The gift of Sabbath
‘Everything is breath,’ says 1001 New Worshiping Communities associate
When the Rev. Jeff Eddings took a first four-month sabbatical in 2014 from his thriving new worshiping community in Pittsburgh, he stopped checking his email account, opened up an alias email called “sabbaticaljeff” and read only from the book of Ecclesiastes. His only agenda was to seek more spaciousness and to be more present to the moment. In his time away, he set aside quality time with his wife and took his boys, who were teenagers, to several national parks. The drive from Pennsylvania to the Western states enhanced his sense of spaciousness and how it spoke to a deep need of the soul.
Eddings, associate for coaching and spiritual formation for the 1001 New Worshiping Communities movement, spoke to his colleague, the Rev. Sara Hayden, on the “New Way” podcast this week. Listen to their conversation here and here.
For the 12th season of “New Way,” Hayden is speaking with leaders and innovators about practices that deepen what Howard Thurman described as “the sound of the genuine” in their lives.
Against the vast plains and the solid mountain ranges, Eddings considered the wisdom of Ecclesiastes that everything we construct is meaningless, even our schedules. Rather than embracing nihilism, Eddings sought spaciousness even in this realization.
“Everything’s vanity,” Eddings said of experiencing the world through reading Ecclesiastes, refraining from grind culture and refusing to get caught up in his news feed. “It could be translated as absurd.” But then Eddings stopped intellectualizing and let his body translate the eternal ephemerality of time passing by.
“But I prefer breath, because that just feels like, well, everything is actually not meaningless. Everything is filled with meaning, because breath is a moment. It roots us in our bodies. It’s here, in space, in time. Be here now. It helps us to, like, be present to ourselves. Breath. Breath. Everything is breath,” pondered Eddings.
The artifice of modern life and the arbitrariness of preoccupations codified in busy schedules and obsession with productivity began to fall away as Eddings explored the meaning of Sabbath and continued to intentionally observe ways to unplug and relax.
“What I think the gift of Sabbath is for us is a complete invitation to be fully present into the space,” Eddings told Hayden as he began another sabbatical this year, taking several months away from his position with the Interim Unified Agency. According to Eddings, sabbaticals and Sabbaths require planning and intention. In 2014, he worked with mentors to shape how he thought about Sabbath and how he could succeed in breaking away. This year, he set up a Sabbath Innovation Lab with cohorts of new worshiping leaders and pastors to explore the internal and external obstacles to taking time off to abide in the Divine. These groups met twice a month on Mondays for special workshops on contemplative practices and have read two books together: “The Sabbath” by Abraham Joshua Heschel and “Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto” by Tricia Hersey. Reviving his old moniker “Sabbatical Jeff,” Eddings produced videos for the participants in the Sabbath Innovation Lab, reflecting on several practices and ideas he has incorporated into his embrace of living Sabbath.
In the groups, Eddings has given and received wisdom about what it means to embrace our identity as human beings loved by God in an economy insistent on our surrendering as “human doings.” Hayden and Eddings discussed the importance of “Sabbath snacks” and “Sabbath values” to carve out space and intention each day and week to practice simply being.
Ultimately, Eddings imagines Sabbath not only as making space in our lives to be held by the spaciousness of divine love but also as holding this space of Sabbath within us. He identified the transformative presence of “a person of peace” in the world and the feeling that they can communicate and offer Sabbath to others through their ability to be with others in the moment.
“We all know, like, that person of peace,” said Eddings. “When they come into our space, it immediately helps us to be more a person of peace. We can breathe in their presence in a different way.” They’re probably practicing Sabbath “in some form, in some shape.”
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