07 Jul Summer Sabbath

Posted at 08:09h in Pastoral Notes by

Dear Westwood Church family,

While hanging out with my family yesterday, I ended up laying back on a grassy lawn, grateful for the shade from a tree that covered me, and for the breeze blowing by. Plus, the leaves of the tree were lovely as they danced in the summer light.

At least for my family, summertime brings significant change in our family rhythms. We trade school-year day-to-day regularity for week-at-a-time summer camps and trips and weeks in-between. And, gratefully, opportunities to lie back in the grass and look up through the leaves of a tree.

Whatever your rhythms this summer—work, travel, care-giving, play—I hope you find opportunities to rest. I hope you practice sabbath-keeping.

The sabbath poetry of Wendell Berry—written from his Kentucky farm—has helped me understand sabbath practice more deeply. Previously, I appreciated rest as necessary for long-term productivity; Berry’s poetry helped me see rest as a faithful way of practicing humility and honoring the surpassing wonder of God. Refraining from activity — especially when I pause to notice beauty and grace around me — helps me remember that I am, at my best, a co-participant in what divine love is doing. I cannot make the best, most incredible, grace-filled things on my own.

And, as easily as I am able to find delight in the sunlight dancing through the leaves of the tree as it shades me, I believe that God is able to delight in me. And you.

I wanted to share one of Wendell Berry’s Sabbath poems, as an encouragement to you. May these days hold time for rest and poetry and sabbath.

Grace and peace,
Molly

“X,” from The Sabbath Poems
by Wendell Berry (1979)
Whatever is foreseen in joy
Must be lived out from day to day.
Vision held open in the dark
By our ten thousand days of work.
Harvest will fill the barn; for that
The hand must ache, the face must sweat.
And yet no leaf or grain is filled
By work of ours; the field is tilled
And left to grace. That we may reap,
Great work is done while we’re asleep.
When we work well, a Sabbath mood
Rests on our day, and finds it good.