On The Seventh Day: A Meditation on the Sabbath

In the Hebrew Bible it is said that “In six days God made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day God rested, and was refreshed” (Exodus 31:17).

 

In my life I have encountered this creation myth countless times and know it as the origin of the tradition of the Sabbath; and I thought I knew what it meant until only recently, when I learned that the Hebrew word translated as “refreshed,” vaiynafesh, literally means, and God exhaled. God exhales on the seventh day, says the myth—God breathes out and relaxes. So it must be that on the previous six days, God quickens existence and life with a creative inhale. And here we have a profound picture of the nature of the fundamental reality in which we live and move and have our being. The creative process, ongoing and never ending, in the larger world and in ourselves, has a rhythm to it. Inhale, exhale; inhale, exhale: this is fundamental reality.

 

And this is the reality I would have us dwell on this morning, as we reflect on the spiritual meaning of Labor Day Weekend. Since the 1880s, it has been a time for honoring the working class and advocating for improved working conditions. It also brings with it a day off from work, wonderful but also bittersweet, since Labor Day has come to represent the end of Summer and the return of Fall endeavors. Soon we will be, with all our activities, inhaling like crazy; but on Labor Day, we exhale, we enjoy.

 

Take a moment, now, to try an experiment. Inhale deeply. Fill your lungs with air, as far as they will go. Now—don’t stop. Keep on inhaling….

 

Doesn’t feel good, right? Welcome to life in modern America, where the inhale-exhale rhythm of creation is out of whack. Today there is a constant flow of intense stimuli and endless information, mediated by satellites with their global reach, cable TV with its hundreds of channels, or the Internet, with its infinite connections. And we plug in, using the portable electronic gadgets at our disposal like cell phones, I Pods, Blackberries, and laptops. We plug in, and we inhale the emails, we inhale the images, we inhale the jabber, and we can’t seem to stop even as we end up feeling manic-depressive, feeling fried, feeling exhausted, feeling like we’re trapped in Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room and can’t get out… 

 

And then there is this: the endless inhale of choices in our American marketplace. For me this is so well illustrated by something I once encountered at a restaurant called Macaroni Grill. “Create your own primo pasta,” the menu said. “Choose from everyday indulgences that take your pasta creation to new heights.” At this point, I’m rolling my eyeballs. The subtext, I know, is that as a consumer in a postmodern hyper-individualist society, the act of purchasing becomes nothing less than the art of declaring who I am, the art of constructing my personal identity. I am what I buy. But must this be the case when I’m hungry and I just want to eat some good Italian food? My eye scans the rest of the menu. I see five categories, each with multiple options: sauces, toppings, yummies, the actual type of pasta, and the type of side salad to accompany the dish. In all, there are 38 options to choose from, to take my pasta creation to new heights. I order a cheeseburger. 

 

The inhale is constant and exhausting. So many things to know, so much need in the world to meet, so many things to do, so many things to choose. And so, like Elizabeth Gilbert, we multitask like Swiss Army knives. We text while driving. To-do lists paper our walls. “I am so busy,” we say along with everyone else. It is the age of overwhelming.

 

But how did things get this way? What happened to throw the natural inhale-exhale rhythm of creation out of whack?

 

Perhaps it is the Law of Unintended Consequences in action. For surely we did not intend to fashion a world in which we must inhale without end. The original intentions were hopeful, and inspiring. Capitalism, with its intention of rewarding people for their initiative and hard work and creativity. Technology, with its intention of making life easier and raising our standard of living. But then there is that sober saying from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Things are in the saddle and ride mankind.” Capitalism ends up in the saddle, and we see what has happened. The development of a system in which the driving goal is a never-ending MORE; in which the modus operandi is to create in people artificial needs; in which the people, bred to be needy, bred to be credit-card consumers of the MORE, find themselves on the wheel of work, working like mad, in debt like mad, running just to stand still if not to make the money to buy the things which they will have no time to enjoy because they are too busy working. This is what happens when Capitalism ends up in the saddle. And as for technology? Our “labor-saving” devices paradoxically cause us to work even harder than before, even as it arguably lowers the quality of our lives. Somehow, our technologies begin to alter our expectations for each other, so that, just as email is constantly available and instantaneous, people (we think) should be constantly available, and when we send an email, we should receive a reply immediately. The expectation is of course unreasonable, but it creeps within us nevertheless. Unfeeling, non-human technology setting the standard for flesh-and-blood. Don’t even get me started on how this is true where it comes to the work of democracy. How the nature of the television medium has shrink-wrapped political discourse into image and sound bite. Now, if a politician can’t explain his or her policies for a complex economy like ours in three sentences or less, he or she is dismissed as incompetent. 

