The evening after the clocks go back an hour isn’t the longest day of the year. For me, it only feels like it is. The light is super bright in the morning, lunchtime hits fast, and in the early afternoon, the shadows race in as if they’ve been held at bay all year and we’ve […]
Labor and rest
Sometimes it can be helpful to read one of my cultural traditions from another perspective. I’ve read most about the Sabbath recently from Jewish writers and evangelical Protestant theologians. But today my devotional brought me this query from Quakers in the southwest region of the United States: Have you taken a day of rest and restoration […]
Choosing when to answer
I’ve had an email draft sitting in one of my accounts for about a year and a half. It’s a compilation of links and research summaries that would have made a very good answer to a question from a friend of a friend. I spent more than half an hour searching Google and skimming abstracts for them. I […]
A few thoughts on rest
I’m leading a conversation this Saturday morning at the CityLights community. Find us near Union Square, New York City, from about 11 a.m. to about 2 p.m. Post-Easter, the group’s starting a new talk series on the Sabbath and time. I’ve been reading a little Walter Brueggemann on rest and resistance lately, and I can’t wait to […]
The right to rest
I’ve always found this advice from Ohio’s Conservative Friends challenging. These don’t seem to be the best times in the world for “gentleness” or “self-restraint.” And the quietist impulse to pull back in times of social turbulence—well, in the spirit of Frederick Douglass, I’m a little suspicious of that. “Who would be free, themselves must […]
Resistance and humane planning
In a way, I’ve felt besieged for a few years now, not in the intense ways others in major cities have. But still, in the way that one who pays attention can’t help but notice creeping crawling unease, I’ve felt besieged. I’ve joked with others who grew up fundamentalist about the opening of Revelation’s seals, but […]
