The Five-Minute Sabbath

Working from home, attending endless Zoom meetings, distance learning for children, cleaning the house or apartment, cutting the grass, managing repairs, dealing with unemployment or underemployment, keeping the family safe from Covid, learning to live with the isolation; the list goes on and on. When it comes to the past year, normal is just a setting on the dryer.

 I will be the first one to admit that I don’t fully get it. I have little sense of the pressures that attend daily life in this time. As a retired person, the truth is my life didn’t change all that much during the pandemic. But I watched what went on around me in the lives of people I care about and all I could do was shake my head in wonder and feel my heart fill with compassion.

So I get it when Sunday morning rolls around and sleeping late wins out over going to church, whether in person or on YouTube. I get it when some quality time with the family eclipses sitting for yet another hour in front of an electronic screen. As a pastor, I also get the frustration of putting hours into creating a meaningful worship service and having only a few people show up, whether in person or virtually.

What gets lost in the shuffle, is that it is easy to forget that our souls need to be fed. That’s true whether we go to church or not. Sabbath time is moments of rest and recreation when we tend to being instead of doing. There is a reason we are called human beings and not human doings. We are more than the sum total of what we accomplish, or fail to accomplish.

Our primary identity rests in the truth that we are created by the Creator. We are creatures of the Divine. We join with all the created order as the beloved of God. Reminding ourselves of that for even a few minutes a day can make the day more tolerable. Honest.

I call it the five-minute Sabbath. It can come any time and in the midst of any moment. For example, you are stuck in traffic. It’s easy to get hot under the collar, lean on the horn or perhaps extend a certain digit as a way of blowing off steam. The truth is, when traffic stops us dead on the road, we have an opportunity to simply look around. Marvel at the miracle that is the modern automobile: the collection of bolts, nuts, screws, sheet metal and some magic that makes an engine run when you turn the key. People figured out how to do this. Spend a few minutes just thinking about the marvels of the human mind.

Or, look at the sky. Is it blue, gray, sunny or cloudy? Is it raining or snowing? Clouds are moisture suspended in the air. When we breathe out we exhale moisture (not just the virus that can kill people). All the water that has ever existed in the world since the beginning of time still exists. The moisture you exhale may contain water from Niagara Falls.  The options are endless. Spend a few moments paying attention to what is around you and let your thoughts take you where they will.

We are surrounded by wonder. Each person, even the ones that annoy the hell out of us, is a unique and unrepeatable individual bearing the image of the Divine. If we spent more time thinking about that and less time thinking about how they annoy us, we would be a lot calmer.

Taste your food. Most of us (me included) inhale our food, often while doing something else like watching TV or reading a book. Let the food dance on your tongue, even if it’s just a sandwich or something simple. Savor the flavors.

Sing along with the radio, even if you can’t carry a tune in a bushel basket. Feel the air as it flows over your vocal chords. Consider for a moment what a miracle it is that we can sing, speak and communicate. Enjoy the harmony and tune along with the words. There are only seven notes in a scale but they are put together in millions of ways to create every kind of music there is. Choose the music you like and ponder the talent that makes it possible.

There are countless ways to have a five-minute Sabbath. What they have in common is that they call us to pay complete attention to the moment and connect the moment to something larger than ourselves. And it is all holy. We are all creatures of the Divine and all that we create or observe in love connects us and others to the Divine, and in a mystical way to each other.

Life has more than its share of challenging moments in these days. While the end may be in sight, it is not here yet. A five minute Sabbath to ponder the moment you are in can transform all the other moments that come after it.

Oh yeah, don’t forget to breathe.