Readings: "Camas Lilies" by Lynn Ungar

Consider the lilies of the field,
the blue banks of camas opening
into acres of sky along the road.
Would the longing to lie down
and be washed by that beauty
abate if you knew their usefulness,
how the natives ground their bulbs
for flour, how the settlers' hogs
uprooted them, grunting in gleeful
oblivion as the flowers fell?
And you--what of your rushed and
useful life? Imagine setting it all down--
papers, plans, appointments, everything--
leaving only a note: "Gone to the fields
to be lovely. Be back when I'm through
with blooming."
Even now, unneeded and uneaten, the
camas lilies gaze out above the grass
from their tender blue eyes.
Even in sleep your life will shine.
Make no mistake.
Of course
your work will always matter.
Yet Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these.[1]

The big question these days is "How was your summer?" How do most of you answer this question? The answer I most often hear--and too often give--is "Busy. It sure flew by!" If you've answered "busy" to this question, this just might be the sermon for you.

The more I learn about spirituality, the more I realize that spirituality can only be a meaningful part of our life if there is abundant time and space in our lives. At the heart of spirituality are two things: paying attention and waiting. Virtually every spiritual practice from every religion directs the practitioner's attention to the here and the now, and then asks him or her to stop, watch, and wait. Spiritual insights and understandings don't come by working for or even seeking them, but by opening up to the here and now and waiting. Stop, look, listen, wait without expectation: this is what spirituality is all about.

How opposite from our world today, the world of busy summers, fast jets and faxes, e-mail, instant news reports, fast missiles and increasing speed limits! Everything's fast and getting faster and faster by the day. Somehow, getting everything done faster and more efficiently has not opened up more time in our lives. Instead, it has just given us more time to do and accomplish more things. Not too many years ago, futurists predicted that modern conveniences like dishwashers and computers and shopping by catalogue would shorten the work week, lessen the time we devote to household chores, and give us more leisure time at home, too. Yeah, right! How many of us are on the run all day long, day after day after day, crawling into bed each night exhausted, dreading the alarm that will go off too soon, signaling the start of another busy day? When we are perpetually and unremittingly busy, our lives begin to resemble that of Bill Murray's character in Groundhog Day: each day seems depressingly just like the day before.

In most of our lives today, there are also fewer and fewer occasions for any real let-up of the pace and the busyness. How many of us go on vacation with our cell phone or pager or laptop computer at the ready, checking in with our workplace periodically to make sure everything's going okay in our absence? I'll never forget being at a retreat with a UU minister who, though 4000 miles from home and blessed with several ministerial colleagues who were covering things in his absence, plugged in his laptop a couple times a day to check his e-mail. God, may I never become that indispensable! Even Moses and Jesus, far more important and indispensable than any UU minister, didn't leave their pager number when they went off into the desert or up the mountain for some quiet time. They didn't even bother to tell their followers where they were going or how long they'd be gone. They just left. How many of us follow the UU minister's lead and habitually let work seep into our vacations and weekends? How many of us spend weekends desperately trying to get to all of the chores and errands and projects at home that we were too busy to get to during the week--or if we do something fun for a change, feel guilty because we aren't doing the work at home?

Much of this busyness and fast pace and lack of down time comes from living in a culture that has made an idol of success--and the proof of success: acquisition. This is the treadmill so many of us find ourselves on: work harder and longer so you can buy more and better things. Wayne Muller points out that from television, movies, magazines, newspapers, billboards and our computer screen, advertisements bombard us. "If you want to be happy, buy this!" they scream. "What you have is not enough!" I just saw an advertisement for a cardigan sweater "designed specifically for the avid armchair reader." Sure, it costs almost $90 and couldn't really be any more comfortable than my ratty old Packer sweatshirt, but here's this handsome guy in the advertisement, serenely reading and wearing this perfect cardigan for the avid armchair reader. Maybe if I buy the cardigan, I'll be able to sit in a chair and read in serenity and look handsome. That's the message the marketer is trying to get into my brain. The only problem is I'll have to work overtime (or in my case, maybe do an extra wedding) to pay for the sweater. I won't have time to sit in my sweater reading and looking handsome!

The Tao Te Ching, written long ago in a very different era and place, contains these words:

If a country is governed wisely...
People enjoy their food,
take pleasure in being with their families,
spend weekends working in their gardens,
delight in the doings of the neighborhood.[2]

This is not a picture of America in 1999. Our to-do lists and fast pace and consumer lifestyle are killing us. Here's some more wisdom from China: the Chinese pictograph for "busy" has two characters: heart and killing.[3] Think about that next time you answer "Busy" when someone asks how your summer was or how you're doing!

