Summer Sabbath: The Holy Art of Rest
Summer Sabbath: The Holy Art of Rest
Summer has finally arrived—even here in Southern California where the shift is subtle but real. The light changes. The pace changes. At least, it's supposed to.
I notice that many of us struggle with rest. We feel vaguely guilty when we're not being productive. We take vacations but check our email. We sit still but our minds race ahead to everything we haven't done yet. We have forgotten—or maybe we never quite learned—the art of sabbath.
SABBATH IS NOT A REWARD
Here's a thing I keep coming back to: in Genesis, God rests on the seventh day before any work had been done that could go wrong. Before there was any mess to clean up or problem to solve. Rest was built into creation not as a reward for hard work but as an essential feature of what it means to be alive. Sabbath is not something we earn. It is something we are given.
The rabbis teach that on the sabbath, we are given a neshamah yeteirah—an extra soul. Something in us that only appears when we stop striving. I believe that. There is a self we can only access in rest.
A SUMMER PRACTICE
This summer, I invite you to experiment with one hour of genuine sabbath each week. Not productivity dressed as rest—not "catching up" on things you enjoy. Real rest. Permission to be unproductive, unmeasured, unneeded by anyone.
During that hour, try this: go outside. Sit somewhere with nothing in your hands. Let your eyes go soft and your breath slow. Notice what's alive around you. And when you feel the pull of everything you should be doing instead, simply say, quietly: I belong to love. This is enough.
Wayne Muller, in his book Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives, writes that “sabbath is a way of saying that the world will go on without our frantic efforts to hold it together. That is both humbling and enormously freeing.”
What might rest offer you this summer? I'd love to know.
Go make peace, my friends.
Pastor Leanne
Community Presbyterian Church
32202 Del Obispo
San Juan Capistrano. CA 92675
949-493-1502
info@sjcpres.org