Stop, Look, Listen: Celebrating Shabbos through a Spiritual Lens

The life of the spiritual seeker shifts between moments of illumination and dry times, and each pole of the cycle has something to teach the other. The real gift is the rhythm itself, the movement, the awareness of the in-between and the bond between the poles.

Ellen Davis, addressing the temptation to promote Shabbos merely as a hedge against overwork and burnout, notes that “Exodus enjoins Sabbath observance on theological, not pastoral, grounds.” She writes that keeping the day holy enables us to “consider what it is to be the creatures of God, living among other creatures in a world that God has made.

The invitation is: See the world in a new light, without attachment, in pure appreciation, transparent to the divine Nothing that animates it, and you will see a world bathed in blessing. You will then be a source of blessing!

the midrash suggests, precisely because Shabbos presents such an attractive, uncluttered space of buoyant openness, temptation will arise to co-opt it.

The preparatory work for Shabbos enables us to be worthy of Shabbos. The opportunity to prepare is part of the gift, transforming weekdays into times of preparation, pathways that lead to Shabbos, the Shabbos to come.

Shabbos-consciousness entails speaking mindfully, choosing words carefully and thoughtfully, inhabiting each one with compassion and full presence.

Holy desisting is the most effective move one can make to enter the peace that one wishes to channel for the world as a whole.

There are times when God wants to bestow a beneficence, but we may be too suspicious, too rigid, too harried to receive the blessing. Preoccupied with our patterns of thought, we are disinclined to pause, and it may not be easy for God to capture our attention.

Gott fun Avraham