When do you take your Sabbath

Sabbaths

Whatever is foreseen in joy
Must be lived out from day to day.
Vision held open in the dark
By our ten thousand days of work.
Harvest will fill the barn; for that
The hand must ache, the face must sweat.

And yet no leaf or grain is filled
By work of ours; the field is tilled
And left to grace. That we may reap,
Great work is done while we're asleep.

When we work well, a Sabbath mood
Rests on our day, and finds it good.

- Wendell Berry

Earlier this semester, someone asked me when I take my sabbath. It was an intriguing question, and no matter what was taught to me in Sunday School or in CE classes, I've always thought of Sabbath day as a day preset and pre-ordained, out of my control -- determined for the people of Israel. And, for those of us clinging to the NT age of Grace, this kind of covenant does not carry the same sort of meaning as it did/does for Israel. Right? Isn't sabbath supposed to be on the seventh day? Isn't that the day of rest pre-determined and utterly irrevocable?

Am I really understanding the meaning of "sabbath"?

Lately, I've been trying to control my spending. And I've been trying to control the ebb and flow of work in my office. And I've been trying to regulate the number of emails I answer in the office mail. And I've been trying to control the pieces of mail I open, the letters I let pile up in the Inbox, the phone messages I return, the plants I water, the meetings I attend, the papers I print, the documents I edit... And I've been trying to number the articles of clothing I wash and fold, the shoes I buy, the books I read, the CDs I collect, the coffee cups I drink...

All these little things that I'm trying to "manage" because I need in my life some semblance of organization and order, believing, hoping, that if I can manage it, then life will be more peaceful and more livable. More enjoyable.

Wendell disagrees. Doesn't he? Whatever is foreseen in joy must be LIVED out from Day to Day. Ten thousand days of work. The most important things, after our sweat and tears, are accomplished outside our control, beyond our means. Those crucial, life-giving acts of filling the grains or greening the leaf -- they are done while we sleep, while we relinquish our grip. We leave to grace whatever needs to be done...

Great work, by golly, can be accomplished by doing less... by doing well... by doing nothing? Incroyable! Pas possible!

I've been reading The Botany of Desire (great, great book!! Read it!) by Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food and The Omnivore's Dilemma. The book is much, much more than a social history of the plants (apple, tulip, cannabis, potato) or a natural history of the four human desires that he links them with (sweetness, beauty, intoxication, control). Pollan posits that as humans, "we're prone to overestimate our own agency in nature". In fact, he thinks that what we believe we do to control "the wild" of nature is actually not because we are the subjects lording over the objects. "Many of the activities humans like to think they undertake for their own good purposes," says Pollan, "are mere contingencies as far as nature is concerned." Here, he's talking about our "design" over nature -- our clever hybridizations, our cultivations, "inventing agriculture, outlawing certain plants, writing books in praise of others", etc. But Wendell, he's talking about a greater Mystery -- un-Named, un-tamed, most times beyond our comprehension.

I appreciate what he says so frankly. It's not our design. As much as we want it to be, it's not our control. Relinquish it. It's in God's hands. Let it go. It is good.