Sabbath in the Suburbs

During the Season of Lent, a group of young adults/adults with young children and I have been reading and discussing the Rev’d MaryAnn McKibben Dana’s book “Sabbath in the Suburbs: A Family’s Experiment with Holy Time.” After MaryAnn and her husband Robert discovered that she was pregnant with their third child, they decided to take a pilgrimage to the Iona Community in Scotland to prayerfully discern how they might make their busy, overscheduled, overprogrammed lives more manageable.

 MaryAnn (a seminary classmate and friend of mine) is a Presbyterian (USA) minister and her husband Robert is an IT specialist. At the time of their trip to Iona, their two children were very young, yet as a household with two working professionals, they already were feeling like the demands on their time, energy, and selves were endless. So they prayerfully decided to embark upon something ancient, biblical, and in this day-and-age, terribly difficult (for many of us, at least). They vowed to, upon their return Washington, DC suburb home, to “remember the sabbath day and keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8).

 MaryAnn’s book is a month-by-month reflection on her family’s successes and failures at trying to set aside one whole day a week to do nothing (for them, it was usually Saturday). No yard or housework, no checking their work-related email or texts, refraining from social media, and generally abstaining from anything that was productive. She does a wonderful job of being self-deprecating, and laughing at their failures to just be. Her approach is not heavy-handed, self-righteous, or a “humblebrag.” And because of her simultaneously light-hearted-yet-spiritually-profound approach, MaryAnn’s book has been a good read for our group of “sabbath pilgrims.” As young professionals and/or parents of young children, we too are living lives that border on unmanageable, even in this unique vacation destination where we call home.

 Each week when we meet together, we have been celebrating the “little victories,” where we get excited about being able to keep the sabbath for even a half-day. And on our non-sabbath days, we have enjoyed taking a “sabbathly” approach to certain tasks such as driving in traffic.

 Being in this class and reading this book together has been a welcome invitation for us to explore and enjoy sacred time, sacred space, and sacred rest. It is certainly more rewarding to try this experiment with a group of folks who are struggling with similar challenges, so that we can celebrate and support one another through our journeys as young adults/young families in the ever-changing world in which we live.  

Pax,

Richard+