 

Things in the saddle, riding humankind. Culminating, I would argue, in a myth that is diametrically opposed to the inhale-exhale creation myth of the Hebrew Bible. I’m talking about the myth of being a limitless self in a limitless world. The myth of the infinite MORE. The myth that we can keep on living unsustainably without consequences. This secular myth, so different from the ancient one, taking up a central place in our lives and shaping our conscience within. And so, even as we say to one another, “I am so busy,” we say it with pride, as if it is a desirable thing, as if we deserve a medal, as if we are demonstrating the goodness of our character. And then, when it all finally gets to us, and we can no longer bear the pain, and we’re burned out, at home in our pajamas, eating cereal straight out of the box and staring at the TV in a mild coma—we feel shame. We feel wrong, and we feel conscience-stricken. We have let the myth down. 

 

Perhaps these are some of the causes of the natural inhale-exhale rhythm of creation going askew. The Law of Unintended Consequences in action. The emergence of a new myth within culture and within conscience that worships the unlimited MORE. Whatever the cause, it hurts. It hurts to never stop inhaling.

 

In his tremendous book called Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives, Wayne Muller makes this clear. How busyness and overwork become a kind of violence in which we simply cannot be our best selves. No time for rest and a renewal of perspective. No time to savor and to feel gratitude. Just living at warp speed, living in anxious survival mode. “I have sat on dozens of boards and commissions,” says Wayne Muller, “with many fine, compassionate, and generous people who are so tired, overwhelmed, and overworked that they have neither the time nor the capacity to listen to the deeper voices that speak to the essence of the problems before them. Presented with the intricate and delicate issues of poverty, public health, community well-being, and crime, our impulse, born of weariness, is to rush headlong toward doing anything that will make the problems go away. Maybe then we can finally go home and get some rest. But,” Muller continues, “without the essential nutrients of rest, wisdom, and delight embedded in the problem-solving process itself, the solution we patch together is likely to be an obstacle to genuine relief. Born of desperation, it often contains enough fundamental inaccuracy to guarantee an equally perplexing problem will emerge as soon as it is put into place. In the soil of a quick fix is the seed of a new problem, because our quiet wisdom is unavailable.” That’s what Wayne Muller says, and it leads me to think of the enormous problems facing this country and facing the next President, and I hold John McCain and I hold Barack Obama equally in the circle of my compassion. In the circle of my compassion, I hold the fine, compassionate, and generous people in this congregation and beyond. There is so much to do, so many needs to meet. And yet the more needs we try to satisfy all at one time, the faster we try to go, the more we breathe in, and in, and in: the more frantic we get, the more desperate, the more reactive, the more sloppy—and our work for justice and peace is neutralized, seeds of future problems are sown. The Tao Te Ching asks us, “Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?” How would we answer? How would this congregation answer? Each of us as families, as individuals? 

 

Perhaps this is why, in Judaism, regularly observing the Sabbath is no less than one of the famous 10 Commandments. It’s right up there, with “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots” like don’t murder, don’t steal, honor your parents, and don’t bear false witness against your neighbor. It’s just as momentous, just as far-reaching, even if, on the surface, the command to take spiritual delight in our days and to indulge ourselves in the beauty of doing nothing seems … frivolous. And here, I have to confess that, in the past, this is exactly how this commandment had seemed to me, in comparison with the others. In the past, there would always be this voice from Sesame Street coming up to sing, “One of these things is not like the other….” Why, I always thought, had the author of the Ten Commandments put “Thou shalt not murder” on the same footing as “Thou shalt remember the Sabbath and keep it holy”? Until I realized that people who lack an intentional practice for rest and spiritual reflection commit a kind of murder themselves. A murder of the life force within and without. Diminishment, depletion, erosion, exhaustion—in our bodies and in the body of our earth. There is a reason why the Chinese pictograph for the word “busy” brings together two characters: one for heart, and another for killing.

 

The message is clear: like God in the ancient creation myth, we do well to embody the rhythm of inhale and exhale in our lives even as it commits us to doing something that is countercultural and flies in the face of our secular world. Judaism teaches this, and so do other major religions around the world. Muslims are about to enter into their holy season of Ramadan, with its fasting, prayer, and reflection to achieve goals of spiritual and physical cleansing, and this definitely resonates with the Jewish Sabbath.  

