The
Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker once wrote: “This question challenges me more than any
other in life: How do I live in a way that keeps faith with beauty – with the
beauty I have known, the beauty of all people everywhere, the beauty of the
earth? How do I resist the violence
that tears us from one another and from the earth? When the violence goes deep into the core of the human soul, as
it has in mine, how is the heart restored?”
(From “Spiritual Practice for Our Time,” in Everyday Spiritual
Practices edited by Scott W. Alexander.
Skinner House Books, 1999)
“How
is the heart restored.” I think I know
what she means. I am often caught in
my own reflections on how to live – how to live well, how to live fully and
without the need for deathbed regret, how to be a responsible part of the web
of life. Dr. Parker calls it “keeping
faith with beauty.” I think of it as
walking with God.
The
Buddhist Eight-fold Path is a spiritual system, a life discipline that offers
the practitioner a clear path to accomplishing some of these goals. The first step is “right knowledge.” The second is, “right aspiration.” The third is “right speech.” The fourth, “right behavior.” The fifth step is “right livelihood.” The sixth is “right effort” and the seventh
is “right mindfulness.” The final step
is “right absorption.”
I
have a special appreciation for the Eight-fold Path. I find that discrete principles and ideas are easier for me to
translate into changes in behavior; I appreciate the practical nature of the
Eight-Fold Path. Please note: practical
and well-defined does not mean “easy to do.”
To walk the Eight-fold Path is the spiritual work of a lifetime; it
requires diligence and effort.
You
might notice that the Eight-fold Path represents somewhat of a progression from
the more basic and tangible elements, such as right speech and right
livelihood, to the more abstract and spiritually difficult elements such as
right effort, right mindfulness, and right absorption. The Buddha recognized that these latter
steps on the path are more difficult.
He said “Those who follow the Way might well follow the example of an ox
that marches through the deep mire carrying a heavy load. He is tired, but his steady, forward-looking
gaze will not relax until he comes out from the mire. Only then does he relax.
O monks, remember that passion and sin are more than the filthy mire,
and that you can escape by earnestly and steadfastly persevering on the
Way.” (As quoted in The Illustrated
World’s Religions by Huston Smith, p. 74-5)
In
how much of your life would you say you pursue a goal with a steady, ox-like
push? To a modern Western mind, slow is
anathema. We move quickly, because we
believe we have to, and no matter how quickly we move, we feel that we are
running out of time. How can I pursue
the Way steadfastly when I’m just so darn busy?
When
one thinks of Buddhism, quite often the first association that comes to mind is
meditation. Meditation, the art of becoming still. The practice of quieting the mind. The opening of the heart.
This
has been the Eastern practice for many, many centuries. But we here in the West have had our own
practice of stopping. It is the
practice of Sabbath-keeping. Another
ancient spiritual practice, said to be modeled on God’s own practice – on the
seventh day God rested.
Let
me swing around another direction. I
realize that many of you have heard me speak before on the incredible pressure
that we are under in a corporate-owned, consumer-based culture that
increasingly relies on disjointed images; a world where we are all too often at
a level of remove from nature and direct human interactions. Perhaps you have some other way you express
what seems to cause life to move at such a pace. However you might express it, things truly have changed,
especially for the modern American worker.
For instance, John de Graff puts it this way: “Medieval peasants
worked less than we do. On average, as former Labor Secretary Robert Reich
points out, we Americans work 350 hours... nearly one year more every five
years. Thus, during an average work life, western Europeans enjoy nearly ten
years more free time than do their American counterparts. In Europe,
workers receive an average six weeks of paid vacation. We Americans
average two. And 26% of us got no vacation at all last year.”
In
fact, the United States is the only industrialized nation that has no minimum
number of days off. Our employers don’t
have to give us even one day of vacation.
I can
think of no more succinct way for people of faith – any faith at all, including
the sincere secular humanism found within our Unitarian Universalist movement,
which holds that value and meaning are derived from human relationships – I can
think of no better way to express the crisis in which we find ourselves than
this offered by Rabbi Arthur Waskow:
“As the folk-singer Charlie King says,
"What ever happened to the 8-hour day? When did they take it away? . . .
When did we give it away?"
This is no anecdotal oddity of the driven
baby-boomers. In The Overworked Americans, Juliet Schor reported in
analytic detail how most Americans work longer, harder, and more according to
someone else's schedule than they did thirty years ago. This life-situation
crosses what we usually see as class lines: Single mothers who are working at
minimum wages for fast-food chains feel desperately overworked, and so do
wealthy brain surgeons.
