How to Create a Body-Integrated Sabbath (or Christmas Break)
A Simple Way to Reclaim Some Humanity
For years and years now, I’ve had trouble with the Sabbath. Part of it I’m sure is being in ministry. I work, typically, from 8:00-5:30 or 9:00 PM on Sundays. Monday, I’ve learned, isn’t the right day for a Sabbath for me. I’m hungover by that point, metaphorically speaking. Nobody wants to be around me, not even myself. It’s a good day for low-energy work, things like staring at pointless social media screens for a second or two then looking up and realizing oh, in fact, it’s actually been an hour.
Fridays are ostensibly the day I have off. Two of my kids are at school. One is at home.
Anyone who has teenagers knows: Saturdays are not a day off. They are a day when your role as taxi-driver/party-planner/home-maker/bill-payer/whine-soother collides into a jigsaw puzzle that, as it turns out, is actually four partial jigsaw puzzles that don’t even try to fit together.
So, Fridays. These are my best shot at a Sabbath.
I think it’s been five years, now. Five? Maybe more than five, but five years where I’ve made a real go at trying to think about what obedience to the Sabbath really means for me. It’s only recently I’ve felt something unlock, so I wanted to share it with you.
Here, after several years, is an epiphany I’ve had about myself which may be helpful to you:
First, it doesn’t help to try to rest on the Sabbath.
This may be obvious to you, but trying to rest on the Sabbath is like trying to clap in rhythm to a song: the more you are conscious of trying, the less likely you are to do it. The better way to clap in rhythm to a song is to let the song take you over. A musician has to get through the ‘thinking about’ stage of performance in order to really perform a piano sonata, for instance. There are other activities which we could speak of metaphorically like this, let the reader understand.
Sabbath is like that. You can’t rest by trying to rest any more than you can sleep by trying to sleep.
Or, to use one more metaphor: my 15 year old son is in Driver’s Ed right now, Lord help us. One of the things they tell you, at least in my day, was that the safest way to navigate the highway is to look about a mile ahead, not at the car in front of you.
My point is, there needs to be some other goal in our Sabbath, some focus point way on up ahead that’s concrete and workable for the resting itself to become peripheral and natural, not forced.
So what is that thing?
Well, that’s the question. It’s the question I’ve been working on for so many years like Thomas Edison with the lightbulb, not failing exactly but “discovering 10,000 things that don’t work”.
But I think, this winter, I may have found the fiber that holds things together for me.
This is what’s finally done it for me: when I turn my attention toward a specific goal (no, not REST HARDER), I find myself resting. Truly resting. The kind of resting that could have taken me a week to stumble on, I can find in a day.
And here’s what it is, for me, anyway: the key has been to focus my entire day on activities that re-integrate my body and mind.
This epiphany came by way of another epiphany, which was this: most of what burdens me throughout my week isn’t the work itself, but the disintegration of my body and mind that modern work requires of me. Things like:
Checking email
Listening to podcasts/audiobooks (I know, this sounds restful. But I’ve learned even listening to fiction while doing something else encourages the kind of displacement I’m warring against).
Managing text threads
Organizing projects in my head or on a screen
Social media
Online shopping
Chat GPT’ing
Writing on a screen (it’s not so much the writing, but the sense that my computer is a magic carpet that could take me anywhere I’d like at the whimsical click of a button - the essence of a disintegrated self - a temptation which I will not resist)
Reading on a screen (ibid)
Basically, any screen time creates a kind of buzzy-ness in my head that follows me around and taps me constantly between the eyes with a tiny ballpoint hammer.
The key on a sabbath is to desecrate these kinds of activities that “buffer” us against the place/space we’re in, and replace them with things the re-integrate my mind and body and give it a sense of place.
Things like:
1. Prayer
Be careful of the apps. If you can get a good book of common prayer and a journal, use these. It’s overly ambitious for me to practice the prayer “hours” during the week…so what about once a week?
2. Walking in Nature
Living in a city, you can forget how beautiful and “given” the world is around you. There is nothing - nothing - like walking to re-integrate the mind and body. Eugene Peterson’s Sabbath practice was to walk with his wife for 2-3 hours in the morning…in total silence.
3. Physical Hobbies
I’ll never forget the day I finished chopping wood for our landlord - we were living above his garage at the time in destitution - and he took note of the glee I was taking in the whole thing.
