Joy Dare, Shabbat, and Slowing Time

Last week we talked about how slowing down enough to notice the gifts in our lives may actually make us feel like we have MORE time. We constantly feel like we don't have the time to stop, notice, and give thanks. And, yet, when we do, we feel somehow as though we've done more, lived more...in fact, had more time. 

Ecclesiastes 4:6 says, "Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind."

Abraham Joshua Heschel said,

"One 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 of embezzling his own life. He must say farewell to manual work and learn to understand that the world has already been created and will survive without the help of man."

"The world has already been created..." I cracked a smile at this. Do we really somehow think that everything will cease if we cease our toil? "Better is a handful of quietness..." Why?

I think that when we stop we recognize who we are and who God is. We see that our work will never be done, and yet, that is just fine because God created this whole world for us, and the world is held in existence by God. It is all held together by God. Our work matters, yes. But our connection with God and with each other matters more. When we are quiet, we see God...in creation, in the people around us, in the gifts we have dared to count. And then we can go about our work, mindful of those things.

This practice of quiet, of mindfulness, of ceasing toil isn't easy, I think. So, God made it mandatory. Among the ten commandments we find, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." (Exodus 20:8) Holy means set apart. We set this day aside. "...the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it, you shall not do any work..." (Exodus 20:10)

The Sabbath Manifesto project (a non-sectarian project, by the way) says it this way:

"Way back when, God said, 'On the seventh day thou shalt rest.'  The meaning behind it was simple: Take a break. Call a timeout. Find some balance. Recharge."

"Somewhere along the line, however, this mantra for living faded from modern consciousness. The idea of unplugging every seventh day now feels tragically close to impossible. Who has time to take time off? We need eight days a week to get tasks accomplished, not six."

Blogger and former YWAM missionary, Andrew Odom, puts it this way,

"We are destroying every sense of our being by not observing a day of rest. Remember the tortoise and the hair? There is a reason we run faster and work harder, but only fall farther behind. Our lives are too hurried, too full, and subsequently too out of balance."

We are not very good at stopping, but it is only in the stopping that we are restored. In the words of Rabbi Wolpe:

"Shabbat means stopping. Pursuit slows and ceases; grasping and getting are no longer our aim. The world still spins but we do not. Balance is restored. We give ourselves a day to celebrate God's giving us a world. Flash and dazzle dim. Meaning slowly ripens. As the poet wrote, peace comes dropping slow. Shabbat Shalom."

Strangely enough, the practice of Shabbat seems to free me all week long. Yes, my work is more productive when I have rested. But, somehow, greater productivity does not equal more frazzled and hurried. Stepping out of the toil once a week teaches me to step into the moments of daily life. And there I can count my thousands of gifts...

Lashon Hara

At Bible Study last Wednesday, we talked about the power of naming things, the power of writing down the gifts we have been give. Ann Voskamp mentions how the first job of Adam was to name the animals. We are a people who count and name and label. How powerful it is when the things we name and label and count are gifts, gratitudes, thanks... I was reminded of the Hebrew term "Lashon Hara," or "evil language," as a kind of inverse of speaking gratitude.

Leviticus 19:16 says, "Do not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not stand up against the life of your neighbor: I am the Lord." Here is the scripture from the Torah that is most frequently cited against Lashon Hara, a scripture that brings lashon hara right up against LIFE. Words have the power of life and, conversely, the power of death. Consequently, the Jewish rabbis have written numerous hedge laws to prevent people from accidentally participating in lashon hara, and the Jewish people acknowledge the harm that has been done in the world through lashon hara. For example (from chabad.org):

• The Midrash tells us that the snake slandered G‑d to Eve when convincing her to eat of the Tree of Knowledge.
• Joseph spoke negatively to his father, Jacob, about his brothers, causing them to hate him. This led to their selling him, and ultimately caused the Egyptian exile.

 When Miriam spoke negatively about her brother, Moses, she was rebuked by G‑d and afflicted with the skin disease.

The spies who were sent soon afterwards to Israel did not take a lesson from this story, and they too spoke negatively—about the land of Israel. The result was that the Israelites of that generation all died in the desert. 

Another fabulous article from Judaism 101 tells us these things about lashon hara:

The Talmud tells that the tongue is an instrument so dangerous that it must be kept hidden from view, behind two protective walls (the mouth and teeth) to prevent its misuse. 

