A Sermon/Reflection by The Reverend Carole Martignacco
15 January 2012
And I have felt a presence that disturbs me
with the joy of elevated thoughts;
A sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
– William Wordsworth
Finding time for the holy is related to three timely words I'd like to explore with you this morning
related to my ministry here: Sabbath … Shabbat … sabbatical.
Finding time for what often gets lost in the shuffle in our ordinary everyday lives. Rather than skirt the
issue, let's deal with this word “holy” at the outset. If you're a new or first-time visitor to this gathering
this morning, you might have noticed an inexplicable tension, a bit of squirming … perhaps you
perceived a muffled gasp or a slight wince when certain words, like holy, are used from – do we call
this box a pulpit or a lectern? Some have told me they stop listening or their mind just checks out, goes
elsewhere – in the same way we greet the drill while sitting in the dentist's chair.
As a diverse community with a wide range of beliefs and preferences, I like the spirit of Doug Muder's
words in today's reading (included at the end of this text). I commend to you his entire essay, “Beyond
Words,” for an exploration of what a humanist spirituality might look and sound like. You'll find it in
the Summer 2011 issue of the UUA World; you can either access it online or ask me for a copy. Muder
says: “The best test of a definition is how it illuminates common usages. … Good definitions tune in
meaning like a fine radio; static goes away, and you can hear what people are saying.” For now,
let me just concede that today I am defining holy by spelling it W-H-O-L-L-Y. As in being wholly
engaged or becoming wholly ourselves … feeling wholly in touch with life and connected to others,
wholly aware of the ultimate or immanent source of all being – sentiments or experiences at the heart
of all religious traditions. We'll leave more precise definition of that word “spiritual” for another day.
We are calling my 13-week sojourn with you a “sabbatical ministry.” Curiously, Rev. Rollert and
I have chosen to take “working sabbaticals.” I'll not speak for Rev. Diane but, from what I know of
her, she's no more a workaholic than I am. Rather, we both know that shifting our focus, engaging
in something wholly new can, in very refreshing ways, be a form of rest. It's all about renewal and
restoration. In many professions, especially the Ministry, renewal is an expectation written into the
contract. Because of a high risk of burnout or stagnation, one takes time for concentrated learning, to
home in on intensive projects, find fresh direction and inspiration for our service to others.
We all need this! We all need to step outside our usual context and reflect upon where we're going; to
shed our daily obligations long enough to reclaim who we truly are beyond the job, the role, the title.
Some wisely treat any life change, even a job loss, as an opportunity for renewal. Valuing the whole
of life, parental leave could be considered a kind of sabbatical. What a privilege -- to stop and reflect,
renew one's focus, one's passion and commitment which, in our everyday functioning, can be easily
lost or grow stale over time. If we can’t find whole blocks of time, we can do this in many small ways
every day, throughout our work week and from season to season. It's a proven fact that production
does not increase when people eat lunch at their desks in front of their computer screens. To clear
the mind, it's best to get up periodically, go for a walk, move the body and change the scenery. “Bon
weekend,” we wish each other, as we take a mini-sabbatical for two days at the end of each week.
That was the original idea. The word “sabbatical” is related to “Sabbath” or “Shabbot” (Shabbat),
all based on this idea of taking time out of time, finding time for the holy (wholly). Judaism is one
source we claim for the roots of our Unitarian Universalist tradition. And it’s to the religious genius
of ancient Judaism that we owe this revolutionary idea of taking time out of time for periodic renewal
and restoration. In the ancient world, it was a revolutionary concept. A form of tithing with time, every
seventh day of each week, every Jew obliged to give one full day back to God.
Thomas Cahill, in The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone
Thinks and Feels, tells us that the sabbath was one of the first of the Ten Words, or Laws, handed down
to Moshe (Moses) for his people – what the Western world calls the Ten Commandments, and some
now call the Ten Suggestions. In my early Catholic catechism, I learned it as the third: “Remember to
keep holy the Lord's day.” Cahill writes:
Besides this innovation of speaking the unspoken moral law aloud, one should note the lesser –
but hardly unimportant – innovation of the weekend, which got its start in the Jewish Sabbath
(or “Ceasing”). No ancient society before the Jews had a day of rest.
