> jumping into life.

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2.19.2006 

"I am more and more sure by experience that the reason for the observance
of the Sabbath lies deep in the everlasting necessities of human nature, and
that as long as man is man the blessedness of keeping it, not as a day of rest
only, but as a day of spiritual rest, will never be annulled. I certainly do
feel by experience the eternal obligation, because of the eternal necessity, of
the Sabbath. The soul withers without it. It thrives in proportion to its
observance. The Sabbath was made for man. God made it for men in a certain
spiritual state because they needed it. The need, therefore, is deeply hidden
in human nature. He who can dispense with it must be holy and spiritual indeed.
And he who, still unholy and unspiritual, would yet dispense with it is a man
that would fain be wiser than his Maker." - F. W. Robertson


Though I'm neither Christian nor Jewish, nor religious really at all, I try to keep the Sabbath. I find that the world is often too much for me, with all its buzzing and flash. My heart may be bold but it is not bulletproof, and the buckshot of society - I can't even watch the news anymore - it can hit me hard. So I take my Sundays.


Often it's a hike, or a bike ride, or at least a long walk in the woods. A walk in the woods can unstick my thoughts, sir and settle them, leave me calm like nothing else. After walking, kneading is the best meditation I know, and so every Sunday I bake bread. We used to have tea on Sundays, when there was a we, a handful of friends and a pot of genmaicha; now I will drink my tea myself and knit instead. Perhaps a good book. Poetry and painting. All the things that soothe my soul.


Tonight marks the start of tech week: from 6:30 this evening until the end of the last performance next Saturday, my life will be largely given over to this play. Entonces, then, it is imperative that I keep this day as well as I can: the bread is on its second rise, I am halfway through a sweater made of the hand-spun yarn gifted me in Bolivia, the door is open for the little grey cat, and once the bread is done I'm headed for the woods. Amen.