“What’s so great about chopping wood?” he asked.
“I guess I can see what I did,” I said. “In ministry I can’t tell.” He thought for a minute.
“You need a hobby,” he said.
It was a conversation that changed my life. Ever since, I resolved to take up hobbies that integrate my mind and body. For me, it’s mostly cooking and playing music. But for others, it’s woodworking, landscaping, pottery or some other body-integrated hobby.
One of my favorite “deep thoughts” of comedian Jack Handey is this one:
I remember how my great-uncle Jerry would sit on the porch and whittle all day long. Once he whittled me a toy boat out of a larger toy boat I had. It was almost as good as the first one, except now it had bumpy whittle marks all over it. And no paint, because he had whittled off the paint.
The thing is, I understand Uncle Jerry now.
He needed that boat.
4. Exercise
In my ordination vows, I took exception to the Westminster Confession, which forbids select leisure activities during the sabbath. But, I think importantly, it wasn’t because I disagreed per se with the Confession, so much as it was an acknowledgment that our situation has changed. The Westminster Confession was written in a labor economy, so you could make a case that adding physical toil to physical toil was breaking the sabbath. I can’t imagine, for instance, my neighbor who works construction joining a weekend soccer league and finding “rest”.
But for those of us who labor in the digital economy, a proper application of “rest from normal work” might be the opposite: body integration through exercise. In the digital economy, rest from normal work through exercise, in my opinion, is an appropriate way to Sabbath, if the question isn’t so much, “What counts as rest on the sabbath?”, but:
“What are we each resting from?”
For me, the personal revelation is this: in the digital world, I need rest from mind/body disintegration. Exercise is re-integrative. For me, that could be sports, climbing at the gym, weight-lifting (but without the ambient noise I usually plug in during the week) or just some Heat/Cold Exposure.
5. Memorizing Poetry
This is brand, spanking new for me. The dilemma for me is always this: I love to read. The problem is, so much of my “normal” work is reading. Even when I’m reading fiction, I’m thinking up a dozen sermon illustrations for quotes and scenes. I can’t help it.
Poetry - namely memorizing poetry - forces me to slow down. I can’t read for efficiency, or even for illustration. By memorizing, I force myself to chew on each word and savor it.
6. Friendship
I’m going to admit that this has felt like an impossible nut to crack, as a pastor. Who is my friend? Who am I working for? Who is a co-worker?
I think at one time I had the idea that I need to find people outside my church circles, so I could enjoy friendship. There is some truth in that.
But lately I’ve been thinking more about forming the kind of spaces where I can be with the same people, but not feel “on.” Last week we hosted a “game night” Christmas party with our community group, something we used to do in college ministry. A few days later, we did the same with a former college student who was in town.
It was a reminder to me that there were creative ways we made space for students, during our time in college ministry, that didn’t have to feel weighty or loaded or layered. Game nights were those spaces for us: make a meal, chat about life, play a game, everyone goes home happy. Use paperware. Order pizza. Keep it easy.
Another thing that’s “light touch” for me is getting together with my buddies who like film or music or art, watching/listening together and maybe chatting about it, maybe not.
Both of these are “light touch” community, which is perfect for me on a sabbath.
7. Physical touch
Brenna is the one who constantly reminds me of this: there is something physiologically healing about touch. Get as much of it as possible on your sabbath day. It literally rewires the brain. Start it and end it and interrupt it with long hugs.
8. Meditation
Because I wake up with a disintegrated body/mind, I start my day with about 20 minutes of grounding breaths. I may need it once or twice more before the day’s end.
Make no mistake, the reason meditation is such a phenomenon in American life is because of digital malaise. I know people have feelings about it. For me, it doesn’t replace my life with scripture/prayer. It simply gets me into a place where I’m with my body enough to enter into that space.
9. Journaling
I can’t write on a screen during my sabbath. But that doesn’t mean I can’t write. Writing is important for me, so free-journaling, with no agenda, on paper, is the way I can engage.
10. Film/Stories/Gaming/Albums
I need to be a little careful with this one, because watching a screen alone isn’t exactly the best way to rest from working at a screen alone. So this time is capped. But for me, rich stories do something for me that help me to look at life with clarity. There’s a whole swath of gorgeous story-rich games out there, and I know what I like. I don’t listen to spotify “mixes” on these days specifically. I listen to whole albums. I watch whole films in a sitting with no phone.
