Week Eight: Sabbath on Sunday 17 January

Sabbath this day begins before dawn. I sit with my sermon, eat cheese and drink coffee and pray.

On my way to church, five miles from home, I realize I left the sabbath candles at home. I turn back.

Now I can listen to the morning news on NPR as dawn lightens the road, and news burdens the heart: Haiti and heartbreak.

"Come and fill our hearts with your peace" we sing together.

And we begin to move between the space of grief and the space of Vibrant Rural Sabbatical. This is a sabbath container, I believe, for being present to one another and to God, being present to joy and horror, for the reception of a new grandchild and the aching memory of a son gone. We sit, sing, listen, and pray. And God is here in this little church in the country.

Sabbath lunch: four teen women join me at Camino Real for Mexican food and shy conversation and hard questions.

Sabbath afternoon: birthday celebration with friends in Marcellus who need, I believe, reasons just to be together.

As I drive home the sun is setting. This sabbath has gone from sunrise to sunset. I see two bent snow people looking at the sunset on the Tri-Lakes Road. They have partly melted in the sun, but they still lean on the shaky walking sticks. They aren't going anywhere.

I am going home. Home. At the end of a sabbath day with my community of faith and friends, being home alone in silence and solitude is the sabbath I now crave. This day has been a gift. May it give me the strength to do my part to birth life, vibrancy, in the week ahead.