 

Inhale, exhale. Take a deep breath now, fill up your lungs—and release. Relax into the exhale. Be a good steward of the present moment.

 

So now we turn to practicing the Sabbath—what’s involved. And to this end, once again we go back to the Hebrew scriptures, where we read that “On the seventh day God finished God’s work,” and we also read, over and over again, the refrain: “And God saw that it was good.”

 

A close reading of that line about the seventh day—God finishing God’s work—suggests that, actually, the Sabbath is not simply a day off, a day when nothing is done. God is finishing God’s work—and this is something. Something is happening, something is being done, even into the seventh day; but the character of what is being done is special, has finality to it, has uniqueness. So what might this be? According to the ancient rabbis, God’s work of finishing has to do with menuha, which means tranquility, serenity, peace, repose. Rest, in the deepest possible sense. Renewal. This is what God creates on the seventh day, without which the Creation is incomplete and lacking. God creates the exhale, to balance out the inhale.

 

It means that we enter into Sabbath space and time not simply by ceasing from doing any job-related activities, or pressing pause on whatever makes us feel busy. We cease doing all such things so that we might shift our focus to the creation of something higher and something deeper, something which puts all the labor of the previous six days into perspective and completes it. Wayne Muller describes it well when he says, “It is the presence of something that arises when we consecrate a period of time to listen to what is most deeply beautiful, nourishing, or true. It is a time consecrated with our attention, our mindfulness, honoring those quiet forces of grace or spirit that sustain and heal us.” That’s what Wayne Muller says. The Creation culminates in a direct sense of beauty, and nourishment, and grace, and healing, and the ultimate goodness of life. And what takes us to this is doing what God does in the creation myth: we consecrate the work of our lives, meaning that we step back and just look upon it, we attend to it, we listen, we honor, we give thanks, we appreciate.  

 

This is the proper work of the Sabbath. For observant Jews, the practice is to set aside the time from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown for this. To spark the imagination by lighting the Sabbath candles, to eat the Sabbath meal, to remember God and reflect on the Torah, to enter into an experience, ideally, of spaciousness. It’s not supposed to be heavy and legalistic. It’s supposed to be a time of sacred spirituality, sensuality, prayer, rest, song, delight. One of the more popular Sabbath activities, in fact, is making love. Apparently there is a tradition among some observant Jews that couples are to make love four times during the Sabbath. Once, Wayne Muller respectfully inquired about this with a friend, and the response was, “No, we make love only once. But, for the other three, we hold a deep intention.”

 

The proper work of the Sabbath: whatever invites the Spirit into our lives. Gardening can do that. Creative writing, or dancing. We are doing it right now, seated as we are here, in the round—not busy with our jobs, not busy with housework, not busy with committee work, but focused on work of a higher order, which is singing together, reflecting together, mourning together, rejoicing together, praying together, committing and recommitting our lives to that which deserves the loyalty of our hearts and spirits, dwelling in gratitude together. This work finishes our week, just as God’s work of creating tranquility and peace on the seventh day put the finishing touch on all that God accomplished in the previous six—and without which Creation would NOT be good, would NOT be worth living in, would not be enough, so that, presumably, God would be in the same spot so many of us today are in, trapped in the myth of the infinite MORE, and compelled to keep on creating: an eighth day, a ninth day, a tenth, an eleventh, and on and on….

 

But what God created on the seventh day makes the other six ENOUGH, makes them GOOD. So let it be for us. Every week, but also every day, let there be a Sabbath time where we turn away from our regular labor and pause, find a place of spiritual rest and repose, breathe in and breathe out the rhythm of creation. Be like the God of the myth, on the seventh day, and look upon the life you are creating with love, with compassion. Allow gratitude to well up within you. Let gratitude flow in your heart. God may see that it is good, but even more important is that YOU do. 

 

Rev. Anthony David

August 31. 2008

Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta

Our Inner Ape

As Unitarian Universalists, we rally around a religious vision of people connecting with the Sacred in life—of being changed and transformed by this, called into acts of compassion and hope, expanding our circle of concern beyond self-interest so that we can be satisfied with nothing less than peace and justice for all. We rally around this vision of spiritual and ethical interdependency, and here at UUCA, we know that one of the essential ways of living the vision and making it real is being healthy in our relationships together: being mindful of how we communicate with and about others, seeking a peaceful and constructive resolution process when conflicts arise, celebrating the diversity within our community, building the common good. This is what we know, and rally around.  

 

Yet my question this morning is one of depth. The religious vision I just outlined, and its corresponding commitment to healthy relationships: how deeply rooted is it in our nature? Deep roots, or shallow? Teach a dog to fetch a newspaper, and that resonates with a basic capacity that is already deeply instilled in him—is this what Unitarian Universalism is trying to accomplish in us? Just cultivating and bringing to fuller expression potentials which are already ours in some way? Or, are we more like cats, and a capacity for fetching is just not part of who we are—and yet our religion foolishly persists in teaching us this anyhow?     

 

Scratch the surface of who we are, and what’s underneath?

 

It’s a question that has been asked with great intensity, especially since the savagery of World War II—the holocaust, the atom bomb, the willful destruction committed in Europe and Asia by otherwise civilized and scientifically enlightened people. Out of this, a dominant answer that emerged firmly rejected the “onward and upward forever” naïve optimism about human nature that so characterized nineteenth century liberal religion. In the harsh light of Nazi atrocities, or Soviet atrocities, this optimism appeared completely ridiculous. What seemed far more realistic was the grim idea that, deep down, humans are basically violent and amoral. And so, for example, a prominent scientist at the time, Konrad Lorenz, argued that aggression was a pressure within the human psyche that builds relentlessly, completely unrelated to frustrated desires and aims, without understandable and reasonable cause. The inexplicable pressure to destroy is within us, and it just builds and builds over time until it bursts through the thin veneer of human decency which religions and ethical systems like ours try so hard to shore up, but always in vain.

 

Then there was the thought of science writer Robert Ardrey. His 1961 book African Genesis argued what has since become known as the “killer ape” theory, which is that the ancient ancestors of humans were distinguished from other primate species by their greater aggressiveness, and that’s what drove their evolution, that’s the prime mover behind human development. It’s the famous scene in the classic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, where a fight breaks out among a group of our ape ancestors, in which one bludgeons another with a zebra femur, and then that ape ancestor flings the femur triumphantly in the air, where, millennia later, it turns into an orbiting spacecraft. This is what the “killer ape” theory means: we’ve gotten to where we are today through genocide. Says Robert Ardrey, “We were born of killer apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments?” This is who we truly are, says Robert Ardrey. Liberal religion tried to throw away the idea of original sin, but secular science revalidated a version of it. Scratch the surface, rub off the thin veneer of religion and ethics and civilization, and we find something horrible which is nothing less than the secret of our success—which makes it even more horrible. (Not one of our favorite things….)

 

And so where do we go from here, if the horrible vision is true? Another movie scene comes to mind, this time from the classic The African Queen. Surrounded by the jungle, Katherine Hepburn’s character says, “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.” In others words, work even harder to shore up the thin veneer of civilization, so that the jungle within us—the inexplicable pressure to do violence—is kept bottled up, pushed down. Sing hymns louder, perhaps—meditate more—repeat the Purposes and Principles regularly and often, as well as our Congregational Covenant of Healthy Relationships. Face your fate like a plucky and undaunted Katherine Hepburn, and rise above…

 

But this only goes so far. Putting on a brave face won’t take away the dread we’ll never be able to stop feeling about ourselves. The sense that there exists a murderous force within us, so alien to all that we hold sacred and holy, so untrue to the teachings of our greatest prophets, like Jesus and the Buddha. So alien to our hopes for peace and justice for all. So irreconcilable with the idea that people have inherent worth and dignity. No inner light within, but inner seething. Therefore we could never truly relax and trust our instincts; there would have to be constant vigilance to make sure that the thin veneer of sanity is maintained. Not freedom, but authoritarianism, would be the better way in religion and in life. Unitarian Universalism, in short, would cease to make any sense. This is what would happen.

 

All of what I’ve said so far is background for why the question about apes is so crucial, so momentous to our understanding of ourselves. Says Emory University professor Frans de Waal in his fascinating book Our Inner Ape, “If [apes] turn out to be better than brutes—even if only occasionally—the notion of niceness as a human invention begins to wobble. And if true pillars of morality, such as sympathy and intentional altruism can be found in other animals, we will be forced to reject veneer theory altogether.” This is what Franz de Waal says. Take a look at our closest animal kin—great apes like chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas—and see what their lives are really like. Perhaps humans can fool themselves and pull the wool over their eyes, but not apes. They are what they are, without deception, without shame. So put all the theorizing to the side. Put “killer ape” theory to the side, and just look at the evidence from the lives of our closest biological kin, with whom we share more than 97% of our DNA.    

