June 2007

Summer Sabbath from the Pastor

How have you spent a life-time of summers? When I was a child growing up in Maryland, summer was a time to explore the woods that grew behind our house until it was torn down to make room for more houses. Summertime also meant trips to the beach to see my grandmother, local carnivals, endless parades, corn bingo, and country gospel played at various church festivals. No matter that we weren’t members of any particular church; my family frequented those church festivals based on their dinner fare. In some ways, God was made real to me through the food that church folks served during the summer. There was strawberry ice cream at the Lutheran church in Woodsboro (which also had a fish pond and coin toss for us kids), fried ham sandwiches and chicken corn soup at Mt.Tabor in Rocky Ridge, and the peach festival at the Moravian church in Graceham. But besides those church suppers that our stomachs craved, if not our spirits, there were also bike trips to the local library to escape the heat and humidity, and books to savor just for the fun of it. Time stretched like salt-water taffy in those days-- elastic, sweet, and waiting to be unwrapped. And while I did not, like Thoreau, sit in a doorway, “rapt in a reverie,” I did chase fireflies, swat mosquitoes, braid dandelion stems, and catch crawfish in the local crick. (Yes, I said “crick”) At any given moment, I was covered either in calamine lotion or chilly aloe because I also managed to catch poison ivy and the occasional sunburn.

For some of us, as adults, summer no longer means a change in the seasonal rhythm of life. Nature dresses herself in her finery and we fail to pay her any lasting notice, unless the heat is stifling or the pollen potent. The kids might be on summer break and our commute might be more frustratingly congested with summer travelers, but our work-life continues, as does the potential for weariness, daily drudgery, and living life as if imprisoned by time.

To this desperate state of the soul, summer invites us to break our pattern of over-work and under-rest and bids us to remember and honor the Sabbath that we may have forgotten or put aside. An intentional time, Sabbath has the capacity to break our tendency to remain perpetually stuck in survival mode. Yet, even as I write this, I know that local farmers and gardeners are even now kicking into high gear to coax Mother Nature to yield her fruit and to stake their claim upon her bounty. Someone, we know, has to pluck, pull, and weed, when others are lazily lounging in the hammock. We each have our own garden to tend, whether the calendar says June or December.

Still, Sabbath calls and sometimes screams, “take a break, go for a walk, and for heaven’s sake go watch the clouds float against the sky.” Some fields lay fallow for a season, can we afford to do less? Sabbath is not wasted time. In fact, it is critical that we discover a rhythm of rest in the scheme of things, in the midst of our necessary work. Our health demands it and our spirits float in its embrace. As Wayne Muller writes in his book about the Sabbath, “If we do not allow for a rhythm of rest in our overly busy lives, illness becomes our Sabbath—our pneumonia, our cancer, our heart attack, our accidents create Sabbath for us.” In other words, my dear friends, if we can not give our lives a break, our lives will surely break us.

Summertime at our church has traditionally been a time of renewal and rest as well. There are usually fewer meetings, our choir takes a break, and our church school finally has a chance to catch its breath. Worship continues, but with a different flavor. We share services with our neighbors in Easthampton, we get up a little earlier on Sundays, and we share news of vacations, barbecues, and time spent outdoors.

Allow Sabbath to find you this summer. Whether you are picking berries or picking up kids, take an intentional moment to take a break and rest in the arms of God, who commanded us to rest from time to time, for our own good. Find a shady porch or a sunny doorway in which to sit quietly, observe the birds, and savor the moment. Your soul will thank you, and you just might find, like Thoreau, that you grow like the summer corn.

Wishing you many beautiful Sabbaths,

Rev. Dee