theo|digital

Sunday haven’t been the easiest day for me, since being up in Chicago.

I haven’t written outlines or something on my personal theology of “sabbath. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a set of experiences that have formed my assumptions. ” (I hear “sabbath” as a warm word, btw, not dark. And a word I don’t think requires a link to “Sunday” – but here I’m using it like that).

I think the sabbath rest has to do with God as my maker and me as the one he made. That he understands that I am surrounded by the opportunity for unlimited work—that my tasks are bigger than I will ever be—and being not only creaturely, but stubbornly opposed to that reality, I’ll try to finish the work anyway.

Sabbath is the idea that there is a rhythm to rest that I need. 1 in 7. A time for work and a time to remember I’m never going to finish the list.

And whatever I call “rest” has to involve freedom from spiritual, emotional, physical weight that naturally accompanies vocational accomplishment. So if I sit in front of TV all day but worry about my coming week – I’m missing it. Same if I ban myself from yard work – if my daily load is a life of reading and writing, physical tasks might be exactly how sabbath rests me.

But that’s not the component I’ve having trouble with.

The second part of Sabbath seems to be community. There’s something to resting with others. This is something that my sister Erika’s church back in Moscow, ID understood well: that sabbath was barely palatable without the table-leaf installed, wine glasses full, prayer and laughter mingled. I loved Sundays in the DawgHaus in Champaign because they involved a lot of we. We’d sleep in. Flop on couches and chat for hours before showering. Make breakfast together. This year down in Champaign, it seems to look like a regular home-cooked meal on Sunday evening with a movie after — actually the way we did it for a long time in DawgHaus 1.0.

But here in Chicago, I wake up to an empty apartment. I’ve don’t have the community of friends that thinks of Sabbath as gathering day, a laughing day. And by myself, it’s much harder to believe the first part: that I should be free of my list. With others: easy. Alone: I’m gonna work. Which is why I spent the morning reading research materials.

It’s just how it’s been. :-7