Why is this happening? Because doing, making,
profiting, producing, and consuming have been elevated into idols. While
corporate profits have zoomed and the concentration of wealth has increased,
real wages have remained stagnant for twenty years, and the pressure has
intensified to work harder and longer, just to stay in the same place. Varied
communities and cultures, eco-systems and habitats, regional economies and
grass-roots citizenry have all suffered from the voracity of these idols.
At the root of all our religious and spiritual
traditions is a critique of these idolatries. We know that human beings need
time for self-reflective spiritual growth, for loving family, and for communal
sharing. And the earth itself needs to be nurtured by human communities that
allow for it to rest, to renew itself from meeting human needs. Yet the
workings of American society work increasingly to squeeze dry the time for
spirit, family, and community.
What Americans need is Free Time to renew what it
means to be a Free People:
o
Free Time for hands-on childrearing and for loving
rather than violent or disconnected family relationships;
o
Free Time for neighborliness in neighborhoods;
o
Free Time for personal spiritual growth;
o
Free Time for active citizen participation;
In short, a self-renewing rhythm of time to help
individuals and society heal from overstress and burnout.
"Free time" means not only the nourishment
of freer individuals, but the nurturing of a free people —— a society —— that
can take joy in family and community, govern itself democratically, achieve
social justice, heal the environment, and seek its spiritual growth.” (From the website Free Our Time:
www.shalomctr.org)
What I have found time and time again working with individuals and couples is that
they experience this “time crunch,” but feel helpless to effect real change in
their own lives. The Buddha would empathize. So would Moses, or Jesus. Spiritual leaders in every age have known
that time set apart from the routines and demands of daily life are essential
to the wholeness we seek. Indeed, most
suggest that the single most important practice to keep is time for that which
we consider holy. In the
Judeo-Christian tradition, it is the Fourth Commandment: “Remember the sabbath
day and keep it holy.” It is put
forward before the commandments not to steal, lie, murder or commit
adultery. It holds that important a
place in the spiritual canon.
Remember the sabbath day. It seems we find this so hard to do. And I want to be clear – I’m not talking about a particular day
designated as the Sabbath, be it Sunday or Saturday or Wednesday or any other
day. I mean, keeping the sabbath as a
day set aside where we do not work. We
do not buy things. We do not immerse
ourselves in the distractions of television or movies or video games, but
rather, set aside some time for study and reflection. Time to immerse ourselves in the beauty of the natural world, or
the splendor of time with friends and family, and for those who seek, the
presence of God.
The Washington Post did a survey of 2,000
college folks, asking them if they believed they will have a net worth of $1
million by the time they were 40 years old.
52 % of them said they believed they would. Perhaps the Post could have
contributed to their education if they had mentioned that the percentage of
Americans who reported an income of $1
million or more was 0.1% I’m not all that great at math, but it sounds to me
like at least 1038 of them kids is gonna be bummed out come age forty. But my math nor the eventual shock and
dismay of these young people is not the real problem. The real problem, I think, is that they may spend their time
pursuing this dream to the exclusion of so much of the rest of life, only to be
betrayed either by not making their goal, as fewer and fewer living-wage jobs
are to be found in the U.S., or by the experience of wealth should they achieve
it. You may remember that wealthy
people and those working several part-time jobs all report feeling that they do
not have enough time for the things that are truly important to them. I don’t find this surprising. What I do find surprising is the degree to
which so many of us overlook one of the most important spiritual disciplines
for healing this disparity. We feel too
busy, but we’re too busy to make the changes that could heal not just our own
lives, but perhaps the world itself.
The question is not, can you find the time to take time for spiritual
and emotional depth, for relationships that matter, for the giving that makes
life meaningful. The real question is,
how can you not?
I believe it was Ram Dass who said, “I meditate every
morning for at least 20 minutes, unless I have a really busy day ahead, in
which case I meditate for an hour.”
Exactly.
One of the chief requirements for an active, informed
citizenry in a democracy is enough time to educate themselves on issues and to
take part in the democratic process.
The same is true for a vital educational system for our children, or a
thriving social network of friends and social clubs with a service
orientation. Next week, I am going to
be talking about the dramatic changes we’ve seen in all these areas, and how a
church community can be a buffer against the erosion of our social capital and
civility. This week, however, I am
working toward a different goal. I want
to suggest that we should feel it crucial to reclaim our ability to set
aside time for rest – crucial to ourselves as human beings, not human
doings. Crucial to our nation, in terms
of our children and our democracy and our safety networks of voluntary
associations.
