A Sabbath Poem

My Soul Longs For the Sabbath

I want to rest from being who everyone else knows me to be.

I want to rest from being put together and up to speed
– I want to fall apart and to fall behind.
I want to stop making the same mistakes
– the ones I make when I never stop.
I want to stop hurting people for a time
– and to mourn and to cry.
I want to be suspended between the strong tall towers of obligation
– in a hammock dreaming.

I want to float where I have stumbled,
dance where I am chained,
lose where I have found.

I want to say NO where my dutiful YES has chimed forth!
I want to have six devoted days worthy of a holy seventh!
I want to lay down the burden of my ego in the soft warm cradle of tenderness!
I want to know the truth, and to speak the truth and to let it destroy me!

I want to stop measuring my worthiness and “love-ability”
– and be weak and powerful and naked.
I want to release my strength and kneel down
– still and silent as it crumbles into deep dark soil.
I want to dangle on the branches of my life’s deepest purpose
– and to ripen into richest colour and flavour.

I want to need someone again,
I want to need someone again.

I want to give away what I have kept,
fall down from where I have climbed,
receive the deepest blessing of inheritance
which is mine to share with another
in the wide restful heart of the Sabbath.

And I want to stop wanting.


Christopher Giffen
January 08