Sabbaticaling Continued

 Amongst the sabbatical benefits so far:

1. a sense of being rested - which is what Sabbath is for; and therefore a regular necessity
   
2. a fresh perspective on other important aspects of life beyond immediate vocational responsibilities
3. a recovering of physical fitness with a regular exercise programme
4. time with people usually squeezed into odd 'windows of opportunity' - meals, conversation and laughter - kind of what friendship is about.
5. specific reading keeping up with recent work on Evangelicalism, its own internal critique and history, the ongoing search for definition, the problem of politicisation especially in the US, and that bright elusive butterfly of an agreed evangelical identity. The relationship between Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism is currently under scrutiny and itself raises important issues about Evangelicalism's relation to culture, the nature of biblical authority and the straightforward equation of Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism in the popular mind, often in the writing of journalists, and less excusably in some academic work in sociology and theology.
   
6. a range of reading not limited to the funtional but intentionally recreative - this includes poetry of Levertov,Dickinson and the later R S Thomas; Kathleen Norris's Acedia and Me, with some sorties into Desert Spirituality; some of Tom Torrance's later work, Christian Doctrine of God, The Trinitarian Faith,(in preparation for the day conference at the end of the month, and several novels which don't feature on any academic list I can think of!
7. some jobs done to the house, either by ourselves or organising for them to be done by those who can them properly.
8. listening to music that is new and old, from Eternal Light by Goodall, to Beethoven's Symphonies (is there anything more wildly manic than the lst movement of the Seventh which one contemporary reviewer explained by the accusation Beethoven was drunk when he composed it), and then Brahms, Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Bruch, violin concertos all of which I've listened to loadsatimes!!
9. Several periods of longer change and holiday, a week at St Deiniol's, 8 days in Cornwall, and next week mostly at Crail doing amongst other things the Fife Coastal Walk, or parts thereof. A couple more such jaunts are planned, including a still to be arranged pilgrimage to Manchester to commiserate with Sean the Baptist about the amount of sunshine he'll have to get used to in Australia!
   
10. Alongside this some preliminary work towards Advent when the later part of this sabbatical will be spent exploring the images of Jesus in art, music, icon and film - in preparation for return to College and a new course, but at this stage an opening up of mind and heart to the unique glory of that grace and truth that dwelt among us.

Now and again I recall the important disclaimer of A J Heschel probing at the pride that drives our drivenness:

He who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil. He must go away from the screech of dissonant days, from the nervousness and fury of acquisitiveness and the betrayal in embezzling his own life. He must say farewell to manual work and learn to understand that the world already has been created and will survive without the help of man. Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone else. Six days a week we seek to dominate the world; on the seventh day we try to dominate the self. (Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath)

Comments

[Jason Goroncy]

Jim,

I love the quote from Heschel. I only hope that the previous 10 items don't push out the space that Heschel is inviting you to enter.

Here's a quote in response: "It is not man who brings the history of creation to an end, nor is it he who ushers in the subsequent history. It is God's rest which is the conclusion of the one and the beginning of the other, i.e., God's free, solemn, and joyful satisfaction with that which has taken place and has been completed as creation, and His invitation to man to rest with Him, i.e., with Him to be satisfied with that which has taken place through Him. The goal of creation, and at the same time the beginning of all that follows, is the event of God's Sabbath freedom, Sabbath rest and Sabbath joy, in which man, too, has been summoned to participate." - Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 3/1, p. 98.

Sabbath blessings.