Keep the Sabbath Useless

500 words on Sabbath

The path of my hike yesterday. A completely useless walk through a local forest.

Our market mindset, always trying to find the use value in everything, makes it difficult to practice something for the pure pleasure of it, the wild aliveness that cannot be captured by a price, or “mental health outcome,” or improvement of any kind. It is difficult, because many good things come with good benefits, quite despite themselves. Still, we can, with some effort, resist the calculus and keep our most precious things useless.

I first became conscious of this when my daughters were young and it seemed that every other toy, or program, offered itself as “educational.” I didn’t want my daughters to be educated, I wanted them to play and wonder. The ABCs would come in time, what was the rush?

When my wife and I decided to homeschool our daughters, it was largely to keep them from confinements of utility. Yes, they have to learn math and grammar, but they also have ample time to play, whether it is learning a perfect cartwheel or writing a novel, these are things my daughters do simply for the joy of it. It would be difficult to have the time for such ungraded pursuits under a state sanctioned curriculum (though of course there are kids and parents who resist as subversives in the system).

Sabbath is a day of play and delight, a restful wonder in what we did not accomplish. To lean against an oak by a spring fed stream, listening to the acorns falling on the leaves—this is a moment to be free from any labor, a time to simply witness the cycles of life that continue without us. And yet, in this moment of delight, of letting go of our constant need for control, we are renewed, and here lies the danger.

In his classic of self-help, Steven Covey includes “Sharpening the Saw” as one of his Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. He couches it in a parable about a man who was trying to cut a tree. Over time, the work became more and more difficult, and in response, the man worked harder and harder. Then someone came along and said, why don’t you stop and sharpen the saw. When the man did, suddenly the work was far easier. At least that’s how I remember the story. The point is a simple one and a good one, that to work effectively we have to take breaks and recenter rather than slogging on relentlessly. To put it in another context, I saw a running shirt recently that said, “Rest is Training.” It is a good reminder to runners that a rest day is an essential part of getting faster and stronger.

The problem with Sabbath in a world centered on utility, however, is that it can be seen as a means of sharpening the saw, a form of rest for the sake of becoming more effective. Our response should be like that of D.H. Lawrence to Benjamin Franklin on the subject of sex. Benjamin Franklin said that one should “Rarely use Venery but for Health or Offspring.” Lawrence quipped in response: “Never ‘use’ venery at all.” The Sabbath, like sex, is a gift. It is not to be used, only received and delighted in. If there are any benefits to it, then we should keep them like our alms giving, not letting our right hand know what our left is doing. In this we can keep Sabbath as it should be—both holy and useless.