keeping the sabbath

While we were camping in Vermont over the summer, marveling at the verdant landscape and the equally beautiful functionality of the family of friends hosting us, I would periodically pump the kind matriarch who quietly presided over our meals together for information. How, exactly, did she grow this extraordinary, loving family? How did she get from where I am to where she is, mother and grandmother to such distinctively delightful people?  My feigned casual inquiries about discipline, books, and her career amounted to a single plea: draw me a map. Please. Write the directions, including as many landmarks and details as possible. Point A to point B. Simple enough, right?

If only creating community and growing a thoughtful, loving family were so simple. If only there were blueprints available. Polly indulged me with lots of stories about when her children were small, and this in itself was deeply satisfying. But of course when we left Vermont, Mike and I still carried the responsibility for figuring out how to make a life for ourselves and our children, though the burden felt much lighter, having been strengthened by our time away with inspiring friends.

One particularly inspiring aspect of family life that Polly shared grabbed my imagination with a persevering grip. She and her family observe the sabbath on Sundays. I won't get into the specifics of what that has meant in practice over the years, but I think it amounted to a commitment to spending quiet, restorative time together as a family.

Whether you are religious or not, I think the appeal of special time set apart from rushing, chaotic regular life is considerable for so many of us. Over the past months, we've been experimenting with what keeping the sabbath might mean for our family. The first priority that we agreed upon was spending time together in a way that was restful - mostly at home, or places we can make it to on foot. Articulating what we wanted from a day of rest helped Mike commit to working less - or not at all - on Sunday. His work can easily ooze into any available nook or cranny in the week, regardless of day or hour. It is a gift to have a job that connects so effortlessly with who Mike is, but even vocational work needs to be set aside sometimes. Plus, we realized that dedicated time (outside meals) in which the four of us spend time together happens all too rarely. Strange, because it feels so nice. And so with our new day of rest, Mike has erected a permeable yet significant boundary between work and family.

In the late summer we began going to a new church, which fills the first part of the day. When we get home, the afternoon stretches out before us. Early in the sabbath-keeping experiment we imposed a shopping ban on Sundays. All the errands have to happen on Saturday, or else be squeezed in during the week. This has not been particularly burdensome, because neither of us like to pile into the car and drag our children around box stores (does anyone?), but we also haven't been very rigid about it. I probably break the no-shopping rule every other week, usually because I need a last-minute item for Taco Sunday. That's hardly an excuse, because Taco Sunday is nearly every Sunday, and thus easy to plan ahead for.

Taco Sunday - otherwise known as Taco Dimanche - fits beautifully into the rhythm of the kind of restorative, homey day that I'm aiming for. One fall afternoon some friends who work with Mike at the college and live down the street were bemoaning the loss of a campus institution known as Taco Tuesday. It had recently disappeared in the transition to a new campus food service provider. We decided to bring back the taco, on Sundays instead of Tuesdays, and in our homes rather than at St. John's. Ever since that conversation we have been taking turns hosting, sharing the cooking and welcoming others when the occasion presents itself. There is usually plentiful wine, guacamole, and more or less wholesome baked desserts from our kitchen. Katie shares airplanes and wooden blocks that her college-aged boys once loved with Gabriel, and her own art supplies and writing tools with Frances.

We love Taco Sunday. It feels so good to load up the stroller with beer bottles and Frances-made place cards and walk down the street together in the early evening winter light. It brings the weekend to a close with a meal that is a pleasure to anticipate and a comfortable happiness to share. There is delight in both its sameness and in the small details - a piece of china, a new toy, a salsa recipe - that inevitably change from week to week. As we learned in Lancaster, there is something so deeply connecting and right-feeling about sharing daily life and meals with friends. (And yes, what you are thinking is true. We are finding a bit of community here after all.)

So this is the shape of sabbath so far: Church. Not so much work. No shopping, no errands. Afternoon avocado-mashing, cheese-grating, and then tacos for dinner with friends. Then on this past Sunday Mike and I decided to up the ante: no internet.

Oy. This is harder for me than you might think. I discovered what I already knew but was choosing to ignore: my email- and Facebook-checking, blog-adjusting, and general whimsical inquiries (what was that album called? what will the weather be like on Monday? why haven't I read that most-emailed article on yoga or pet grooming in the Times yet?) are habitual and often thoughtless. It's a distraction, a little technique to get me through the harder moments of the day. I can always justify it because my paid and volunteer work commitments are all mediated through a computer screen. (Maybe that's a problem.) I cannot tell you how many times I felt my body drifting towards the little white shelf in the kitchen where the computer lives on Sunday. Each time I had to take a deep breath and physically turn my body around, re-commiting to whatever tantrum or inner unease had driven me in that direction in the first place.

A crutch is not the worst thing, but it's not something to be proud of either. And no, I did not feel an inner lightness after liberating myself from the internet for 24 hours (sabbath ends at sundown; I rushed back online with a sigh after the kids' bedtime). But I had lived with an intention, one that required confronting the strength of my habit but also confirmed my ability to refrain from indulging it for a time.

It sure is hard to be present to each other and the world around us. The happy morning moments are a joy, sure, but those whining itchy late afternoon moments? Not so much. When I check something online, my body walks away to a corner of the kitchen and my brain gets to dart around anywhere and everywhere, to every conceivable place but the one I am in. Leaving my internet crutch on the shelf, while not always pleasant, felt like giving myself over to something greater. Oh, I'll just say it: like letting God take charge, rather than scurrying off to assert myself when the going gets a wee bit tough in this weird, private, no-really-I'm-in-charge-here sort of way.

And it turns out that I can tolerate being just where I am - and just who I am - without turning to excessive drink or online shopping or compulsive Facebooking. And for a whole day, too! Not without effort, not without moments of sadness and frustration - but isn't that part of the being-a-person deal? I'm about to get into bed with The New Yorker so I can read what Adam Gopnik has to say about how the internet gets inside us. He can be so very clever and persuasive, but no matter his conclusions I'm sticking to my internet-free sabbath intention. Beneath the comforts of clicking, in my heart I know I'd prefer other sources of illumination fill whatever space our quiet Sundays might create within.