Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives
Abraham Joshua Heschel's classic The Sabbath
Cooler Smarter: Practical Steps for Low-Carbon Living
1. From Benedictine Dreams (3QD Essay)
We know there is a mass extinction going on. We know the earth is heating up and environments are being destroyed. We know industrial meat production is so very cruel. We know over-population is dangerous. We know this and yet somehow we keep thinking the problem is that the wrong party is in the white house or the corporations are evil. Those are not the problems. Those are symptoms of the problem. And while it would be ideal for the government to step up and start solving these issues, in the US, at least, as long as we are a country where the only bottom line seems to be quarterly performance (maximizing of profits) and this model of endless consumption, nothing will change unless we all do. Several years ago, I participated in a conference on the topic of cities in Shanghai where we discussed how cities are the more viable level to look at in terms of change. Portland was brought up as an example of a place where people decide to work together to evoke change on the local level. I think the Big Island in Hawaii is another place where there is a counter-culture. You just don't see the relentless consumption and producer/consumer mentality there, where neighbors and families seem to loom larger and people are so much more laid back. New cars and new electronic devises every few years and big box high quantity consumption, industrial farming is killing us. And I for one, think trying to opt out is the best option.
With this idea of parallel worlds and counter cultural activities, as a kind of experiment, I have become interested in something called the sabbath movement. You have probably heard of the slow food movement–but have you heard of the sabbath movement? As a kid, my notions of the sabbath were the jokes my dad used to tell about how we couldn't do anything fun because it was the sabbath. But in fact, that American notion was a Puritan corruption of what the sabbath really was supposed to be–which is a day of play and love. A kind of feast day. It was a day set aside to step out of society-mandated roles (in our case, that of producer/ consumer) and some people think it is a helpful way to be mindful about why we do what we do. Basically, one day a week, a person is called to do anything but consume or produce–and instead, to have a day devoted to other matters. I bet at first it will be hard to imagine there is anything else! But by avoiding all corporate entertainment (so corrosive and this includes spectator politics), and consumption; and with the earth in mind avoiding driving, fast food (industrial food)– as well as work (producing), the idea is one can get back to being human again, beyond the producer consumer model. The bottom line is you are supposed to unplug–be in nature, step up for others, have slow meals with loved ones, light candles, listen to music (or find silence), drink wine (for example), eat bread (for example), avoid all commerce and corporate media and entertainment, and embrace being slow! Join the sloth club movement? We know that everyone can reduce their carbon imprint by 20% easily. The union of concerned scientists has a great book on how to do it and really it is something anyone can achieve. But the mindfulness required to make the internal changes that will enable us to step away from this current model of mass consumerism and relentless optimization that is killing our planet requires time to cultivate our imagination in different ways of being in the world. Stepping away fully one day a week from consumerism –and aiming at what Dreher calls a re-sacramentalizing of our lives, through shared activities that are both participatory (not spectator) and are other-oriented rather is more challenging that it at first sounds.
In Europe, you still see many shops closed on Sundays with families getting together for long, shared meals, walks and other slow activities. Animals still graze freely on the sides of the roads. Corporations, corporate media and entertainment and politics are extremely market-driven. We know that. But it's not just that.
To do things that are ends in themselves is wonderful. Like a kiss. And ah, to indulge in a delicious fantasy. To be cut off from the world, protected from the onslaught of modernity, quietly filling the days in reading and contemplation, watching the tide and the moon and the sheep, making a life small in scale and impact but with the crazy dream of living, finally truly living in a boundless sacred time and sacred space. I would brave tides, walk through quicksand, and scale Medieval walls to make that pilgrimage! For me, it's a lot harder than it sounds!
2) From A Novel to Cross a Desert With (3QD Essay)
Both Descartes and Cervantes were interested in the notion of being "bewitched." In this state of slumber we do not question “the world”, instead accepting that what we know as real is truth and cannot be replaced with an alternative, better, saner world. The rules of our problematic world are built into the very language we use to talk about it, trapping us unless we break out of our own narrative prisons. As Amitav Ghosh tells us concerning climate change, we cannot tell the story of how to make a better world using a language that was built word by word on the framework upon which the problems are built. Interruptions can begin to distance us from the current narrative.
Humor and playfulness can also be very effective. As can be immersing oneself in a different language or culture to help see the world with new eyes. I might have mentioned the sabbath movement here. Spearheaded by Columbia Theological Seminar professor Walter Brueggmann and inspired by the Jewish sabbath, it is a movement to set aside one day where you interrupt the current model of human beings as producers and consumers (I think this is what Heidegger would say we are bewitched by) and try to do things in a different way. It is an effort to step out of the Matrix. In our house the aim is to not work or be consumers; and to just play for an entire day every Sunday. Our day usually involves cocktails at lunch and a homemade dinner with candles and listening to music… we try to avoid computers and cell phones and resist all the things we have become. No amazon, no streaming, no heavy-duty industrial food…. It is enlightening to realize how hard it is to do this. In fact, when I see how challenging it is for me to live in a simpler way (the way I lived thirty years ago), I realize how much I have drunk the Koolaid.
One of my presumably non-religious friends on Facebook shared this article about the Anglican church encouraging Lent be used to step out of our current mindless use of plastics. He said this:
This looks like a neat example of how religion might do what it does best and encourage virtuous behaviors among its members and perhaps model that behavior for society at large. I’ve always thought that Lent has such potential for critiquing our consumer society—and here is an environmental twist. Maybe we should all try it—religious or not. Check out the Lent calendar link in the article. It is very cool.
It is very cool! Many traditional calendars have these kinds of feast and fast days and also days of abstinence. They are very helpful in attempting to combat 24/7 consumerism, where everyday is Christmas. In any case, it's harder than it looks from here. I can say, it was orders of magnitude easier in Japan (where the average citizen has 1/4 the carbon impact that the average American has, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists). And with this in mind, I think Cervantes is right that interruptions can be the first step to taking a stand in life; for as Einstein might have said: We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
Or better
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
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