 

And what do we find? A fine animal gorilla like Koko. A being who truly and deeply gets what we are doing here today. Blessing our animals companions, our pets—and Koko herself would do the same. Bless her beloved All Ball. Bless Smoky. We hold and rub and play with and talk baby talk to our cats and dogs, and so does Koko. “Koko love Ball. Soft good cat cat.” Stricken when All Ball was killed, as we are when our pets die. Sounding out a long series of high pitched hoots. Saying, “Cry, sad, frown.”

 

Now it is undeniable: when we look at our great ape brothers and sisters, some of the things we find are not nice warm fuzzies. Chimpanzees are notoriously brutal at times, and they are also incorrigibly tribal and xenophobic, fanatically patrolling group borders, viciously charging against strangers, fighting to the death to preserve the group’s territory if necessary. But, this said, the picture grows far more complex once you consider the larger picture: that there is amazing breadth and diversity within our biological family of great apes, and the behavior of chimpanzees cannot possibly represent the final word. Gorillas like Koko shed a very different kind of light on things. And then you have bonobos. Have you ever heard of bonobos? Bonobos make love, not war. Listen to how Frans de Waal compares them to chimpanzees: “One is a gruff-looking, ambitious character with anger-management issues. The other is an egalitarian proponent of a free-spirited lifestyle. [The chimpanzee’s] hierarchical and murderous behavior has inspired the common view of humans as ‘killer apes.’ […] I have witnessed enough bloodshed among chimpanzees to agree that they have a violent streak. But we shouldn’t ignore our other close relative, the bonobo, discovered only last century. Bonobos are a happy-go-lucky bunch with healthy sexual appetites. Peaceful by nature, they belie the notion that ours is a purely bloodthirsty lineage.” That’s what Frans de Waals says. Our human heritage, exemplified in our closest animal relatives, is mixed. Chimpanzees may be tribal and xenophobic, but bonobos, in the best United Nations way, regularly establish peaceful relations with foreigners. Our inner ape is just not one narrow thing, as “killer ape” theory suggests. What’s deep down in human nature is broad: as much love and compassion as it is murder. And our job is to choose wisely, which impulses we draw on.

 

Consider this story about a bonobo called Kidogo, who suffered from a heart condition. “He was feeble, lacking the normal stamina and self-confidence of a grown male bonobo. When first introduced to the colony at the Milwaukee County Zoo, Kidogo was completely confused by the keepers’ shifting commands inside the unfamiliar building. He failed to understand where to go if people urged him to move from one part of the tunnel system to another. After a while, other bonobos stepped in. They approached Kidogo, took him by the hand, and led him to where the keepers wanted him, thus showing they understood both the keepers’ intentions and Kidogo’s problem. Soon Kidogo began to rely on their help. If he felt lost, he would utter distress calls, and others would quickly come over to calm him and act as a guide.” That’s the story. The strong helping the weak. Genuine sympathy, genuine altruism, found in the sacred depths of nature, right there. Sending a message that our job as humans is not so much to follow Katherine Hepburn’s advice and “rise above” nature as it is to bring into fuller expression certain capacities it has gifted us with. To draw on the positive aspects of our inner ape so as make a better world. Hubert Humphrey once said that “the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.” Now if in bonobo society we have the strong helping the weak, why not in human society, and MORE of it? Why not?

 

Story after story documents in bonobos—as well as in chimpanzees and gorillas—kindness and empathy, a capacity for peacemaking and reconciliation, creativity, even freedom—this latter part suggested by Koko’s capacity to tells lies and her sense of humor. Blind actors carrying out a pre-set genetic program just can’t do this sort of thing, aren’t capable of the kind of improvisation and imagination that deception and humor require. Story after story opens up our minds to the fact that “our humanness is grounded in social instincts we share with other animals.” Our inner ape is just not a killer ape. Don’t say to me, “scratch an altruist, and watch a hypocrite bleed.” That makes no sense, in light of the facts. Kindness and sympathy and altruism are not veneer-thin but deep. You can’t scratch it away. It is a gift to us from our great ape brothers and sisters. It means we don’t have to be afraid of ourselves. It means we can replace a feeling of dread with a feeling of wonder. It means that to creation, we belong. Unitarian Universalism is real. Our Covenant of Healthy Relationships is realistic. The animals bring us back to our senses. “Fine animal gorilla” teaches us to say—and gives us courage to say—“fine animal human.”  

 

 

Rev. Anthony David

August 23, 2008

UUCA