Sabbath (or) Holy Civility, part XVI
Richard M. Wright
(Disclaimer: What prompted me to address this is life within my own family.)
“With the Sabbath comes a miracle… Anger is lifted, tensions are gone, and there is a glow on the face” – Susannah Heschel, in The Sabbath
(xiv-xv)
Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. – Ephesians 4:29
Brothers and sisters. Children and parents. Husbands and wives. Colleagues and co-workers. Members of the Christian community. We never fight do we?
Snide, sarcastic, snippy, angry, argumentative, hurtful, insulting, demeaning, critical, accusatory, stop yelling at me, that’s not fair, how dare you, I hate you, you’re stupid and so on language. How we treat each other particularly in terms of how we speak to each other.
Mentioning no names because I want to be sensitive to the privacy of my family but I admit that sometimes such language patterns can be heard among us. Sometimes we wonder with exasperation, “Why did you say that to [fill in the blank]? Well just don’t listen to [blank]. Don’t respond to [blank]. Well you don’t have to talk to [blank] the same way [blank] talks to you.” Consequences are imposed in order to encourage family members simply to be kind to one another. Really weird stuff like “please” and “thank you” and “yes sir, yes ma’am” and just plain being civil, respectful, kind, nice. We do not have to respond in kind when another family member speaks unkindly to us.
What does this have to do with Sabbath?
That we commit ourselves to being kind to each other for just one day. That for the twenty four hours of Sabbath we practice not responding in kind to rudeness or antagonism or insult. We started a code phrase in our home: “Shabbat shalom” (Hebrew for “Sabbath peace”, the traditional Jewish greeting just before or during Sabbath). When we’re playing Skip-Bo and dad starts getting all annoyed because… someone calmly interjects “Shabbat shalom”. And dad stops griping. We will keep the Sabbath peace. We will not get angry or annoyed or critical.
Gee why not do that all week? Here is the point. If you want to do something all the time one must first practice doing it some of the time. Sabbath is the dojo-in-time where we practice patience, bearing with one another, love, forgiveness, reconciliation.
So that we can do it all week. And outside the home. And within the Christian community.