Many of us are lost in the busyness, clueless about where we want to go in our lives and what our inner compass is telling us about our direction. In the words of Wayne Muller, we have "lost the rhythm between work and rest."[4] With no time for rest, we cannot have an inner life, let alone at least an occasional feeling of inner peace and serenity. We cannot have a spiritual life. And without this, it is very hard to speak and act in ways consistent with our deepest values. Thomas Merton wisely observed that you can't embody and work for peace and justice if you have no sense of inner peace.[5] Without an inner life and some sense of inner peace, we inevitably become frustrated, exhausted, alienated from ourselves and others. Too many of us too much of the time live lives that are shallow and out of balance: too much work and activity, not enough rest and reflection. Too much doing and not enough waiting and being.

I don't know about you, but "out of balance," "frustration," "exhaustion," "alienation": these words sum up my life too much of the time. Even as a minister who should know better, I fail time and time again to find balance between work and rest, between the inner and outer life. Time and time again, I surrender to the American idolatries of success and acquisition. I almost bought that cardigan sweater so I could sit and read and be handsome. I'm not just talking about other people, but about me. And perhaps you, too.

Maybe we need to rediscover the Sabbath. The Sabbath has its roots in the ancient Hebrew culture. Enshrined in the Ten Commandments, remembering the Sabbath is as important to the Hebrews as not murdering or stealing:

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, or your manservant, or your womanservant, or your cattle or the resident alien who is within your gates; for in six days the God made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore God blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it.[6]

So the Sabbath became a time for stopping work and stopping busyness. At sunset on Friday, put down your plow, God commanded. Put down your broom. Look up from your work. Look to the horizon[7] and up to the heavens; feel your feet touching the sacred ground. See the bigger picture: the great web of life you are part of. Appreciate the incredible gifts of earth and life and family and love and friends. Give thanks for all of abundant gifts that bless your life. The Sabbath became a time to play and sing and light candles and pray and read and eat together with family and friends and do nothing and take a nap and make love. (Yes, according to the Talmudic interpretation, you should make love with your life partner on the Sabbath.) The Sabbath became a time to rest and savor the gifts of life. It became a time to remember what's important. The Sabbath gave weekly space to watching and waiting for the movements of the spirit.

Of course, the spirit of the Sabbath is not present only in Judaism. Many Buddhists, for example, observe poya--the day of the full moon. Each poya day Buddhists go to the temple to worship and meditate and to live for a day by some of the precepts the monks embrace. Christians for nearly two millennia kept the Sabbath on Sunday, marking Jesus' resurrection by stopping work and going to church. This tradition is increasingly lost in our culture--with people working in grocery stores and malls, making it easier for those of us who don't work to shop and run our errands on Sunday. My wife Amy remembers that when she was a girl, the work on her family's farm would come to a screeching stop on Sundays. The family would go to church, have a big dinner, and take it easy the rest of the day. Sunday after Sunday, aunts and uncles and cousins would congregate next door at her grandparents' house, talking and playing together. Some Sundays, Amy remembers, it even got a little boring. Looking back, though, it was a sweet and precious break in the busyness of life on the farm. Today, this pastoral scene is no more than a distant cultural memory for most of us. As a nation, we have forgotten the Sabbath.

We need to remember the Sabbath again. Remembering the Sabbath would give our bodies and souls and minds a desperately needed opportunity to renew and revive. It would remind us that we still do live in a world of natural rhythms--a world governed by rhythms of work and rest, dormancy and harvest, acquiring and letting ago, sorrow and joy. Remembering the Sabbath would give us an opportunity to step off the success and acquisition treadmill, for one day appreciating what we have and not fixating on what we don't have. I suspect that having a regular time of rest, relaxation and rejuvenation would even make us better workers the rest of the week. We will not be able to be creative or even efficient at work if we are perpetually exhausted and busy.

