Category: Spiritual Friendship

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Tara and her daughter Seren on the Hill of Tara, Ireland, during sabbatical

Even as a writer, I find it hard to put the experience of sabbatical into words. In truth, it would be easy enough to tell you chronological stories of what happened, when, and where. But one of the things I experienced is that time inside of sabbatical isn’t exactly chronological.

So, let’s start with the end, then.

Discovering What I Missed

As September began, my calendar filled again with the work I love and get to do: Scripture Circles, spiritual direction, supervision, apprenticing, teaching. Some of you wondered if that experience was difficult for me, wondered if it would feel heavy or tiring. What I found was that I’d missed something other than I’d expected—I hadn’t missed the work (especially the email part of it); I missed the with-ness with God and with people. That particular quality of sacred presence that runs as a golden thread through all the activities I get to do was what I missed the most, and what energizes me each and every day.

I had missed being anam cara, and discovering that “missing” was one of the many gifts of sabbatical for me.

Sacred Space, Sacred Time

One of the activities that emerged during the three-month window was the reorganization of my home office. With much-needed help, the prayed-over and well-used space of mess and meeting became a holy sanctuary. I gave away a lot of books. I moved retreat resources to storage. I kept only the books I would read again or the unread books. If we meet over Zoom, you almost wouldn’t see any difference in my bookshelf backdrop; however, what is behind me has massively changed. In some ways, I’ve created an antilibrary, a reminder of how much I do not know. Nassim Nicholas Taleb coined that term and writes about it this way:

“The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore, professore dottore Eco, what a library you have ! How many of these books have you read?” and the others — a very small minority — who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you don’t know as your financial means, mortgage rates and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menancingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.”― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

It seems to me that this, too, is a parable of sabbatical, this reorganization of space to make more room for unknowing, while also inviting in more deeply the mysterious relationship that underpins it all—my relationship with Christ.

While reclaiming my space (I hesitate to call it an office) during my sabbatical, I realized I have more than 10 pieces of completely original art on the walls, some commissioned pieces, some not. The one on the threshold, that circumscribes the sanctuary, is an original painting depicting Jesus asleep in the boat during the storm. Around him the lines of the painting swirl and intersect. In the small quarter of the image where his body touches the water, the lines still and create reflection. This, too, is an icon of sacred time.

Don’t Die By Inches

Sabbatical began with a lot of death. Spiritual, relational, physical death happened around me and to me in various ways. There was a moment when I found myself running at full speed into those frigid waters, almost as if by holy instinct. I know what it is to let go of things reluctantly, prying my fingers off one cramped movement after another. I made a decision that if this time was to be in some measure about dying, I didn’t want to do it in slow, agonizing inches. I wanted to be plunged in quickly and completely.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean you don’t have to stay there for a long while.

Become the ancestor of your future happiness – David Whyte

These are the words that formed and held me in the dying. The hope and reality is that whatever this journey was, whatever it now is, whatever it will be, I have said yes to becoming a good ancestor. To myself, yes. But also to the sacred future. There is a way in which entering into sabbatical is a kind of death to linear sequential time—at least in the ways you’ve known it up until that entry.

Practically speaking, that also meant a death to my dream of time away on the island of Iona, time with the community of Northumbria, and time on Holy Island. It also meant death to my expectations (one of the hardest deaths, sometimes) and to my timelines.

There’s been a lot of learning and healing unfolding from those deaths, and there is still more. But death is not something that often happens easily, which surely continues to be the case for me.

Welcome Forward

This leads me straight into the paradoxical reality into which I’m still living: my sabbatical may have ended in linear sequential time, but I haven’t left sabbatical. I’m coming to see that if you’ve really, truly entered into sabbatical time, it’s not something you ever leave.

This makes for awkward conversation, especially when the traditional greeting you offer after someone returns from a vacation or a trip or maternity leave or a hospital stay (all of which I’ve experienced) is, “Welcome back!”