Can you imagine how radical this was! … the God of creation calling all humans to cease their daily
round for weekly restoration, a day to be spent in prayer, study, and recreation (re-creation). To
actually emulate the life of the Author of Life! … honouring each human’s inherent worth and dignity,
prefiguring not only democracy but the right to a personal religious practice.
Israel being the first human society to so value education and the first to envision it as a
universal pursuit – and a democratic obligation that those in power must safeguard on behalf
of those in their employ. The connection to both freedom and creativity lie just beneath
the surface of this commandment: leisure is appropriate to a free people, and this people
so recently free find themselves quickly establishing this quiet weekly celebration of their
freedom ... The Sabbath is surely one of the simplest and sanest recommendations any god
has ever made; and those who live without such septimanal punctuation are emptier and less
resourceful.
So there’s an aspect of gratitude for freedom here. For countless generations, from Friday sundown to
sundown on Saturday, whether Orthodox, Reform, Reconstructionist or Renewal, Jews throughout the
world cease their regular work schedules to keep holy the Shabbat. It's interesting to note than in some
languages, the name for Saturday actually means sabbath – as in the Spanish sabbado.
Long before the invention of modern psychology, the wisdom of the early Jews came from an astute
understanding of human nature. They recognized how easily we humans get derailed, caught up in
what we're doing, going off on tangents, losing perspective, forgetting our life purpose, why we are
here. It was also the great equalizer: whatever your station in life, your standing in the community,
employer or employee, whatever your livelihood, your primary call was to deepen your relationship to
the holy, for this was deemed too crucial to be left to happenstance.
Where I live in North Hatley, I’m frequently invited to participate in a weekly shabbat with a group
of Jewish friends and families. Friday before sundown we gather for dinner, wait for just the right
moment to light the candles, and chant the prayers. Women in the household are honoured with the
task of kindling the flames to welcome the holy shabbat. Many hands round the table reach toward
the flame to gather in and absorb the light, then spread its brilliance outward in all directions, blessing
loved ones present and far away. A child carries around a bowl of water with a two-handled cup, for
each person to perform the symbolic hand-washing, offering a clean cloth for drying. More prayers
are chanted as, in this particular household, wine is mixed with water and passed around. Bread is
blessed, broken and shared. Multi-layered in its meanings, the observance of Shabbat is at the center of
Jewish family life. Sanctifying human existence, it acts as a kind of leavening agent; the next twenty-
four hours will be spent attending to the life of the spirit. Each week, we do this, knowing throughout
the week that whatever happens, whatever fortune or disaster may befall us, the ritual will come ‘round
again to remind us how we are grounded in goodness, our lives caught up in the mystery of the holy.
In modern terms, we might say that anything worth doing is worth scheduling so we flip the pages of
our agenda and find a time slot to write it in. The early Jews made it easy. By common agreement,
everyone ceased work at sundown and resumed again twenty-four hours later. No decision needed, no
letting the family go ahead without you while you put in a few hours of overtime. Woven into the very
fabric of Jewish life, over a lifetime of regular practice, you can see how --ever so gradually-- one's
sense of the spiritual, all that is sacred and holy, would be integrated into the ordinary everyday.
For orthodox Jews, the list of the things one cannot do seems, to the outsider, formidable and legalistic,
even oppressive. Originally these laws were meant to remove any obstacle from meaningful observance
and thoroughly release one from everyday duties to share in the life of the spirit. Since even G-d
needed rest, by following the pattern of creation, you emulated the very nature of the Creator.
So from the Jews, the world – especially the entire Western world, has been given this radical gift – a
structure for time out as individuals, as families, in community. Today we live immersed in cycles of
time shaped by the ancients, our days named for gods we’ve long forgotten. And we take the weekend
for granted. But it’s a gift we are in danger of losing. Instead of the so-called “blue laws” of my
childhood, which preserved Sunday as a day free from all but the most urgent and necessary commerce,
our modern materialist culture with its endless escalating round of business-as-usual threatens to
displace the whole concept of the weekend as a time of rest. Not only as individuals, but as a whole
now-global culture, we discard this gift at our peril. We in the 21st century are in danger of losing
something priceless, of infinite value and meaning. What’s at stake is a whole, and holy, perspective
on time.
