Sabbath is a State of Mind

First of all, the painting above is by Harmonia Rosales who is doing amazing theology with her paintbrush. This one is called Yemaya’s Asencion into the Waters which is definitely mixing faiths since I’m about to talk about Genesis but I like these things to be in conversation from the start.

You see, Sabbath is another one of those things from scriptures that is kind of overlooked as just the ‘day off’ clause in Genesis. But if you pay close attention you’ll notice that something is missing from the seven-day creation story. Actually there are two seven-day creation stories in a row in Genesis, and a ‘God’ who refers to themselves in the plural, but those are explorations for another time.

Now these scriptures are many thousands of years old and so have been studied by many thousands of scholars, including Jewish peoples doing midrash. The tradition of Jewish midrash is where a scholar “not only engages the words of the text, behind the text, and beyond the text, but also focuses on each letter, and the words left unsaid by each line,” as Prof. Vanessa Lovelace says. So what is missinng from Genesis about the Sabbath?

Well, what we know is that with logos God created water, light, moons, suns, stars, animals, mountains, rivers, humans, firmaments, and all manner of things (twice). And then God looked and saw the work was good and rested. But as the midrashim scholars note, what isn’t said in the scripture is that God ever got back to work again. Which is to say, we might all still be living in the 7th day of rest, Sabbath, and supreme functioning of all that God created, including you. Let that sink in.

Now for productivity, self-improvement, capitalistic, make-the-world-turn purposes it doesn’t do to have every day be a Sabbath. But for being-a-perfect-child-of-God purposes, there is nothing but the Sabbath. I.e. absolutely nothing to improve upon within yourself because everything you are is functioning totally perfectly. Same with the world; everything everywhere is - if we leave it be - turning with great perfection, beauty, and grace. Yes, I am aware this is a almost insultingly unbelievable claim to make in April of 2022 on planet Earth. Even so, this is what good theology does; give us at least a little glimpse of the possibility of miracles, ancient grace, and a future that doesn’t end in death but life beyond our wildest dreams.

So for now, consider it a proposal or an invitation to a state of mind. Not one of complacency or spiritual bypass, but a profound recognition of the current state of reality espoused by Jewish folks, Christian folks, Hindu folks, and certainly Buddhist folks; that we exist multidimensionally. One plane of existence - this Earth plane - says that things have gone to shit, that we must improve upon them and fast, that nothing is right especially not ourselves, and that work work work is the way to salvation. And yet somewhere in the Eveylyn and Jobu Tupaki multiverse we are all resting with great delight alongside the magnificent light body of God Herself, revelling in the perfect and astounding power of the great turning of the wheels of the kosmos all around. (Remind me to tell you sometime about my favorite angels who live closest to God and are utterly useless because they’re simply stupified with joy all the time).

So even if you’re reading this on a Monday, I invite you to try on a Sabbath state of mind sometime today. Take a moment to tap into that alternate dimension (vis a vis your favorite verse-jumping technique) and look around you with Sabbath eyes; see if you can perceive the perfect sacred functioning of everything around you and then look within yourself. Start at your heart and follow the arteries and blood vessels out from there to every internal inch of yourself. See that you are a aSabbath-perfected being deserving of rest, delight, enjoyment, and peace just as you are.

May it be so now and through all space and Sabbath-time.

PS. I got a new too-small keyboard so please excuse any typos with the mantra “Perfectionism is a false idol and a tool of the patriarchy” and you should be just fine.