Hello, Sabbathers!
Thinking about our time together in Tatamagouche. I was grateful to be able to deepen relationships with all of you during our time. But as we shared our Sabbath experiences I got discouraged. Not that I needed everyone to have a similar experience in every way but one way I had hoped we could share was that we all would remain committed to attempting a Sabbath ritual or practice of some kind.
Between our first meeting in Regina and our Tatamagouche meeting I did my ritual based on the assumption that we were in solidarity with a commitment to the ritual. During that time we were learning from each other that some found it really difficult if not impossible and I was OK with that. I certainly understood the guilt around that. It was more at the meeting when I felt that there was more or less a collective abandonment of commitment to ritual. Yes, people would try to honour Sabbath in their own way (once a week, once a month, every 7 years, whatever!). But I found it sad to have to let go of what I had hoped we could be with the ritual. Maybe I have misunderstood where we left off with the ritual of Sabbath.
It would have been helpful for me if we had taken some time to re-commit to a more personalized ritual. For instance, I would commit to continuing my Wednesday morning Sabbath. Another member might commit to a weekly family meal and treating it as Sabbath. Then I could know that we were still in solidarity in our Sabbath "experiment" which I feel is central to our discernment of the work we need to do for the larger church.
And I also must admit that as well as I am doing at Sabbath practice I am not doing so well at discerning the youth and young adult ministry questions which we named near the end of our meeting. And clearly at the meeting there are many on this great team who excel at working through that piece. So I feel inadequate in that respect.
Anyway, as we named together, our church is not that good at being vulnerable and honest. So this blog entry is my attempt.
Peace.
Rick G(unn)
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3 comments:
Thank you for sharing Rick. I too have felt disappointed since we met. I really enjoy the weekly ritual, and I have found it harder to do since we got back, because others are still not posting. I believe that we all agreed to keep going with our weekly rotation of scripture and blogs, and I don't know how we can continue discerning without practicing Sabbath. For me they are intrinsically linked.
Karen
I feel that words are not coming to me in this moment to have something very reflective to say...Other than, I agree with both of you and will continue to take what you wrote Rick to my prayers when God and I chat this afternoon.
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