In our opening words of welcome, my congregation in North Hatley each week acknowledges that “We
meet here every Sunday to find strength for the lives that we lead.” What do we honour when we take
time out of our lives to gather here on Sunday? What is worship but remembering to reverence the
whole and holy of life. We meet here every Sunday to celebrate our common human journey, remind
ourselves of shared values, speak of things profound, and contemplate life's deeper dimensions. We
recall again our ultimate reason for being. We’re told that church attendance is declining in all faith
traditions. Who knew that merely showing up here on a Sunday morning could be a form of counter-
cultural protest?
Sabbath … Shabbat … Sabbatical … can be declared for a moment, a week, a season, or at any time
it is needed. Some years ago, I took a longer sabbatical, dedicated not to study of the Torah, but to
studying the arts of Ministry, a central lesson being how to pace myself so that I -- as I move through
middle age and beyond -- can do this work with grace and joy. Here's what I learned then that I wish to
pass on to each of you: I learned …
-- to make time for the holiness that is rest.
-- to leaven my life with many kinds of sabbaticals.
-- to actually spend a day each week (Monday is my Sabbath) free from email, or the need to be
connected 24/7 to electronic media.
-- to stop using vacation time for completing outstanding projects. (Instead, I now schedule these into
my agenda; instead of waiting for time to free up, I am actually claiming time for creativity. Because
being creative is a spiritual practice for me, relating me to the source of all that is. An ancient idea I
learned from reading Cahill's book on – you guessed it – my sabbatical.)
I learned to be less driven, to give myself frequent sabbatical moments each day: whenever possible, to
work near a window open to a beautiful view. To get up and take a walk-about to loosen the joints and
the kinks in the mind. To read a poem, to play something on the flute, to sing a song – even if silently,
inside my own head – or to do some yoga stretches. (If you happen to catch me in some strange posture
as you pass the open door of the minister’s study, you’ll know what that’s about!) To take a meditative
walk each day, the longest saved for weekends. One can declare a sabbatical moment while standing
in a queue anywhere; I silently hum a melody or recall a poem, imagine a beautiful landscape, or relive
the last time I played with my grandchild. Shifting focus for a few brief moments is a mini-sabbath.
To summarize, I quote from a most unlikely source, a YouTube video entitled “Unplug Yourself: How
Advertising and Entertainment Shapes Your Subconscious”:
The subconscious mind is more powerful than the conscious. Usually people are more influenced
by their innate subconscious desires or intent rather than by a rational or planned decision. This
aspect of human nature is heavily influenced by daily activities.
That’s what the media gurus know. And we know it too, from a wholly different angle. We are
literally shaped by what we do, whether shopping or praying, arguing or making music. So from the
Jews, we have this ancient, and apparently still radical religious idea. As individuals, as a culture,
we neglect this ancient teaching at our peril. For all living things, rest and recreation, restoration of
physical and psychic balance are necessary parts of the natural rhythm. To live a whole and holy life,
we must actually put it on our agendas. Yet I know even retired folk – even some here – for whom
finding time for rest and renewal is a challenge. Let us not consign ourselves, as Thoreau cautioned,
to “lives of quiet desperation.” Sleep for the body, regular rituals of gratitude and worship for the soul.
Think of it as spiritual practice if you like. I do. Or think of it as just good common sense. It’s your
life, my friends. And so far as we can know for sure, most of us will only get the one go at it. Take
your time. Take time out of time. May you have many sabbatical moments. Bon weekend!
******************
Excerpt from “Before Words: The Spirituality of Humanism” by Doug Muder
Recently one of my congregation's more outspoken Humanists told me he is uncomfortable when our church talks about spirituality, because he doesn't know what the word means, and isn't sure it means anything. ... I've also had the polar opposite conversation, with people who think our church isn't spiritual enough. To them, Unitarian Universalism can be too wordy and head-centered. It lacks a kind of depth that they hunger for. Of course, a word may evoke sincere emotions without necessarily representing a definite concept.”