There’s no such thing as “Welcome back” from sabbatical (and I still deeply appreciate the people who have said it to me because what else does one say, really?). The closest reality is “welcome forward,” which also makes for awkward greetings. (Not as awkward as the Joshua/Moses/God intersection at the Tent of Meeting in Exodus 33, but that’s a sacred story for another time.)

All of this is to say that I’ll keep having stories from sabbatical to share: here, in person, in prayer, in writing. I’m still living out of time in ways that God is teaching me about, and as hard as that is to put into words, I’m deeply, wildly, unaccountably grateful.

So, thank you. For being part of the community that made and makes this countercultural reality possible. My hope and prayer is that you, too, will one day experience what crossing over into sabbatical will bring.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

When I was about 13 years old, I spent many of my Saturdays building fence with my grandfather. (Yes, I mean “building fence” and not “building fences”—it’s a Kansas farm boy thing, I guess). Because he had a shoulder injury that caused him to be permanently disabled, I did most of the hole digging, post driving, and wire stretching, but unless one of his friends stopped by to visit or he just got too cold to stay outside, he was with me for the work. It didn’t matter to me that most of the physical labor was mine to do. I didn’t care that he would occasionally bark orders when I wasn’t doing the job just right. I was just happy to be with my grandpa, earning a little money and learning important life skills. 

The day usually began by him picking me up at 7:30 am or so. We would leave my house and then drive to The Red Maple, the local family restaurant in my hometown, for a hearty breakfast. Because, “You can’t build fence on an empty stomach.” Then we would drive out to my grandparent’s place in the country, gather supplies, my grandpa would have a cigarette (or two), and we’d get to work. 

On particularly cold days, we would take more frequent breaks. We would sit in the shop where the wood stove was always burning while my grandpa smoked Kool kings and told stories. Sometimes he would reminisce about his childhood, the time he and his brothers built the dam for the old pond by hand; just a few boys with shovels. Or when he and his brother went to California for the summer to work on the railroad when they were fourteen and fifteen and lived in a tent in the front yard of the twelve year old girl that would eventually become my grandmother. Sometimes he would tell stories about hunting in the Sandhills (the local name of the area where he grew up and lived until he died). And nearly always, he would tell a story that I wasn’t sure was actually true but he would swear on his life happened just the way he told it to me. When one of his friends would stop by, the tales got taller and my work breaks sitting by the stove in the shop would last much longer. 

It’s funny, as I try to remember some of the stories he told, the details are vague at best. I’m sure I’ve forgotten the vast majority of them, but the feeling those memories stir in me is as present as if I was sitting by that wood stove right now. I can smell his menthol cigarettes, the wood smoke and hot metal. His voice, his laugh, his gestures when he would get wound up telling a story, those are indelibly etched in my memory. I don’t remember much of what he said, but I remember him. And as I think back, I realize how significant it was to be a 13-year old boy whose grandpa picked him up on Saturday mornings and, more than the breakfasts or the stories or the work ethic or the life skills, gave him a safe place to become and belong. 

That’s what being “with” does. When one offers the gift of presence to another, they are making a space where we can become and belong. We find groundedness there with them, even when the rest of our life may feel unmoored. To find a person who will hold this kind of space for us is indeed a rare gift. 

In 1997, Fred Rogers received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 24th annual Daytime Emmys. During his acceptance speech he did something that must be etched in the minds of everyone who attended. I know that it is etched in mine. As he was accepting the award, he said; “All of us have had special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are . . . ten seconds of silence, I’ll watch the time.”  Then he pulled up his coat sleeve and looked at his watch. There was a giggle that rippled across the audience. But as the camera began to pan across the room filled with television and film stars, people started to realize that he was serious. In that moment, tears began to fill people’s eyes. The room got very quiet as people began to remember those who had loved them into being. 

Everytime I see that clip, (which you can watch here), my grandpa comes to my mind. His presence was a safe place for me to find my way. May you too find safe places to be loved into being, dear friends. 

– Jeremy

photo credit: https://unsplash.com/photos/B7SUX_gx_7M?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditShareLink