| Sabbath rest has an impact on the individual and the day and then also the vast ways we live within the world - more from Jurgen Moltmann. Coming to rest on the sabbath or Sunday needs practice. It has to be learnt. Peace doesn't come of its own accord, and is not just a matter of doing nothing and vegetating. It is still true that most family quarrels take place on Sundays, and most murders in a family on Sunday evenings. Not least, the political spirituality of liberation belongs to the spirituality of the lived life, liberation of the people we have oppressed. If we want to be free ourselves, we must free others; if we want to arrive at peace, we must leave other people in peace. True spirituality cannot be a solitary, selfish experience of the self, for every self exists in the network of social and political relationships. If these are oppressive for other people, then liberating inward experiences of self are linked with liberating actions for others. Many people have arrived at their mystical experiences of the self in protest movement and actions for political liberation: contemplation in the very midst of the struggle for liberation and greater justice. There is no such thing as an inward journey if it does not become tied to the journey of liberation and wholeness of all things. Such a self-focused journey without a way out into the world around us seems to be self-absorbing. And yet, the inward journey is necessary as we begin to walk with those around us who long to be set free. On the other hand, it may be the work alongside those who long to be free that we enter into that inward journey of liberation and freedom. Once again, the pattern of liberation and setting free all people is not a programmed endeavor. We live within it with the many sides that become transformed as we make time to rest in God alone - a sabbath journey. Connection: We will have our God alongside us in our journey. And yet, we do need to enter the journey and begin to see how God takes us and shapes and makes us into something that sounds like the coming together of the Lord's Prayer. God's will being done - for all - in all times. Lord God you bring us into this day to be a part of the grand work of your creative powers. When we come upon the rest you offer us, it is there that we give ourselves and one another the opportunity to see the expansiveness of your will. Help us breathe in that life-giving will. Amen. |
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