioritizing what must happen, and dropping the extraneous. Delegating becomes a necessity. You start to hum along, because there’s simply not room for overflow.
Plus, there’s the benefit of being refreshed from your day off, which brings greater clarity, better thinking… you get the idea.
Reminder that we’re not only physical
We humans need to know we’re part of something larger than ourselves. Known as self-transcendence, awareness of having a place within a larger framework, that we aren’t only meat suits bumbling around, matters.
This is part of connection with other people, of course. Evolutionarily, separation from the tribe fairly certainly spelled death sooner than later.
Having a sense of something larger than yourself is also key to being able to make meaning in life. Derive a sense of purpose. My life isn’t just about me, it’s also about the systems and communities to which I belong. My family. My workplace. My spiritual community. My town/geographical group.
Viktor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning, asserted that life is, at its core, about making meaning. Meaning is made, in large part, by being able to step beyond the self and reach for something greater.
That something greater of course can be other people. It can also be an experience of the natural world that inspires awe. Taking care of a pet.
It can also show up through sabbath.
Even if not religious, setting aside daily concerns necessarily reminds us that there is more to life. Not every waking moment needs to be consumed with the next task. We don’t need to wrestle our lives to the ground to make them what they 'should’ be. There’s room for something more, something greater.
Enhances connection
One piece of my own sabbath practice is staying off my phone for the day. Not texting, not calling, not scrolling… none of it. I put the darn thing away and out of sight.
Which means two things — 1) I’m fully present with whoever I’m with at the time (usually my husband and dog) and 2) I take care to reach out to folks I want to talk to throughout the week (usually on Friday during the day or Sunday).
My sense of connection is improved, overall.
This may look different, of course, for different folks. Your sabbath day may be the day you call up family members you don’t get to talk to during the week. It may be a day you and friends gather for a potluck or grab brunch.
Regardless, the space created via a sabbath practice creates additional space to explore connection at the very least.
Refuge of peace
Hopefully this comes through in all of the other points I’ve made thus far, but having a weekly sabbath creates the opportunity for peace.
There’s a commandment in Exodus “You shall not kindle a fire in any of your dwellings on the Sabbath day” (35:3). Of course, the literal translation is not to light fires of any kind on Sabbath.
And, there’s also the interpretation that emotional fires should also not be kindled.
Anger. Jealousy. Fear. etc…
How often, in our day to day lives, full of the outrage and click bait of social media, amid fears of what tomorrow will bring and how we’ll cope, concerns about the welfare of those we love most, pressures to complete every task on time… how often do we stop and cultivate peace?
Not often enough, I’d venture.
And so we live anxious, depressed, stressed, overstimulated.
Why not take a day off?
Once a week, practice cultivating peace.
Take a break from the too much-ness of it all.
Just for today, surrender yesterday to the past — it’s done.
Just for today, trust that tomorrow will, in fact, take care of itself.
How to?
Well, you get to decide, really.
I’d recommend starting with putting your darn phone down and away. At the very least, don’t scroll for the day. Turn the computer off. Get as far away from screens as you possibly can.
Consider what is rest in your world right now? Is rest for you reading or listening to music, or planning your garden, or daydreaming?
What then, do you need to take away in order to do those activities?
Start as big or as small as you like — adjust and iterate as you go.
Personally, I refrain from cooking, cleaning, emails, texts, calls, my phone in general, travel (excepting the short drive to the synagogue), my computer in general (excepting streaming services if I don’t drive to the synagogue), fire making, writing, art… I do the bulk of my housework and meal prep on Friday in order for my Shabbat to work. I do use my Kindle if I’ve not been able to get a book I’d like to read in physical format. If I’m traveling, I’ll refrain from booking flights/trips on Saturday. I light candles and say blessings at the start of Shabbat, and at the end to mark its passing.
This has changed over time, and will continue to evolve.
One way is not better or worse than another.
The beauty of it all is that you get to decide.
Whatever form your sabbath takes, I wish you peace, great rest and a Shabbat Shalom!
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Note: This post is intended for information and entertainment purposes only; nothing in this article or episode is a substitute for medical or mental health treatment; do not delay necessary medical care; please work with a qualified and licensed health care provider in your area.
