Some people have a reticence towards Shabbat practices of forbidding specific work activities. Others find meaning in an alternative view where one intentionally chooses to do different activities, the things you don't have time for during the week, to differentiate the Shabbat from the other six days.
I opened my current diary, The Idea Book by Fredrik Haren, to the next blank page. Interspersed in the book are inspirational stories. This morning's story was about how a police chief solved a problem: his jail cells filled up with drunk/stoned young men who over-partied during the spring-break revelry in his city. The dudes bragged about incarceration as a sign of their manhood. According to the story, when the word spread that the chief changed the jail's menu to baby food, the attitude and behavior changed. Fredrik's point is "when you feel that you cannot solve a problem, then try doing the opposite".
Sleeping is the opposite of being awake. But what is the opposite of work?
Diana Renner, friend, motivational speaker and author, gives many examples in her book Not Doing of "structured breaks". I appreciate the stories in her book as they based in personal experiences of people she has met, their personal struggles and their particular solutions. Many people may find in the end, for example, that meditation is the tool that they use but their way into it was breaking out of very different forms of stuck-ness or stress. Everyone independently has to find their own pathway and process to change [therapists would have no work if everyone could learn from someone else's experience]. I imaging that people reading Diana's book will respond to many of the stories "ok, but, this doesn't relate to My problems" and then eventually something sticks [sticks = both adhere and puncture] and there's an "a-ha" realization. 'Not Doing' is a common need, but How one discovers one's 'not doing' practice is a particularly personal process of discovery in what works.
Maybe the issue is not what activities are 'not working' but being aware of the needs that are fulfilled when working versus the needs we are servicing when 'not working'? What would those needs be?
Personally, I find Abraham Joshua Heschel's explanations and correlations about rest and what being engaged with technology does to our human psyche very meaningful. I'm going to combine three major concepts here when quoting Heschel:
Break/rest
To set apart one day a week for freedom, a day on which we would not use the instruments which have been so easily turned into weapons of destruction, a day for being with ourselves, a day of detachment from the vulgar, of independence of external obligations, a day on which we stop worshiping the idols of technical civilization, a day on which we use no money, a day of armistice in the economic struggle with our fellow men and the forces of nature – is there any institution that holds out a greater hope for man’s progress than the Sabbath?
The solution of mankind’s most vexing problem* will not be found in renouncing technical civilization, but in attaining some degree of independence of it. In regard to external gifts, to outward possessions, there is only one proper attitude--to have them and to be able to do without them. On the Sabbath we live, as it were, independent of technical civilization: we abstain primarily from any activity that aims at remaking or reshaping the things of space. Man's royal privilege to conquer nature is suspended on the seventh day.
The Sabbath – by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel 1975
*"mankind’s most vexing problem":
As civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Mankind will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation. The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living. What we lack is not a will to believe but a will to wonder**.
**"wonder":
Awareness of the divine begins with wonder. It is the result of what man does with his higher incomprehension. The greatest hindrance to such awareness is our adjustment to conventional notions, to mental cliches. Wonder or radical amazement, the state of maladjustment to words and notions, is therefore a prerequisite for an authentic awareness of that which is.
Radical Amazement – by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, From God in Search of Man (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc., New York, 1955, pages 45-50)
Time for 'radical amazement' and wonder is the break/rest time - a stopping or being on strike from work - which is the root of the word Shabbat. The Space to have have this 'higher incomprehension' is anywhere where we recognize wonder, awe...where is that for you? When does it happen?
There are many ways to take a break, to rest, to free ourselves from the busy, expedient and demanding. All of them are an "Art" as they take practice, doing, in order for them to have meaning and make an impression upon us, within us. From 'doing the opposite" of doing, the Not Doing, time and space radically shift and the amazing machine which is us recognizes the shift and responds in-kind, kindly, in a creative and expansive way without force or tools.
Here's the catch: in order to be able to take this break, in our busy and demanding social and economic environments, many times we need one critical item in order to take a break: we need someone to do our job for us. Even on Shabbat, and always at home, there is work to be done. On Shabbat, in my community, we intentionally take turns in sharing work that must be done. What could be your "washing the dishes so that I/someone else receives the gift of Time for themselves and their humanity"?
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