Muder's definition: “Spirituality is an awareness of the gap between what you can experience and what you can describe. … Spirituality is not a place like Shangri-La or Brigadoon, where other people can go, but for some reason they can't tell you where it is. And it's also not an activity like meditation or prayer or chanting. Whatever activities raise your awareness of the gap between experience and description are spiritual for you – and not necessarily for anyone else. That kind of spirituality would naturally vary from person to person, because we each have unique abilities to experience life and to describe it – and both abilities change as we learn and grow.”
issue, let's deal with this word “holy” at the outset. If you're a new or first-time visitor to this gathering
this morning, you might have noticed an inexplicable tension, a bit of squirming … perhaps you
perceived a muffled gasp or a slight wince when certain words, like holy, are used from – do we call
this box a pulpit or a lectern? Some have told me they stop listening or their mind just checks out, goes
elsewhere – in the same way we greet the drill while sitting in the dentist's chair.
As a diverse community with a wide range of beliefs and preferences, I like the spirit of Doug Muder's
words in today's reading (included at the end of this text). I commend to you his entire essay, “Beyond
Words,” for an exploration of what a humanist spirituality might look and sound like. You'll find it in
the Summer 2011 issue of the UUA World; you can either access it online or ask me for a copy. Muder
says: “The best test of a definition is how it illuminates common usages. … Good definitions tune in
meaning like a fine radio; static goes away, and you can hear what people are saying.” For now,
let me just concede that today I am defining holy by spelling it W-H-O-L-L-Y. As in being wholly
engaged or becoming wholly ourselves … feeling wholly in touch with life and connected to others,
wholly aware of the ultimate or immanent source of all being – sentiments or experiences at the heart
of all religious traditions. We'll leave more precise definition of that word “spiritual” for another day.
We are calling my 13-week sojourn with you a “sabbatical ministry.” Curiously, Rev. Rollert and
I have chosen to take “working sabbaticals.” I'll not speak for Rev. Diane but, from what I know of
her, she's no more a workaholic than I am. Rather, we both know that shifting our focus, engaging
in something wholly new can, in very refreshing ways, be a form of rest. It's all about renewal and
restoration. In many professions, especially the Ministry, renewal is an expectation written into the
contract. Because of a high risk of burnout or stagnation, one takes time for concentrated learning, to
home in on intensive projects, find fresh direction and inspiration for our service to others.
We all need this! We all need to step outside our usual context and reflect upon where we're going; to
shed our daily obligations long enough to reclaim who we truly are beyond the job, the role, the title.
Some wisely treat any life change, even a job loss, as an opportunity for renewal. Valuing the whole
of life, parental leave could be considered a kind of sabbatical. What a privilege -- to stop and reflect,
renew one's focus, one's passion and commitment which, in our everyday functioning, can be easily
lost or grow stale over time. If we can’t find whole blocks of time, we can do this in many small ways
every day, throughout our work week and from season to season. It's a proven fact that production
does not increase when people eat lunch at their desks in front of their computer screens. To clear
the mind, it's best to get up periodically, go for a walk, move the body and change the scenery. “Bon
weekend,” we wish each other, as we take a mini-sabbatical for two days at the end of each week.
That was the original idea. The word “sabbatical” is related to “Sabbath” or “Shabbot” (Shabbat),
all based on this idea of taking time out of time, finding time for the holy (wholly). Judaism is one
source we claim for the roots of our Unitarian Universalist tradition. And it’s to the religious genius
of ancient Judaism that we owe this revolutionary idea of taking time out of time for periodic renewal
and restoration. In the ancient world, it was a revolutionary concept. A form of tithing with time, every
seventh day of each week, every Jew obliged to give one full day back to God.
Thomas Cahill, in The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone
Thinks and Feels, tells us that the sabbath was one of the first of the Ten Words, or Laws, handed down
to Moshe (Moses) for his people – what the Western world calls the Ten Commandments, and some
now call the Ten Suggestions. In my early Catholic catechism, I learned it as the third: “Remember to
keep holy the Lord's day.” Cahill writes:
Besides this innovation of speaking the unspoken moral law aloud, one should note the lesser –
but hardly unimportant – innovation of the weekend, which got its start in the Jewish Sabbath
(or “Ceasing”). No ancient society before the Jews had a day of rest.
Can you imagine how radical this was! … the God of creation calling all humans to cease their daily
round for weekly restoration, a day to be spent in prayer, study, and recreation (re-creation). To
actually emulate the life of the Author of Life! … honouring each human’s inherent worth and dignity,
prefiguring not only democracy but the right to a personal religious practice.
