Many of us want to take the next step in growing a strong spiritual life and create a Sabbath practice.  We want create a sacred time to BE, and strengthen our connections to each other, to God, to our beautiful world. 

 Here you find a community of support for each other in this endeavor. We are calling it The Sabbath Project.  Those of you who would like to try a modern, UU-style Sabbath Practice are invited to join.  You can practice your Sabbath on any day of the week that will work for you. The Sabbath Project is here for us to challenge, inspire, inform and support each other… 

 Get Inspired! Click here to read the sermon. 

Participate! Click here to join the Sabbath Project Facebook Page!

Sabbath Project: FAQs

What is a Sabbath practice?

A Sabbath practice is a way to intentionally step out of the normal flow of your life, to shift from “human doing” to “human being”.  It’s a way of removing yourself from whatever your particular rat race is, slowing down, connecting with yourself, your loved ones, nature, and the divine.

What are the rules?

There are no rules… except to make a commitment to whatever you decide will be your practice. The point is to create a personal and meaningful practice that you can then commit to for a period of time. The commitment is important because there are many and obvious challenges any Sabbath practice.

What is an example of a Sabbath practice?

The biblical tradition is to take a full 24-hour period as your practice. In Jewish tradition this period begins at sunset and ends at the next sunset (although it somehow adds up to 25-hours!).  During this 24-hours, people refrain from work (or discussions about work), refrain from spending money or doing chores, and instead focus on relationships, relaxing activities, and prayer or meditation. The point is to cease all efforts aimed at accomplishment, except for pleasurable activities where the goal is the pleasure rather than the achievement. The spirit of the practice is that you are resting in what you already have and feeling what it’s like to experience that as enough.

How can I create my own Sabbath practice?

Ask yourself what it would look like if you stopped doing anything that you felt “needed to be done”. What would you stop doing? What would you do instead that felt like enjoyable, relaxing, rejuvenating, and celebrating the bounty of what you currently have and have achieved. Do those thing for as long a period as you can do you can settle into it and truly experience it. If that means 2 hours, or 4 hours, then start there, although a longer period of time will likely be more meaningful.

What are the challenges?

In our society, we are wired to fill any available time with “getting things done”. That creates a pressure that challenges the ability to both commit to and relax into a Sabbath practice. That’s the internal struggle or even family struggle you’ll need to take on and it’s also the exact point of the practice: to learn how to stop, to be, to notice your life and the world from a standstill and rest from the otherwise constant need to be doing more. It’s stopping to smell the roses… or even just noticing that there are roses. This creates an opening where a more healthy, balanced view of life can emerge or a spiritual experience can manifest. It’s important to face the urge to “get stuff done” and work with that feeling, examine it, and see what it would take to let it go for a time.

Simple Sabbath Rules

The first rule is to have rules! Make some simple agreements with yourself and your family about the things you will try to do to observe your Sabbath. Write your rules down and hang them up. That way, when you come upon a challenge, and you will, you have something to fall back on.

Do…

            Spend time with the people you love, or spend time alone.

            Spend time enjoying the spaces and things you already have in your life.

            Something spiritual. Attend church, read a sacred text, meditate, pray, sing hymns, take a walk to nowhere or write poetry.

Don’t…

            Work or worry.

 Schlep, shop, or stress out.

            Try to get things done.