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Progressive Christian

Last updated on: October 16, 2009 at 3:11 pm by Cathleen Falsani

2009-10-16T15:11:00-07:00 Cathleen Falsani

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

GODSTUFF

PRESSING THE PAUSE BUTTON: THE POWER OF A PERSONAL SABBATH

Do you find yourself adding more to your to-do list, even though you already feel overwhelmed?

Are your weekends just as jam-packed as your workdays?

When you try to pray, do you find your mind swimming with yesterday’s worries?

If, like me, you answered yes to all of the above, you might be in need of a pause.

A spiritual timeout.

Last week, I took an online quiz called “The Power of Pause Online Assessment.” I scored a 38 out of 50. And that’s nothing to brag about.

“Push Pause Now!” was the cautionary message I received with my assessment score. “You are constantly overtired and overcommitted. You rarely take time to pause and recharge — which makes you feel even more overwhelmed. You need to learn to pause on a regular basis — not only will this help you to work more effectively, it will also ensure that you are not losing sight of what is truly important to you.”

It’s a great idea, this pausing.

Most of the time — well, all of the time lately — I’m trying to do too much and too many things at once. I end up feeling exhausted, sick and frayed.

In fact, when I sat down to write this column a week ago, I was on a 20-minute lunch break at a film set in Boise, Idaho, where I was shooting promotional videos for my new book. I thought I could squeeze the writing in between bites of a chicken quesadilla, reapplication of lippy and powder, a call from home to tell me my son came home sick from school, making dinner reservations for four and answering about 50 e-mails.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t find the time to even write about taking the time to pause, tune out, slow down, just be.

“We are wired to be present. We are built to honor the senses. We are created to be attentive, or literally just to be. But somewhere along the way, life chokes the music and poetry out of us,” author Terry Hershey writes in his new book, The Power of Pause: Becoming More by Doing Less, a sort of how-to book for taking a spiritual recess. “I pause to be surprised, to let the cares of the day be carried away and to let my soul catch up with my body.”

Ya know, there’s probably a good reason why the Abrahamic religions — Judaism, Islam and Christianity — believe in a Sabbath. A day of rest. A day to recharge, to worship the Creator, to stop and . . . just . . . be.

In Hebrew, shabbat — the word for Sabbath — means to cease.

Observing the Sabbath, keeping it holy by slowing down and resting, is one of the Ten Commandments. Right up there with “Thou shalt not kill” and “Thou shalt not bear false witness.”

“Cool it,” God says. “I did.”

Slowing down for a few minutes a day, and, more important, for one day a week, is a healthy idea physically, emotionally and spiritually. It’s also a radical counter-cultural idea in a society that moves at warp speed and where self-worth is measured by how little white space we have on our calendars.

But adding to the list sometimes becomes untenable. One more task, one more demand, one more hurried moment of multitasking and superwoman-ing, and this ship is going to become unmoored and drift into whatever comes next. A storm. A sandbar. Hostile waters. Who knows?

“Too easily and too quickly we dismiss our creases and shadows — places of reluctance, uncertainty, ambiguity, confusion, angst, grief, loss, fear, shame, or passion,” Hershey writes. “We see them only as darkness. And hope becomes a sort of lottery ticket, something that might just click this time and make everything change.

“But what if hope is really about the Incarnation — God (literally) with us? In the midst? In the middle of? In — as in, this life and these shadows? What if this shadow — the long night with no destination in sight, and with only a stone for a pillow — is where we encounter the truth?”

Hmmm.

I want to think about that, ponder it, turn it over in my psychic hands. But to do that, I have to do nothing. I have to stop.

“What if it isn’t about what you chase, but resting in God’s grace?” Hershey asks.

He’s right. At least, I think he is.

I’m going to find out by pushing pause more often.

Hershey suggests buying an old bench or chair and setting it aside in your home (or, better yet, outside) just for sitting. I have a chair I call the grace chair. It’s an old, caned, straight-back seat that someone painted red and recovered with faux zebra pelt.

It’s on my patio.

As soon as I hit send on this, I’m going to go sit in it.

And, for a few minutes, just . . . be.

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