Israel being the first human society to so value education and the first to envision it as a
universal pursuit – and a democratic obligation that those in power must safeguard on behalf
of those in their employ. The connection to both freedom and creativity lie just beneath
the surface of this commandment: leisure is appropriate to a free people, and this people
so recently free find themselves quickly establishing this quiet weekly celebration of their
freedom ... The Sabbath is surely one of the simplest and sanest recommendations any god
has ever made; and those who live without such septimanal punctuation are emptier and less
resourceful.
So there’s an aspect of gratitude for freedom here. For countless generations, from Friday sundown to
sundown on Saturday, whether Orthodox, Reform, Reconstructionist or Renewal, Jews throughout the
world cease their regular work schedules to keep holy the Shabbat. It's interesting to note than in some
languages, the name for Saturday actually means sabbath – as in the Spanish sabbado.
Long before the invention of modern psychology, the wisdom of the early Jews came from an astute
understanding of human nature. They recognized how easily we humans get derailed, caught up in
what we're doing, going off on tangents, losing perspective, forgetting our life purpose, why we are
here. It was also the great equalizer: whatever your station in life, your standing in the community,
employer or employee, whatever your livelihood, your primary call was to deepen your relationship to
the holy, for this was deemed too crucial to be left to happenstance.
Where I live in North Hatley, I’m frequently invited to participate in a weekly shabbat with a group
of Jewish friends and families. Friday before sundown we gather for dinner, wait for just the right
moment to light the candles, and chant the prayers. Women in the household are honoured with the
task of kindling the flames to welcome the holy shabbat. Many hands round the table reach toward
the flame to gather in and absorb the light, then spread its brilliance outward in all directions, blessing
loved ones present and far away. A child carries around a bowl of water with a two-handled cup, for
each person to perform the symbolic hand-washing, offering a clean cloth for drying. More prayers
are chanted as, in this particular household, wine is mixed with water and passed around. Bread is
blessed, broken and shared. Multi-layered in its meanings, the observance of Shabbat is at the center of
Jewish family life. Sanctifying human existence, it acts as a kind of leavening agent; the next twenty-
four hours will be spent attending to the life of the spirit. Each week, we do this, knowing throughout
the week that whatever happens, whatever fortune or disaster may befall us, the ritual will come ‘round
again to remind us how we are grounded in goodness, our lives caught up in the mystery of the holy.
In modern terms, we might say that anything worth doing is worth scheduling so we flip the pages of
our agenda and find a time slot to write it in. The early Jews made it easy. By common agreement,
everyone ceased work at sundown and resumed again twenty-four hours later. No decision needed, no
letting the family go ahead without you while you put in a few hours of overtime. Woven into the very
fabric of Jewish life, over a lifetime of regular practice, you can see how --ever so gradually-- one's
sense of the spiritual, all that is sacred and holy, would be integrated into the ordinary everyday.
For orthodox Jews, the list of the things one cannot do seems, to the outsider, formidable and legalistic,
even oppressive. Originally these laws were meant to remove any obstacle from meaningful observance
and thoroughly release one from everyday duties to share in the life of the spirit. Since even G-d
needed rest, by following the pattern of creation, you emulated the very nature of the Creator.
So from the Jews, the world – especially the entire Western world, has been given this radical gift – a
structure for time out as individuals, as families, in community. Today we live immersed in cycles of
time shaped by the ancients, our days named for gods we’ve long forgotten. And we take the weekend
for granted. But it’s a gift we are in danger of losing. Instead of the so-called “blue laws” of my
childhood, which preserved Sunday as a day free from all but the most urgent and necessary commerce,
our modern materialist culture with its endless escalating round of business-as-usual threatens to
displace the whole concept of the weekend as a time of rest. Not only as individuals, but as a whole
now-global culture, we discard this gift at our peril. We in the 21st century are in danger of losing
something priceless, of infinite value and meaning. What’s at stake is a whole, and holy, perspective
on time.
