My Year of Shmita: March Update

I’ll be the first to admit these posts are tedious to write (and, perhaps, to read). That said, I’m glad to have this record. Also, it forces me to spend a bit of a dedicated time on reflection even though I feel like my thoughts are a jumbled mess at the end of each month and there are no neat and tidy conclusions.

I want to offer you neat and tidy conclusions. I want to have neat and tidy conclusions. I suppose conclusions are for deathbeds. While I’m alive and kickin’ I’ll always be growing, iterating, learning, messing up, etcetera.

March felt especially disjointed. We left the country for a week. Life was crazy. The weather was the pits. But I continued to think and ruminate and read and consider all things rest/Sabbath/Shmita.

*(Here is a post I wrote about announcing my Year of Shmita and my January and February recaps.)

MONTHLY NOTES

MAJOR THEMES

• Relationships. Diane made some insightful comments on February’s post, and mentioned Shmita’s 7-year cycle lines up with the “seven-year itch” often documented in relationships. She theorized perhaps this “itch” is a cyclical reminder to rest and rejuvenate those relationships; a nudge to invest time (remember, Shmita/Sabbath are all about time) into those we love the most.
• Time. Diane also made an excellent point about how fasting could include our time and schedules. While it can feel luxurious to have flexible time, it’s easy to fill that time with “empty calories.” She wondered about the possibility of emptying our schedules – fasting, in a way – to better understand what is filling our hours. Fascinating.
• My role. It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem? Am I the problem?! As more and more research sheds light on the impact of constant distraction and online engagement, doesn’t that mean I’m contributing to the problem? If I put content out into the world, doesn’t that make me partially responsible for keeping people glued to their devices? These are mostly rhetorical questions for me at this point, but something to consider…
• Ecology. What happens to land when it’s left fallow for a year? The natural nutrient balance is restored. It helps rid the land of crop pests. Nutrients and minerals hidden deep in the ground rise toward the surface. The land regains its ability to hold moisture.

A few book quotes and/or thoughts that I jotted down.

• Does the path I’m walking lead to a place I want to go? If I keep heading this way, will I like where I arrive? [How’s that for profound?]
• Any deep change in how we LIVE begins with a deep change in how we THINK.
• Why not rest/play now and work later? What if doing something enjoyable first will give me energy and momentum?

I also wanted to be more purposeful about noticing themes of rest in art: books, music, paintings, dance.

BOOKS I READ THAT RELATE TO SABBATH

• The Bible.
• 24/6: Giving Up Screens One Day a Week to Get More Time, Creativity, and Connection by Tiffany Shlain. (3/5 stars). This was okay. I feel like it was lacking…something to draw me in? I didn’t feel connected to the author or her family in the slightest. She speaks about the religious aspect of a Sabbath, but isn’t religious herself, so that part felt forced and stilted. It wasn’t hard to finish, but it left me feeling underwhelmed. Great concept, but not quite right on the execution.
• Garden City: Work, Rest, and the Art of Being Human by John Mark Comer. (3.5 stars rounded up to 4). Comer writes in a unique – slightly irreverent – style. I found the flow of this book to be choppy, there were a few glaring editorial issues, and I didn’t find the message as coherent as his more recent writing. But I appreciated the central message: whatever we do, we are called to glorify God.
• Screaming on the Inside: The Unsustainability of American Motherhood by Jessica Grose. (3.5 stars rounded up to 4). A deep look at the unsustainability of motherhood. It is very American-centric (this makes sense; America is in the title) but I think it would have been helpful to have some additional perspective on motherhood from other cultures.
• I Didn’t Do the Thing Today: Letting Go of Productivity Guilt by Madeleine Dore. (3/5 stars). There were many great things in this book…but they were buried in far too many words. I don’t know what it was exactly, but I felt exhausted reading it and didn’t actually finish the whole thing. I am rating it and marking it read because I finished the majority of the chapters (and took quite a few notes), but it felt like a slog which was such a shame because there were some great nuggets hidden in the pages. The book just needed to be about 1/2 the length and “punchier.”
• Growing Up Amish by Ira Wagler. This was an interesting behind-the-scenes look at someone who left the Amish community and the fall out from that decision. It was a good – but not griping or overly memorable – memoir. I read it mostly to see if there were mentions of a traditional Sabbath practice (there were not).
• Paris in Love by Eloisa James. (4/5 stars). This was a book full of fun, short observations on womanhood, parenting, marriage, body image, and Paris. Not groundbreaking but I chuckled regularly and enjoyed the read.
• Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport. (4/5 stars). This was a re-read for me. I continue to have a few basic contentions with Cal Newport – most notably the lack of female diversity in his books – but this is a solid read and very relevant in 2024.
• The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time by Judith Shulevitz. (3/5 stars). This book…confused me. I found it hard to engage with the material. Some of Shulevitz’s anecdotes were interesting, but most of the book was tedious and/or boring. I found it a slog and was only skimming the text by the end.
• The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath by Mark Buchanan. (4/5 stars). The first half of this book was so dynamic and challenging (in good ways) that I could not put it down. The second half felt like a completely different book – much less engaging and compelling. That said, it offers a solid Christian perspective on the concept of Sabbath; Buchanan provides a general framework for why and how to observe a Sabbath but with grace and flexibility.