The person who listens to gossip is even worse than the person who tells it, because no harm could be done by gossip if no one listened to it. It has been said that lashon ha-ra (disparaging speech) kills three: the person who speaks it, the person who hears it, and the person about whom it is told.

 An article at Aish.com describes the 3 people hurt by lashon hara in this way:

• The person speaking: Although you briefly become the center of attention when you dish out a juicy piece of gossip, in the long run people start mistrusting you. ...
• The person spoken about: The person under discussion is, of course, being killed in everyone's eyes. Whether the information is true or false, it is hard to take back defamatory words already spoken and undo the character assassination already committed. ...
• The person spoken to:  ...the Talmud says that listening to lashon hara is even worse than speaking it; the person had the power to stop it and didn't. Now the transgression is complete.

We see, in these articles, how words have changed the history of the Jewish people...and the world (Adam & Eve, Joseph, Miriam, the spies that went out ahead into the promised land...)  How powerful words can be. And how easy it is to use them. It's so much more difficult to commit other acts, either positive or negative, toward others. It's much harder to DO something. But it's so easy to SPEAK something.

So easy to speak something...and yet so difficult sometimes. Why does it sometimes seem like it's easier to "name" the difficult things, the problems, the hurts, the frustrations, the pain, lashon hara? Why must we train ourselves in order to name the gifts, the positive things, the gratitude, the thanksgiving, eucharisteo?

Yet, we must. We must train ourselves to name our gifts. In naming them, we draw attention to them and to the One who gave them. In naming them, we affect those three people from the quote above: the person speaking, the person spoken about, and the person spoken to. We give life, rather than speaking against it.

Chodesh Adar - Accept the Grace of Joy

Today is the 11th of Adar. The eleventh day of the Jewish month of JOY. Adar is considered the month of Joy because it includes Purim (the Fast of Esther) and falls one month before Passover. Both Purim and Passover are deliverance stories, times of joy and celebration. The Talmud says, "When Adar comes, joy is increased."

How fitting that my Bible Study group began a study of Joy last week and I have been following the Joy Dare prompts this year! And how fitting that the month of Joy comes in one of the darkest seasons, right before spring...right when we need it the most. This is the month of anticipation, of joy breaking through, of awaiting our deliverance. From winter. From captivity.

I wrote this for my Bible Study group:

I got to thinking about the plethora of literature that's been generated in recent years about happiness. A website called Happiness Club lists the top 20 books on happiness. Amazon and Goodreads both have lists and lists of books about Happiness. I've read a few of them myself. Most notably, The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, where I learned that Happiness is about learning to simplify, organize my closets, and have more fun. Clearly, we live in a culture where we are longing for something. We call it Happiness, but I'm convinced we are really after Joy...because we are after something that can only come from outside ourselves...ultimately, God.

A number of other thoughts have come tumbling through since then. I wonder what it means to have joy or to be joyful when you aren't happy? If we make a distinction between Joy and Happiness, can we assume they are independent of each other? Some people describe Happiness as something that is based on circumstances. We are happy when things are going on our. Joy is independent of circumstances. Something we have from within, despite circumstances. Or, perhaps, something that comes from without, that comes from a reliance on something greater than ourselves.

I like the idea. But what does it look like? How do we have joy when we are mourning? In the midst of sadness? In the midst of struggle? When we are tired, broken, defeated, frustrated, angry...

I'm not claiming to have answers. I just wonder. Romans 12:12 says, "Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer." And again, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 says, "Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." Seems like a pretty impossible standard. Rejoice always? Pray without ceasing?

I also started thinking about people I know, whom I would consider joyful. ...or not. So, my neighbor, who was previously a drug addict, who has been clean for years now, has a daughter in high school, married to a sweet Hispanic guy who experiences a lot of discrimination, raising her "surprise" baby now, low income, watching previous friends die from overdoses or gang related violence, working to help clean up our part of the city... She has joy. Definitely. I mean. I can't even figure it out. Because I know that sometimes she's sad and she struggles, and she doesn't hide that. But somehow, she's always overflowing in joy.

I don't know what it is. I just know that isn't me. And I also know you cannot fake it. You can try to see the silver lining all the time. Try to see the rose in the midst of the thorns. Try to think of how it's always better than it could be. But, honestly, those things feel forced.  There is something so genuine and real about the truly joyful people I meet. And it seems to me that it's sort of like grace. It's not something you can earn or create. It's something you are given and you must open your hand and receive it. TRYing will get you nowhere. Acceptance is the only path. Accept the grace of joy.