Dear Friends in Christ,
Six days a week the spirit is alone, disregarded, forsaken, forgotten.
Working under strain, beset with worries, enmeshed in anxieties,
one has no mind for ethereal beauty.
But the spirit is waiting for us to join it.
Then comes the sixth day.
Anxiety and tension give place to the excitement that precedes a great event.
The Sabbath is still away but the thought of its imminent arrival stirs in the heart
a passionate eagerness to be ready and worthy to receive it. ¹
When Rabbi Heschel wrote his little (yet VERY BIG) book on sabbath, much of his previous 15 years centered on the effects of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. Rabbi Heschel’s daughter, Susannah, a professor of Jewish studies at Dartmouth, speaks and writes about her father, and about his work. In one interview she said, “In our home, certain topics were avoided on the Sabbath (politics, the Holocaust, the war in Vietnam) while others were emphasized. Observing the Sabbath is not only about refraining from work, but about creating menuha, a restfulness that is also a celebration.
I see what she means. My upcoming time away from work, mostly away from Maine, is more than a time of rest because it’s wrapped up in adventure, in time with Tom in peculiar destinations (for many Americans at least) such as Tallinn, Helsinki, Hamburg, and Lund, and also along the banks of the River, in the Thousand Islands of New York and Ontario.
The celebration part-of-sabbatical also includes disentangling from texts and emails, and that will be both liberating and unsettling. With Lauralee and Teresa’s help, Verizon is literally turning off the digital sim card that’s associated with my work email and phone, so even if I want to check, I won’t be able to. Yikes….four months of no texting and no emailing.
In these preparations, I’m mindful of the privilege given to those of us who can take sabbaticals. Everybody deserves a sabbatical, but not everybody gets one. This mindfulness is accompanied by gratitude. I’m grateful for: the Standing Committee, who approved my plans and authorized its funding; for staff colleagues who not only support my taking a sabbatical, but also assume extra responsibilities during it; for your prayers and those of your parishioners; for Bishops Hollingsworth and Lane who have agreed to to support Canon Pinney and the Standing Committee et al, should the need arise for episcopal ministry; and for an ongoing desire to continue in ministry with you after I return.
Here’s what’s essential for you to know: With God’s grace there’s another set of chapters for us to write together. For that to happen, I need to pray and think and live in different rhythms, trusting in the Truth that the Diocese of Maine and I are not fused, and that being a bishop is not the sum total of who I am. So on June 23 I’ll be on sabbatical, and I’ll be back on October 24.
Rilke put it this way,
You carry within you the capacity to imagine and give shape to your world. It is a pure and blessed way of living. Train yourself to this, but also trust whatever comes. If it comes from your desire, from some inner need, accept that and hate nothing.
(from “Letters to a Young Poet,” written at Worpswede on July 16, 1903)
God be with you ‘til we meet again.
With all my love, and God’s, I am faithfully yours,
The Rt. Rev. Thomas J. Brown
Tenth Bishop of Maine
¹ Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath,” (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1951) p. 65.