I wrote down a lot of quotes from the books I mentioned above; this isn’t an exhaustive list of those quotes – nor does it necessarily represent my absolute favourites – but it’s a good sampling of the type of inspiration I was drawn to…

QUOTES

The Bible

• Ecclesiastes 3 – the famous passage about there being a time for everything under the sun. A time to be silent. A time to plant. A time to heal. So many of the phases listed seemed relevant to the themes of rest and Sabbath.
• This passage from the Gospels (the story is recounted in Mark, Matthew, and Luke). Here’s the account from Mark 3: Another time Jesus went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. ² Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. ³ Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Stand up in front of everyone.” ⁴ Then Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they remained silent.⁵ He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. ⁶ Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.

In Matthew 12, it highlights that Jesus also compared this to a shepherd (very relatable in ancient Israel) seeing a sheep fallen into a pit and not rescuing it on the Sabbath. His conclusion: How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.

What I realized, though, is this man had a chronic condition. Jesus could have waited until Saturday at sundown through to Friday at sundown to perform this miracle. There was no time sensitivity here, but He saw a man in pain – a man of infinite value to the Saviour of the world – so He healed him. Then and there. On the Sabbath. I have never, ever considered this healing story through this lens and it adds so much depth to Christ’s miracle. (Even typing this paragraph out tears are coming to my eyes. Imagine being healed by the Messiah! On the Sabbath!)

24/6 – Tiffany Shlain

• Time is the ultimate form of human wealth on this earth. Without time, all other forms of wealth are meaningless. It is this insight about time – patently obvious but frequently forgotten – that makes keeping a Sabbath day both spiritually profound and politically radical. To reclaim time is to be rich.

Garden City – John Mark Comer

• …burnout isn’t always the result of giving too much; sometimes it’s the result of trying to give something you don’t have to give in the first place.
• Work is “the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” That’s what you’re looking for – the intersection between what you love and what your world needs.
• The Church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter [insert any other job] is usually confined to exhorting him to not be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours and to come to church. What the church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.
• …the Sabbath is a memorial. At Sinai it looks back to Eden [creation, God’s glory], but in Deuteronomy it looks back to Egypt [God’s deliverance of the Israelites].
• …we are made in His [God’s] image. God works, so we work. God rests, so we rest.

Screaming on the Inside – Jessica Grose

• Exclusive breastfeeding “is a serious time commitment…this is why, when people say that breast-feeding is ‘free’ I want to hit them with a two-by-four. It’s free only if a woman’s time is worth nothing.” [As someone who wasn’t physically capable of breast-feeding and felt very much less-than because of this “deficiency” along with being friends with women who have struggled to juggle work and nursing/pumping, etc – I think this is timely.]
• If we could stop layering guilt atop ourselves every single day, what could we accomplish?

I Didn’t Do the Thing Today – Madeleine Dore

• …time is how you spend your love [Zadie Smith]; perhaps it’s worth asking how we can manage our love rather than our time?
• …we forgo what we enjoy for something we deem more noteworthy.
• Just as storms have seasons, the triggers that cause me pain or distress come in patterns. I can’t prevent them; I can only do my best to soothe this particular cycle until it dies out. Then I look around me at the land that has been flattened and destroyed, as if a cyclone has swept across my life. I begin to pick up the pieces and rebuild, but I never lose sight of the sky, knowing the wind can pick up again anytime.
• If nothing in nature blooms all year, why should you?

Paris in Love – Eloisa James

• One of the hardest things for me to remember is that just because a dish takes six hours in the kitchen it will not necessarily make guests as happy as a familiar recipe done well.
• An important part of preserving memories is deliberately letting some go.
• Invalides Metro station at 8:30 in the morning smells like buttered toast, which makes me remember my mother, slathering butter on to homemade bread. Today Anna said dreamily “I love this brand-new croissant smell.” I realized that she is creating her own buttery memories to be recalled decades from now.

Digital Minimalism – Cal Newport

• Minimalism is the art of knowing how much is just enough.
• He [Thoreau] asks us to treat the minutes of our life as a concrete and valuable substance – arguably the most valuable substance we possess – and to always reckon with how much of this life we trade for the various activities we allow to claim our time.
• …solitude is a prerequisite for original and creative thought; solitude is not a pleasant diversion, but instead a form of liberation from the cognitive oppression that results in its absence.

The Sabbath World – Judith Shulevitz

• No one thinks of time as a moral entity. We think of it as a mathematically neutral one. But what was the labour movements fight for shorter days and workweeks about, if not the social morality of time. And how about the way we’re always recalibrating our feelings for our friends…based on how many minutes they’ve kept us waiting.
• The extraordinariness of the Sabbath lies in its being commonplace. We who look at religion from the outside think of transcendence as something that occurs at special moments, in concentrated bursts of illumination, but people raised in homes where religious ritual occurs over breakfast and at dinner…know that revelation commingles promiscuously with routine. If ritual is art, then it is stretched over the frame of habit.
• [Consuming is not just buying – if you buy a new gadget you have to maintain it, call help desks; Walden would say that the cost of something is how much of life is exchanged for using it.]

The Rest of God – Mark Buchanan

• Sabbath is both a day and an attitude to nurture such stillness. It is both time on a calendar and a disposition of the heart.
• The Chinese join two characters to form a single pictograph for busyness: heart and killing.
• …a good definition of Sabbath: imitating God so that we stop trying to be God.
• Slaves don’t rest. Slaves can’t rest. Slaves, by definition, have no freedom to rest. Rest, it turns out, is a condition of liberty.
• Sabbath-keeping is more art than science. It is more poetry than arithmetic.
• The truth is, we’re always a bit restless. We’re supposed to be. This is not a flaw in our faith, it is faith’s substance. It is a divine ruse to keep us from making permanent settlement this side of eternity. Our citizenship is in heaven. [Mic drop.]