SABBATH

  
"The Sacred Rhythm of Rest and Delight: Interview with Wayne Muller"

Let's begin by talking about what you mean by the word "Sabbath."

Wayne Muller: The Sabbath is simply a period of sacred rest. Every spiritual tradition has some ethical commandment about the need to rest. And it's not just in order to function more efficiently when we go back to work. It's also about nourishment, and sacred nourishment comes during the time we spend off the wheel, when we're not at our desks, when we're not in the marketplace. That's why all of the Sabbath prescriptions of all the world's religions say, "Don't do business on the Sabbath, don't buy and sell things, don't go out and build things and fix things."

Why don't we take the time for "sacred rest"? Why don't people honor the Sabbath?

Well, there are personal reasons and there are social reasons. When we work, we feel a sense of worth and a sense of value in the contribution that we can make to the world. The more we contribute, the more valuable we feel. Everywhere we hear people reciting our collective mantra: "I'm so busy." There's a little bit of complaining going on, along with a quiet admiration for ourselves.

And there are those people who deny themselves permission to rest because they're working to make some goal happen. People think they want to get enlightened in this lifetime, find the perfect relationship, or arrange the circumstances of their lives so that they achieve a perfect lifestyle. We don't feel like we can rest until we've gotten it perfect. Of course, that's a very seductive illusion; most spiritual teachers will point out that however your life is right now, it already has perfection in it.

I think that another major factor in our culture is that we're expected to trade our time for money. The catechism is pretty clear: time is money. Well, actually, time isn't money. But the assumption is that we will always trade our time for money, and that if we do trade our time for money, then we will live a successful life. People who have very little time and a lot of money, we call rich; and people who have a lot of time and not much money, we call poor. And that's a pretty bizarre way to characterize the human experience, because, in point of fact, people who have a lot of money and no time are dreadfully impoverished. I see some of them in board rooms, and I see some of them in therapy, and I see some of them acting out in the world.

And even though it looks like they're doing good, they're doing good badly. They're not particularly happy because they don't have those things that grow only in time -- love and kindness, the chance to be with your children as they move through the different stages of
their lives, to be easy and gentle with your lover or your spouse, to learn about delight and gratefulness and appreciation -- all those things take time. And so, while our culture teaches that the best thing to do with a human life is to take all the time you have and trade it for
money so that you can buy more things that will make you happy, in point of fact, all that work to buy all those things only makes you tired.

So we put vast amounts of our effort and energy into our labor, but what about taking the time to delight and feast on the fruits of that labor? Part of the prescription for sacred rest is to enjoy ourselves -- doing those delightful things that are the gifts of being alive, like
eating and drinking, and singing and praying, and walking and napping and making love. We all need sacred rest, not just to revitalize our body so we can go back to work, but to make our soul happy. With a happy soul we can see more clearly what's true. We can see where the delight is, we can find God, we can find the spirit, we can find the dharma more clearly when our eyes are clear and our body is refreshed.

On your new audiotape, Sabbath, you refer to some of Thomas Merton's teachings about how busy we are in our time. He actually called it a form of violence.

Right. Merton said, "To allow ourselves to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. " Merton believed that when
we are busy all the time -- even busy with good things -- the frenzy of our activism actually neutralizes our capacity to feel peaceful inside. It kills the root of inner wisdom that can make peace, and our work fruitful. And so even though we're trying to do good work -- if
we're desperate and rushed and frantic -- we will unintentionally  create suffering for people.

Even though Merton was a priest, and you are a minister, it doesn't sound like your teachings about the Sabbath are religious.

Well, you know, I just spent time with a group of doctors, and I shared with them a story told to me by a friend who is also a doctor. He told me that when he was in medical school, he was taught to be exhausted. He was on call every other night and not getting any sleep, and he said the more exhausted he got, the more tests he would have to order. You see, this man was so weary in his body and mind, he was no longer able to use his intuition and his wisdom to
figure out what was going on with his patients. But once he got some rest, or had a chance to meditate and then went back and saw his patients, then he could very clearly and quickly understand exactly what was going on with his patients. He needed only one or two tests just to confirm his diagnosis.

Now, he wasn't talking about a religious point of view; he was talking about the need to take a sabbath moment, a sabbath hour, a sabbath day, in order to enter back into his work with more clarity and more intuitive wisdom.

And I think this is true for all of us. The spiritual teachers of the world point out that all life on earth has the same biological need for dormancy. Without it, our life force will begin to ebb away.

Please speak about honoring the Sabbath as an expression of our faith.

Keeping the Sabbath really is an act of faith. It's an act of faith that there are forces larger than ourselves at work. It demonstrates faith in God, faith in the dharma, faith that the spirit of life itself is coursing through not only our veins, but through the planet. It shows faith that
the entire movement of those forces is not dependent on each of us being at the switch every second; that in point of fact, we can actually get in the way when we don't stop and rest.

One more little story. At an abbey in the south, where they grew all their own food and also grazed cattle, there was a nun. And every afternoon she would go out and collect herbs for cooking and so on. And then a permaculturist suggested that they rotate their fields,
and keep the cattle paddocked in small sections that changed from time to time. This is a system that the ancient Hebrews knew about quite a few thousand years ago; the need to rest the land, to give it a Sabbath. And so the abbey followed the advice.

And then in the spring, after two or three years of this practice, the nun went out to collect her herbs one day. She discovered a dozen new herbs and grasses growing that she'd never seen before. And where did they come from? Nobody planted them. The seeds were
always there. But since they were always being trampled by the cattle, there was never enough time or sunshine or warmth for them to break through and flower.

There are secret things embedded in the soil of all of our lives; in the soil of the problems that we have. But when we meddle, and never leave the seeds alone to rest, they never come to harvest.

You know, Wayne, I actually think that your message about the Sabbath is very radical and subversive.

I think it is supposed to be radical and subversive. I think the world is  put of balance. I think that we've so prioritized money and possessions and accomplishments that we've forgotten about lusciousness and wisdom and delight. We can go to more and more workshops, or work harder and harder to try and make more and more money so we can buy those things that we think will make us happy. Nothing lives like this, with the exception being in times of war .
And so it is subversive to live as if you're at peace, even if it's only for a day.

--Sounds True Catalog, Summer 1999