In our opening words of welcome, my congregation in North Hatley each week acknowledges that “We
meet here every Sunday to find strength for the lives that we lead.” What do we honour when we take
time out of our lives to gather here on Sunday? What is worship but remembering to reverence the
whole and holy of life. We meet here every Sunday to celebrate our common human journey, remind
ourselves of shared values, speak of things profound, and contemplate life's deeper dimensions. We
recall again our ultimate reason for being. We’re told that church attendance is declining in all faith
traditions. Who knew that merely showing up here on a Sunday morning could be a form of counter-
cultural protest?
Sabbath … Shabbat … Sabbatical … can be declared for a moment, a week, a season, or at any time
it is needed. Some years ago, I took a longer sabbatical, dedicated not to study of the Torah, but to
studying the arts of Ministry, a central lesson being how to pace myself so that I -- as I move through
middle age and beyond -- can do this work with grace and joy. Here's what I learned then that I wish to
pass on to each of you: I learned …
-- to make time for the holiness that is rest.
-- to leaven my life with many kinds of sabbaticals.
-- to actually spend a day each week (Monday is my Sabbath) free from email, or the need to be
connected 24/7 to electronic media.
-- to stop using vacation time for completing outstanding projects. (Instead, I now schedule these into
my agenda; instead of waiting for time to free up, I am actually claiming time for creativity. Because
being creative is a spiritual practice for me, relating me to the source of all that is. An ancient idea I
learned from reading Cahill's book on – you guessed it – my sabbatical.)
I learned to be less driven, to give myself frequent sabbatical moments each day: whenever possible, to
work near a window open to a beautiful view. To get up and take a walk-about to loosen the joints and
the kinks in the mind. To read a poem, to play something on the flute, to sing a song – even if silently,
inside my own head – or to do some yoga stretches. (If you happen to catch me in some strange posture
as you pass the open door of the minister’s study, you’ll know what that’s about!) To take a meditative
walk each day, the longest saved for weekends. One can declare a sabbatical moment while standing
in a queue anywhere; I silently hum a melody or recall a poem, imagine a beautiful landscape, or relive
the last time I played with my grandchild. Shifting focus for a few brief moments is a mini-sabbath.
To summarize, I quote from a most unlikely source, a YouTube video entitled “Unplug Yourself: How
Advertising and Entertainment Shapes Your Subconscious”:
The subconscious mind is more powerful than the conscious. Usually people are more influenced
by their innate subconscious desires or intent rather than by a rational or planned decision. This
aspect of human nature is heavily influenced by daily activities.
That’s what the media gurus know. And we know it too, from a wholly different angle. We are
literally shaped by what we do, whether shopping or praying, arguing or making music. So from the
Jews, we have this ancient, and apparently still radical religious idea. As individuals, as a culture,
we neglect this ancient teaching at our peril. For all living things, rest and recreation, restoration of
physical and psychic balance are necessary parts of the natural rhythm. To live a whole and holy life,
we must actually put it on our agendas. Yet I know even retired folk – even some here – for whom
finding time for rest and renewal is a challenge. Let us not consign ourselves, as Thoreau cautioned,
to “lives of quiet desperation.” Sleep for the body, regular rituals of gratitude and worship for the soul.
Think of it as spiritual practice if you like. I do. Or think of it as just good common sense. It’s your
life, my friends. And so far as we can know for sure, most of us will only get the one go at it. Take
your time. Take time out of time. May you have many sabbatical moments. Bon weekend!
******************
Excerpt from “Before Words: The Spirituality of Humanism” by Doug Muder
Recently one of my congregation's more outspoken Humanists told me he is uncomfortable when our church talks about spirituality, because he doesn't know what the word means, and isn't sure it means anything. ... I've also had the polar opposite conversation, with people who think our church isn't spiritual enough. To them, Unitarian Universalism can be too wordy and head-centered. It lacks a kind of depth that they hunger for. Of course, a word may evoke sincere emotions without necessarily representing a definite concept.”
Muder's definition: “Spirituality is an awareness of the gap between what you can experience and what you can describe. … Spirituality is not a place like Shangri-La or Brigadoon, where other people can go, but for some reason they can't tell you where it is. And it's also not an activity like meditation or prayer or chanting. Whatever activities raise your awareness of the gap between experience and description are spiritual for you – and not necessarily for anyone else. That kind of spirituality would naturally vary from person to person, because we each have unique abilities to experience life and to describe it – and both abilities change as we learn and grow.”
