Even Atheists Need a Sabbath

I knew a guy in college called Kenny.  Kenny had been raised in the Jewish faith, and his parents were very strict about observing the Jewish Sabbath by not conducting anything that looked like work; not operating machinery like elevators or cars.  A friend of Ken’s told me that he went to visit on a Saturday once and Ken answered the door with a pair of day-glo orange underpants on his head, bobbypinned to his hair, because he couldn’t find his yarmulke.  Ken then reminded our friend, a secular Jew, that Ken couldn’t operate the record player on Saturdays (oh, those vinyl days), but that our friend was quite welcome to toss the Van Morrison on there and give it a spin.  Ken was, of course, allowed to listen to music, but not operate the device that was needed to play it.  Ditto the radio and the tv.   Hearing the story, I agreed with our friend that perhaps Ken's reverence was executed in a kind of haphazard, college-kid kind of way, but all these years later I agree with Ken that a Sabbath is something important, and having a relationship with it, whatever that means to you, is essential.  And Sabbath has to be constructed in a very specific way in order to do what it’s meant to do – restore the inner serenity that we need to function the other six days of the week.

A lot of folks do practice a particular religion or other, or in the case of Unitarians kind of practice all of them, but they still don’t seem to treat their own Sabbath as a day of rest and revivification.  Plenty of Moms make it to Sunday with a list of obligations that rivals a full-blown Monday.  My Mom used to cook for a dozen people every Sunday, starting her work at 7 a.m., and I still remember waking up to the delicious garlicky smell of meatballs frying.  Breakfast was usually one of those little meaty beauties on the end of a fork.  She never failed to ask us if it was “a good one?” and it always was.  So everyone seemed to get a Sabbath Sunday at the old Woodbridge house except Mom, who was busting her ass and occasionally doing a bit of strategic yelling to get us to do something, or stop doing something else.  At some stage Mom got religion, and Sundays began to include us being dragged to mass at 10:30, but I put a stop to that by locking myself in the bathroom a couple three times.  She finally got the message, and we arrived at a place where she could finally have a real Sabbath for herself without robbing me, and my agnostic ass, of mine. 

What should a Sabbath include, then, and what should it not, and why?  First let’s revisit the purpose of having one day out of seven, whether it’s Saturday, Sunday, or perhaps a golf Wednesday if you’re so inclined.  You need a Sabbath to clear your head.  You need a day without any agenda so that you can stroll out into the world and do just exactly what you want to, and not do what you don’t.  You need to see friends if you’re gregarious, or perhaps you need to hang by yourself just to quiet the soul and regenerate.  And you need to do this because if you want to be effective during the other six days of the week, not allowing yourself to rest on a seventh will impede that.  You know how your day goes when you’ve been up all night?  Shitty, right?  Your week will be much easier to cope with if you’ve had one day to simply keep company, honor the time you’ve been given to walk the world, and push obligations aside.

Should a Sabbath include work?  Well, sure, if you like, but I would say that it depends upon your attitude toward doing that particular spot of work.  If you love working in your garden, for example, in true karma yoga fashion, and digging in the dirt and admiring the shoots and imagining the future rewards are all pleasurable, then, fine, go on with you.  But if the voice in your head sounds more like, “Oh, Christ, I have to go out there and get after those weeds, Jesus, what did I do to deserve this?” then leave it for a not-Sabbath day.  Does your Sabbath always include visiting a houseful of hated relatives because you have “family obligations” and you just can’t wait until it’s over so that you can get home and watch Game of Thrones?  Bad Sabbath.  Other than the Game of Thrones part, that’s a bad Sabbath.  You can do it if you have to, but not on your one-of-seven.  I don't write on Sabbath, by the way, because the writing could go well or go badly, and when it goes badly it can wreck a perfectly good Sabbath, so I don't risk it.

Do I need to practice some kind of meditation, religious observance, or, hell, tithe or something?  Again, only if you want to.  Meditate, go to church, go sit on a tree stump and listen to the sparrows, sail, or picnic, or just spend the day in bed with a bunch of crossword puzzles.  As long as the point of the exercise is to becalm yourself, you’re okay.

Does Sabbath include electronics?  Like, maybe, computer games and posting on facebook?  Here’s where you’re gonna hate me a little – no, it does not.  I feel pretty strongly about this, particularly since my facebook feed has become an All-Trump, All the Fucking Time zone.  Neurologically speaking, screens interfere with the settling process that a Sabbath can give you.  Checking to see of you have “likes”, or playing Soda Crush, or any of that other jazz we do way too much, is outlawed on the Sabbath.  You don’t have to declare a moratorium on electricity, or human speech, or eating food to have a Sabbath if you don’t want to do those things (although some people do that).  But you do have to promise yourself not to consume digital information on Sabbath.  It’s upsetting to your brain cells in a way you’re not always cautious about.  Music, of course, is excluded from this, as long as you are listening to music and not simultaneously watching video feed.  Television can also be exempt if you like, because Sabbath, in my mind, can certainly include watching football, as long as you can simply watch the game, enjoy it, and not put a shoe through the tv if the Bears lose.  If you can’t watch a Met game without becoming depressed when the Mets choke in the seventh inning, then make your Sabbath a day when your favorite team is not playing. 

My own agnostic Sabbath is on Sundays, usually, although it does move around like Nathan Detroit’s floating crap game when I have shows to review or need to go hang with the family in Jersey.  I put on my favorite ratty clothes and sneakers, grab my noise cancellers, and take the subway down to one of my favorite routes to walk around four to six miles, putting the music on shuffle, or just going without for a few hours if there are birds around making bird noise I can dig on.  Sometimes Sabbath starts with an early morning movie with my friend Vic, and then he goes off to rehearsal and I take my long walk afterward.  Long walk over, I grab a healthy meal, head home to get cleaned up, and then spend the afternoon-to-evening hours in activities that will help me to settle down, rather than stress out or get stirred up.  I meet friends for coffee or dinner.  I read.  I draw, or I play guitar, or practice the piano (I’m terrible, but I love my electric piano.)  And, yeah, when it’s on, I watch Game of Thrones.  Not because it gives me a sense of inner peace to watch Game of Thrones, but because hanging out in Westeros for an hour and change is a nice distraction from having to think about the agenda for the following day, which is absolutely outlawed on a Sabbath.  You’re not going to be able to think about something stupid you have to do on Monday morning when you’ve been watching dragons blast shit into oblivion Sunday night. 

Do you have a significant boo that you will be spending your Sabbath with?  Lucky you.  Do they get the concept of Sabbath?  Hm.  If someone ends up spending a whole Sabbath with me, morning to night, then I do sometimes have to explain the rules of Sabbath to them.  No, we are not “getting the grocery shopping out of the way,” though perhaps we are going to the grocery store and reminding ourselves how lucky we are to live in a country that has food and can afford to buy and cook some of it.  No, we are not “getting a jump on the research reports for Monday” because Monday is not here.  It’s not Monday.  It’s Sabbath.  And, no, we are not taking care of your sister’s monstrous, flatulent dog at the last minute because she has a new boyfriend and he doesn’t like the aforementioned dog.  You can go do that by yourself, honey.  Or perhaps, if I like you enough, I’ll move Sabbath for you to another day.  But, make no mistake, Sabbath is coming.  Even to an agnostic, Sabbath needs to be sacred.  If you need your own, special Sabbath that you don’t have to share with anybody, well, hell, that’s cool too.  You have one, I have one, it’s all great.  If you want to spend your Sabbath with someone or a group of someones, then make sure they know the deal.  And if you want to share my agnostic Sabbath with me sometime, weather permitting, you can meet me in the park.