The Sabbath. The Day of Rest. The built in holiday of every week. And one of the Ten Commandments, no less. The world took six days for God to create and on the seventh, he rested. We are commanded to do no less. It’s interesting that we had to be thou-shalt-ed to cease laboring one day in seven when work is supposedly a curse laid upon Adam for eating the apple. We can even be persecuted for not keeping the Sabbath.

The Pharisees were outraged that Jesus healed a man with a shriveled hand on the Sabbath and asked him if this act was in keeping with the ordinances concerning the day of rest. He answered a question with a question and asked them if one of their sheep fell in a pit, wouldn’t they lend it a hand? So it might not be OK to work for gain on the Sabbath but it’s OK to do good. I guess that’s why football works on Sunday in the U.S.

But ultimately, it was a commandment designed to induce people into synagogue, church and mosque. For Muslims it’s a Friday. For Jews and some Christians it’s Saturday. For the majority of Christians, it’s Sunday, of course. Only one God, but each of the great monotheisms had to have its own distinct day off. The Good Lord seems fine with the arrangements. Well…so
far so good. So for me,
it’s judge not lest ye be judged.
I favor three-day weekends anyway.

Buddhists also have their version of the Sabbath, Uposatha. It’s a day of no work, to cleanse the heart and mind. When it falls is determined by the phases of the moon. New Moon, Half Moon Waxing, Full Moon, and Half Moon Waning. It falls every seven or eight days. Not quite regular enough for Western business schedules perhaps, but nice that it’s tied to something astronomical, something that we can all look up in the sky and see and participate in directly.

The Sabbath is a perfect time to do most anything pleasurable except stay indoors and watch TV or putz around on the computer!

My Sabbath is not religious but there is a spiritual quality to it. I think the main importance of it is to be able to do nothing and still be comfortable inside your own skin. It’s a day to stop being a human doing and become a human being. It’s a day of fantasy. A day of quiet rebellion against the clamor of business and the demands of nature. The Sabbath is actually a supreme achievement of man’s ingenuity and culture. We are so successful in our contest for existence and survival out the elements, that we have the luxury to take a day off and devote it to nothing more practical than the contemplation of greater things.

But even on the best of Sundays, there is a langor, a nostalgia, a yearning for things past or things dreamed to be. A feeling of wishing things were somehow otherwise. It was in just such a spirit one Saturday that I tried my hand at translating an ancient Chinese poem into a sonnet that describes that late afternoon tinge of sadness Sundays carry. It is adapted from Lyrics to the Tune of “Spring in Wu-Ling”, by the Poetess Li Ching-Jau of the Southern Sung period, circa 1135 A.D, taken from The Heart of Chinese Poetry by Greg Wincup.

A Load of Sorrow

Warm dusty winds die down out of the west,
The fragrant flowers have now fallen all.
The sun has left me to my darkened rest,
I comb my hair, and wish that you would call.
There is no lack of gold, but friends are few,
Seems most have fled somewhere out on the go.
I’d love to speak to everyone I knew,
Draw them to mind and tears begin to flow.

I’ ve heard that people say that at Twin Bay
The Spring is still so fine at this late date.
I’ll go come dawn there for a pleasant day
And hoist a sail to catch the winds of fate.
I fear that boat pleasure sailing tomorrow
Might not bear such a load of sorrow.

Marc Ladewig
Author of Odysseus-The Epic Myth of the Hero