Weekend Wisdom - September 17th, 2023
I love Fall (I know…don’t get date-technical on me…)! The sights, smells, and sounds just make my heart happy and cozy. Give me open windows, a warm mug of something, my glider chair and a book and I’m happy as a clam. (How do we know clams are happy? Anyone?) Granted, the autumn season wreaks havoc on my allergies, but is there any greater smell than the soil as it cools and the harvest decays into next year’s fertile ground?
Many people don’t know this about me, but after being born in Fargo, ND and raised near the Twin Cities, MN, I spent my formative high school years living in Southern California – Orange County to be specific. Southern California has two seasons: dry and wet. Unless you’re directly on the beach, most of Southern California is in fact desert climate with curated and heavily irrigated vegetation and the weather doesn’t change much.
The climate left one feeling out-of-place. Having been raised in various places in the Midwest, my body and mind didn’t know how to regulate without the presence of the seasons. Without the ebb and flow of temperatures, growing seasons and precipitation, there was a constant ability to GO, DO, ACHIEVE. But here’s the rub, God did not make us as machines to run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, occasionally making a whirring sound and shutting down for a firmware update.
I needed God’s creation to pace my comings and goings. We are created to glorify God and bring God’s kingdom to life here on earth! We can’t do that unless we take time to pause, to rest, to recreate. This is your reminder that the 4th commandment is the ONLY one of 10 that is a command to do something – keep the Sabbath holy – instead of not to do something. God loves us so much that He gives us the Sabbath commandment as an opportunity to step out of the crush of productivity in order to rest and worship because He knows we NEED it. We are not all that different from the Jewish slaves in Biblical Egypt who worked 24/7 to build the pharaoh’s empire. Our mental, physical and spiritual well-being depend on a Sabbath. During this year of the Eucharist you’ll hear and read me like a broken record on this topic. Balancing family life and ministry from nearly 20 years my husband Kevin and I are not naïve to the challenge of keeping a Sabbath, but we have learned the hard way that Sabbath and worship at Mass are non-negotiable in a culture that has no boundaries!
Here are some of the ways we have worked to make Sabbath habits and slowing down a priority. Maybe you already do some of these, but just like we are called by Jesus in today’s Gospel to constant forgiveness, we are also called to constant conversion in our way of living. Perhaps you can find inspiration in these suggestions to invite others into Sabbath habits (ask the grandkids or nieces and nephews to join you!) and model this way of Christ that speaks true life into modern living.
If we can’t make Sunday our Sabbath, we make Saturday our Sabbath and complete the day with a Saturday night Mass. We always follow our worship with a meal whether dinner or brunch.
We view our days as beginning with the evening so that anything done the next day flows FROM rest, not in anticipation of rest.
Except in rare circumstances, we keep our phones off or in “Do Not Disturb” until after our morning quiet time on our Sabbath day.
We try to single-task all day on our Sabbath. (As a mom, I am not very good at this, but I refuse to stop trying!)
And you know what we’ve found? Good Sabbath habits are greater than any Sunday scaries!
Blessings to you all!
Amberly Boerschinger
Director of Communications and Technology
