Our Sacred Right to Rest

BGCL Newsletter

BGCL Newsletter invites you to heal and transform through slow, intentional living. Each week, take this moment to pause with me and recall what is essential. 💚

“There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.” — Abraham Joshua Heschel

Hey friends,

We are approaching three years since our worlds were flipped upside down by the pandemic. As I look around at my family and friends in various states of new normal, I see one common thread: everyone is damn tired.

The fatigue runs deep in my bones too, and it has left me thinking of how little we value rest in our modern culture. I’ve become more aware of the ways in which our lives are consumed with activity, both essential and self-induced, from end-to-end.

Rest seems like a cruel joke when we have been taught to obtain, persist, and endure. Systems upon systems have been designed to create an illusion of peak productivity and exponential growth, with no regard for the human bodies that enable such ideas.

Instead, we are taught to applaud the grind and celebrate the hustle. A spare moment is time to squeeze in a task, run an errand, or feel shamed for the list of work undone. No time for renewal or healing when the rancid breath of capitalism is breathing down our necks.

But what are we grinding for? And when does the hustle end?

Being the person I am, I needed a philosophical answer to these questions. I needed to know the underlying values of how and why we live this way. I needed a historical perspective because we have been bamboozled in believing that the 40 hour workweek has been around since the dawn of time.

I sifted through a stack of books from the library on topics related to rest. After flipping and skimming, I found answers in a spiritual text—one I had been avoiding for that very reason: The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel.

The text, published in 1951, eloquently captures the pull of productivity that has increasingly diminished the importance of rest. In poetic language, he describes how our human desire to control has made us obsessed with space and ignorant of time.

When we value only physical space and objects, we give up our sacred right to time— and time is the essence of rest. We forget that being is not achieved through the collection of space but in the connection between all living things—past, present, and future.

As a result, we continue to seek meaning without the ability to create connection. We quest for belongings and innovation, which time renders inherently value-less. We acquire without realizing that our truest desires are bound by the dimension of time.

Rest is the freedom from the things in our physical world that demand our time and attention. It is the disciplined pursuit of nothingness in order to connect us to what is eternal. As Tricia Hersey of the Nap Ministry has accurately stated: rest is liberation.

“Inner liberty depends upon being exempt from domination of things as well as from domination of people. There are many who have acquired a high degree of political and social liberty, but only very few are not enslaved to things.” — Abraham Joshua Heschel

Tell me my friends: How are you reclaiming time for rest? What can you do this week to resist the grind? You can hit reply to share with me directly or leave a comment on the Substack BGCL community page. 

Thanks for taking time to slow down and be present with me this week. Take care, be kind, and we'll talk soon,

Hillarie