It has most definitely been a long time since I have last made a post to this site; and I really should be asking myself, "why, in the midst of all of the papers and assignments, should I even toy with the idea of writing something additional???" And, to answer that question, most honestly.... "I don't know."
What I do know is that, however useful it may be, there is something terribly confining and limiting to "proper" academic writing, with all it's footnoting and citations, and rigid progression of ideas. For someone who genuinely likes to write... that like telling an artist that he's allowed to paint whatever he wants and express whatever is in his heart--as long as as it is "color-by-numbers" and he follows all of the instructions, and uses only the preselected colors.
But that's not at all what I wanted to talk about anyway. What I want to talk about requires a new paragraph...
For the past while now--me, Ruel, and Glen, have been experimenting with our concept of "Sabbath." As long as I can remember, the idea of "Sabbath" has been terribly stereotyped as this one point in the week where good christians take a break from life. You know, life. That annoying period of conciousness that fills in those times when we are not sleeping. Of course, I'm exaggerating. But, honestly... what do we as Christian take life to be? I remember a certain phrase that became well-used around my family while I was growing up. When we were on vacation, having a good time, and we had to leave to go back home, we would say, "well, back to reality," as if somewhere at home we left this evil Jail Warden waiting for us with handcuffs, waiting for our return... waiting to throw us back into that prison we call "reality." --- once again, I'm exagerating... but only a bit. Similarly, we hear other negative terms like, "real life," which would refer to something that is unpleasant, but a terribly unavoidable reality of living this painful thing we call "life."
What if... WHAT IF... life wasn't something that needed escaping. What if we didn't take a break FROM life, but rather, we took a break TO life. What if the Sabbath was not a retreating away from that monster that waits for us at the door every Monday morning, but WHAT IF the Sabbath, was instead a celebration of the life that has been lived? Therefore, YES, the Sabbath is a time in which we do break from the normal progression of the workweek, but it's not a mandatory holding back from that scary beast that we in the working world have dubbed "real life," rather, the Sabbath is diving headfirst into REAL LIFE. A time where were we get a cup of coffee, write, play, sing, listen to jazz, cook, wrestle alligators--whatever makes you come alive-- what if we did that?
I've been experimenting with this though for the past few Sabbaths, and it has been an amazing breath of fresh air... I almost wonder if this is what God had in mind all along ( and I think he did) Every Sabbath (I've chosen Sunday), me Ruel, and Glen go to church, sing fellowship and the whole 9 yards... then, at around lunchtime, we dissappear and we go.
For me, "going" feeds my soul, gives me life... I don't nessecarily care where I go, but I go. When I go, I try to go somewhere that I have never gone before. Then I take pictures of it. Maybe for some, this does not sound appealing but, for me. This is deeply what I love. I have always been nomadic at heart, I'm a traveler deep down. To me, Magellan--that abominable explorer-- committed one of the most unspeakable acts to those people who are like me... he charted the world...mapped it out, painted a picture of it, and stole a little bit of its wonder and mystery. Honestly, I have always wanted to do what he did. See something that people have never seen before, catch something new, something exciting, see something that is not yet in the dictionary and tell its story-- see something about which one would have to write a book.
I think that it why I spend my Sabbath doing what I do. When I'm "going" (wherever that may be) and I have a camera, or a pen and paper... I think that there is a small part of me that is living out Magellan's dream. I'm looking for a perspective, an angle, an image. Something that tells a story that has not been told before, and shows something in a way that it has never been shone before... so that, for a second, that thing becomes new, and it able to be discovered all over again.
Increasingly, I am becoming convinced that this is really what the Sabbath was meant to be, not an excape from life... but an excape TO LIFE.
Whatever "life" --real life.... REALLY, real life is for you, excape to that. It might be buried deeply beneith your agenda, and paperwork, covered with things like your taxes and finances, but chances are it's there --your life, that is... and odds are, it's not nearly as scary as we all make it out to be.