If I can do any of these things with a friend, even better.
11. Make a “Don’t Do” list
Just as important as what I do is what I don’t do. That whole list of disintegrating activities above? That’s my no-no list.
12. Naps
It was in college that I learned about the “Nazarene Nap”: students would go home, take a nap (sometimes 3-4 hours), and gather again in the evening. I hated the idea at the time, and I still can’t abide a nap that long.
But closing my eyes for 30 minutes, with 20 minutes of sleep? It’s like a midday drug. It also feels like a spiritual discipline of sorts: it communicates something to my mind and body that lets me slow down for the rest of the day.
Conclusion
I’ll leave you with two things, to close.
The first is a poem by Wendell Berry that I heard this weekend (maybe to my embarrassment? It seems famous).
It encapsulated so much of what I’ve been chewing on:
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
Maybe try memorizing that, next sabbath. I know I will.
Second, if you’re interested, my reading plan for 2026 will be focused on the themes of sacrament, place and presence. I’d be delighted if you joined me on this journey in any way, shape or fashion. I’ve chosen a combination of early and late readings, both fiction and non-fiction, as well as a collection of films all about place/embodiment/communion:
Books & Films for Sacrament, Place, and Presence
I. Theology Core (Ancient, Global, Sacramental)
Mystagogical Catecheses — Cyril of Jerusalem
Against Heresies (Book IV) — Irenaeus
On the Incarnation — Athanasius
On the Mystical Life (The Life in Christ) — Nicholas Cabasilas
The Divine Liturgy — John Chrysostom
The Life of Moses — Gregory of Nyssa
The Cloud of Unknowing
For the Life of the World — Alexander Schmemann
Being as Communion — John Zizioulas
Liturgy and the Common Good — Simon Chan
Institutes of the Christian Religion (Book IV) — John Calvin
Union with Christ — J. Todd Billings
II. Fiction — Sacrament, Place, Attention
Home — Marilynne Robinson
The Power and the Glory — Graham Greene
Peace Like a River — Leif Enger
The Book of the Dun Cow — Walter Wangerin Jr.
Crossing to Safety — Wallace Stegner
Lila — Marilynne Robinson
A Month in the Country — J. L. Carr
Angle of Repose — Wallace Stegner
Independent People — Halldór Laxness
Harvest — Jim Crace
The Mayor of Casterbridge — Thomas Hardy
III. Fiction — Longing, Loss, Modern Dislocation
The Festival of Insignificance — Milan Kundera
The Fall - Albert Camus
IV. Philosophy & Cultural Diagnosis
The Gift — Marcel Mauss
The Sacred and the Profane — Mircea Eliade
Being and Nothingness — Jean-Paul Sartre
V. Food, Earth, Creatureliness
The Taste of Place — Amy Trubek
How to Do Things with Food — Warren Belasco
Genesis - Marilynne Robinson
VI. Place, Technology, Resistance to the Machine
Against the Machine — Paul Kingsnorth
The Unsettling of America — Wendell Berry
The Need for Roots — Simone Weil
Technopoly — Neil Postman
The World Beyond Your Head — Matthew Crawford
Shop Class as Soulcraft — Matthew Crawford
Landmarks — Robert Macfarlane
Small Is Beautiful — E. F. Schumacher
The Machine Stops — E. M. Forster
The Question Concerning Technology — Martin Heidegger
The Technilogical Society, Jacque Ellul
VII. Poetry
The Temple — George Herbert
Sabbaths — Wendell Berry
🎬 52 Films for Sacrament, Place, and Presence
I. Sacramental & Spiritual Weight
II. Place, Land, and Belonging
III. Community, Table, and Shared Life
IV. Resistance to Abstraction & the Machine
V. Longing, Loss, and Modern Isolation
VI. Nature, Creatureliness, Time
Le Quattro Volte (2010)
VII. Hope Without Sentimentality
Au Hasard Balthazar (1966, Robert Bresson)
VIII. Quiet Endings & Final Witness
Merry Christmas, owlets.
This shift seems to have great potential. Especially as a pastor’s family who struggles mightily, often guilt-ridden and frustrated) with the idea of Sabbath. Thank you for sharing.
Oh very cool