SUNDAYS: Sabbath

For years I worked in an Evangelical Church as a Worship Pastor and then as a teacher and preacher. Understanding and communicating ancient wisdom was part of my job - and I loved it.

But as my faith developed and evolved, it and I no longer fit the mold required by the institution of the church.

This kick-started a process of deconstruction, of questioning the rules of the faith I had inherited from others.

Deconstruction requires you to enter a void, a good darkness where seeds that were planted long ago can finally germinate and take root.

For many, it can feel like you’re losing your faith, and in some ways you are. You’re losing the faith of others in pursuit of the wisdom and richness of a personal faith between our own soul and the divine presence that is all around us.

On the other side of my deconstruction, I realised one thing that didn’t get lost in the void was my love of ancient wisdom.

And so it seems wildly appropriate to choose Sundays as the day to dig into this ancient wisdom with new eyes.

Welcome to ‘Sunday’, where anyone who wishes, whatever their religious or spiritual background, can lean into ancient wisdom and practices with me as we each walk thing beautiful path of becoming.

Today we look at the practice of having ‘a day of rest’ or ‘Sabbath’. This is when we put down whatever tools we use through the week, to disconnect from ‘doing’ to find rest.

This practice was a hard one for me to master, because in my job in church, my day of rest was actually a work day. So much of my experience of ‘church’ was about what I could do. So learning to simply ‘be’ was hard and took some unlearning.

But now I choose to rest as a spiritual practice: I read, and think, and meditate, and walk and sometimes I write. If my kids are with me, we play games and watch movies too. And for one day, I remind myself that my worth is not in what I can do, but in simply being.

What does ‘Sabbath’ mean to you? And what is your relationship to ‘rest’? What one thing could you do (or stop doing) to help develop a practice of resting?