sabbatarianism
For the last few weeks we here at the squibix household have been trying our hand at keeping the Sabbath, in our fashion. Since all of us are ornery, stubborn individualists—yes, even Rascal—instead of following an existing tradition we're working on figuring out just what a Sabbath day means for us. This means that we might be accused—justifiably!—of doing it wrong, but hopefully even the haters will agree that any attempt is better than nothing. Other folks will probably just think we're crazy religious freaks, but that's close enough to the truth that we can't complain.
So what are we actually doing? In the first place, we're taking our day of rest on Sunday, which I understand it rather non-standard (to say nothing of non-biblical). But we figured that, since we worship on Sunday, it's important to be able to take the time to focus on that rather than rushing around trying to get a hundred other things done—which would certainly be the case if we hadn't done any of them on Saturday. We are not refraining from using electricity, or from driving, or from bicycling or dancing: none of those feel like work to us. We are trying to keep work around the home to an absolute minimum, to avoid shopping, and to make a point of slowing down and enjoying the day.
Our results have been mixed, so far. We feel pretty far behind in the housework on a regular basis, so when piece of mind would be better served by getting some laundry done or bread baked than by leaving those tasks undone, we've been going ahead and doing them. We don't feel guilty about it: it's just pragmatic necessity. And we're just getting warmed up! Obviously, the goal is to be able to build that rest day into the schedule without stressing unduly at other times, and we have managed it a little bit. A couple weeks ago I prepared our Sunday dinner on Saturday, and it felt pretty nice to have a big hot meal with no more effort than popping it in the oven; today we managed to get all of the essential laundry done for the week to come. Will practice make perfect?
If nothing else, it's another notch on our intentionality stick. And I won't promise updates on our practice, but if we either fail utterly at making Sunday different from any other day or guide ourselves to a new sense of spirituality and peace, you'll read about it here.