Here are some tips for creating the Sabbath, pulled from Wayne Muller's book, the Jewish Sabbath tradition and my own experience. First, you don't have to think about the Sabbath only in terms of the twenty-four hours of the Jewish and Christian tradition. As Muller suggests, you can intentionally set aside a day or morning or afternoon or hour as Sabbath time. For my own family, Sundays are the most logical day for Sabbath. On Saturdays we tend to our house, do errands, sometimes work, and have a little fun. Sunday is the only other day the kids are home. There's one problem, though: I generally have to work on Sunday. So we start Sabbath after I get home from Fellowship. We have part of a Sabbath afternoon and evening. During this time, we try to be and play together, taking naps and playing games and going for walks and, in a departure from Jewish tradition, watching Packer games. Sabbath time also doesn't have to happen only at home. Since most of you don't work here at the Fellowship, I hope that for you, coming here on Sunday mornings is a Sabbath experience: a time when, in Albert Schweitzer's words, "your souls can speak to you without being drowned out by the hustle and bustle of everyday life."[8]
Another tip for creating Sabbath time is not to wait until all your work is finished, your to do list completely done to begin Sabbath. For most of us, that magical time never comes. Certainly in ancient Palestine, there was always more that had to be done in the fields and in the house. But when sundown Friday came, the Sabbath started--regardless of how much there was to left to do. Set a time for Sabbath, and start it then. Now, you might find it helpful to do some chores around the home before sabbath starts so that you don't hear the guilt-inducing calls of the dirty dishes and messy bedrooms. Last evening, though this sermon was not yet quite finished, I joined Hattie and Ian and Amy in cleaning our house. We didn't come close to doing everything that needs to be done, but we did enough to make our Sabbath time today more relaxed. Following the Jewish custom of preparing a meal in advance so that it's ready to eat during the Sabbath can also be helpful.

Creating rituals to help mark the Sabbath as different time and space and to help create room for the spirit is another tip. As Jewish tradition understands, rituals are very important in remembering the Sabbath. Rituals can be especially important at the beginning and end of Sabbath time, helping us usher in the Sabbath and return to our everyday lives at the end of the Sabbath. In good Unitarian Universalist style, invent your own rituals: use symbols and rituals that are meaningful to you.

Here's another tip: even if you love to shop, Sabbath is a good time to avoid shopping. It's a time to stop earning, counting and spending money, a time to get off the great American wheel of consumption, a time to focus on the goodness you have in your life now rather than the things you want.

Finally, and most important of all, be good to yourself during your Sabbath. Many of our Puritan ancestors did a terrible thing when they made Sabbath an ugly, grueling, rule-infested, punishing time. They completely misunderstood the biblical roots of Sabbath. Sabbath is a sensual time, a time for opening the soul and mind and body to the joy and beauty that so blesses our world. Sabbath is a time to savor the delights of life. Sabbath is about laughing and playing games and making love, not Puritanical rules. In the Genesis story of the world's creation, remember the repeated line "And it was good"? The Hebrew idea of the sabbath comes from this understanding that the world is fundamentally good and blessed. Sabbath gives us time and space to realize this truth and to revel in it.

Thinking about Sabbath and reading Muller's book have given me new eyes for contemplating the twenty-third psalm. In our culture, we seem to always hear that psalm in terms of the end of life: when we die we finally get to lie down in green pastures and walk by still waters. I think the twenty-third psalm is about life. It's about the here and now, if we but have eyes to see and ears to hear the beauty and wonder of this world. Sabbath can help open our eyes and our ears to this truth.

Listen to the twenty-third psalm as if it's about life, not death. Hear it as if it's about realizing in your bones that goodness and mercy really shall follow you all the days of your life--not just when you die, but today and tomorrow and next week and next year. Hear it as if it's about this very moment in this very place.

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want;
he makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters;
he restores my soul.
She leads me in paths of righteousness for her name's sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I fear no evil;
for thou art with me;
thy rod and thy staff,
they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
thou anointest my head with oil, my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life;
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.[9]

Copyright 1999 by Roger B. Bertschausen. All rights reserved.

[1]Lynn Ungar, "Camas Lilies," quoted in Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred and Rhythm of Rest (New York: Bantam Books, 1999), p. 192.
[2]Tao Te Ching, quoted in Muller, p. 97.
[3]Muller, p. 3.
[4]Ibid., p. 1.
[5]Thomas Merton cited in Muller, p. 3.
[6]Translation of Ex. 20:8-11 from An Inclusive-Language Lectionary: Readings for Year A (Cooperative Publication Association, 1986), p. 214.
[7]Muller, pp. 82-84.
[8]Albert Schweitzer quote from unknown source.
[9]Adapted translation of Psalm 23, Revised Standard Version.