I realize, from my own life and working with others,
that making the changes that could transform one’s life are not easy, they are
not simple. First, they require real
spiritual willpower – the ability to be ox-like, to paraphrase the Buddha. It requires an awakening in how you think
about your life – reframing the “I-don’t-have-time” song to something more
along the lines of, “This is my life time.
It is what I have.” It requires
creativity, and a willingness to swim upstream against the messages you receive
constantly. It requires a return to
ancient wisdom, the practices that have made human life worth living for
thousands of years. In so many ways, I
believe the practice of sabbath-keeping can revolutionize one’s life. I believe a larger-scale practice of
sabbath-keeping could revolutionize the world.
Consider France: they reduced the workweek to 35 hours with no reduction
in pay. (This on top of the 6+ weeks per year they get for vacation) The difference in output was resolved by
employing more people, reducing the unemployment rate. The cost to employers was offset by offer
incentives to employers out of the funds that formerly went to supporting
unemployed workers. And then on top of
that, everyone is free 126 hours out of every week. Work 35, sleep, play, socialize, reform, pray, cook, clean, shop,
instill personal values in your children in the remaining 126. Sign me up for that!
This is all to stress the more political/social value
of sabbath-keeping. But having a
sabbath practice can allow for the holy to be present in life all through the
week. It is a way to discover or rediscover lost parts of oneself. It is the time for acknowledging our own
worth and dignity, for admitting that we are more than Those Who Purchase. It is reclaiming the ability to be quiet, to
have the time to read or have discussions, to involve yourself in creating
beauty or “keep faith with beauty,” as Dr. Parker said at the beginning of this
sermon.
Marianne Williamson, author and minister in the Unity
tradition, describes the sabbath as a practice of “creating a sanctuary from
the cruelty and limitations of the world... Sabbath is a day to remember
[God’s] thoughts; to forgive ourselves and others; to reconcile ourselves [to
one another and to God]; to study more deeply the principles of Truth; to pray
for blessing and protection in the days ahead, and most of all, to commune with
the miraculous spirit of true life, as opposed to the spirit of shallowness and
illusion which is in fact a living death.”
(From Everyday Grace by Marianne Williamson, p. 213)
You can change the world by stopping at least once a
week. Find your time. Keep the faith even if you falter. Commit yourself to sabbath-keeping once a
week for a month. Extend it from
there. Use one sabbath to be with
friends and family. Use the next to be
alone or only with those close to you.
Study, pray, write, get out into nature, attend church, enjoy your food,
explore the life given to you, seek God.
At first, you will find all kinds of excuses to put it off or shortcut
it or only do a part -- “I won’t go into the office but I’ll do all my
housework.” No. This is not it. Set at least some time each week to not work. To not buy. To allow yourself some space to go to the quieter place
within. To just talk with your family
members. To walk in the splendor of an
unmediated world. When you move forward
into that part of your week which is outside your sabbath, you will find that
you can appreciate the non-working hours in a different way. You may discover that you are more able to
persist in the face of opposition or hardship.
You may find you have more friends, and a deeper appreciation of
them. You may uncover hidden talents. You may change the world.
Try keeping a sabbath. Sunday’s a lovely day for it.
The opportunity to practice in the company of like-minded people is a
blessing beyond measure. I have found
that a Friday night/Saturday til noon schedule is often what works best for
me. The day and even the amount of time
is not the issue. What is at issue is
opening your life to the deeper connections, meaning, and relationships that
are only possible when we stop, and nurture them and ourselves.
The Sufi poet Rumi said...well, he said so many
unbelievably beautiful things. A
sabbath-time would be a marvelous time to explore this truth. But let me share with you one small thing he
wrote:
Not Here
“There’s courage involved if you want
to become truth.
There is a broken-open
place in a lover.
Where are
those qualities of bravery and sharp compassion
in this group?
What’s the use of old and frozen thought?
This is not a treasury where gold is stored;
this is for copper.
We alchemists look for talent that
can heat up and change.
Lukewarm won’t do.
Half-hearted holding back;
well-enough getting by?
Not here.”
Don’t live in a space of half-hearted holding
back. Don’t be satisfied with
well-enough getting by. As I opened
with the words of the Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker, let me close with a few more:
“To keep the Sabbath is a radical act of resistance to
a culture that has lost track of the meaning of life. From this place of Sabbath-keeping, I become more capable of
entering into a sustained engagement with the culture of which we are all a
part and which needs our active, creative witness and our work for change.”
Amen!
© 2003 D. Audette Fulbright, Roanoke VA.
All rights reserved.