The Fruitfulness of Rest: Sabbatical as Sacred Work

I’ll be going on sabbatical for three months, starting July 10.

On one level, I’m taking sabbatical leave because it’s our policy at Creation Justice Ministries: every staff member gets three months of sabbatical after five years of full-time employment.

But I’m also taking sabbatical leave because this kind of rest is also the work of creation justice. To slow down, step away from the work, and delight in God’s creation is important. Both ecology and scripture show us that rhythms of sabbath are good for people and for the land.
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A few weeks ago, I had the chance to do a weekend silent retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani, where one of my favorite writers Thomas Merton lived the monastic life of silence and solitude. My intention was to microdose sabbatical; to see what it was like to step away from the work, and the pressures of modern life, and to simply listen. 

I picked up Merton’s Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander while there and came across this passage:
“The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate     violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence. More than that, it is cooperation in violence.

The frenzy of the activist...destroys his own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful." (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander)

In our work, there is a direct connection between the inner wisdom of our spiritual lives and the wellbeing of the planet. So many of the problems we face today—ecological and otherwise—are because our inner lives have become peaceless places. Because we move too fast, too loud. Because we don’t slow down to listen closely to the song of creation, which sings at a volume and time signature much different from our frenzied culture. In the words of Pope Francis, the “The external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast.” (Laudato Si’) As Merton writes, even we activists (or , perhaps, especially activists), in our frenzy to heal the world, do violence against ourselves because we don’t create the conditions for peace to flourish in our internal gardens.

This is not to say that the work is unimportant. Work and labor are sacred. But, they are sacred within their limits. When we (I) begin to exceed those limits, it twists the sacred gift of God into something that looks more like self-serving.

Sabbatical is a course-correction. It is a reminder that there is a direct connection between the ecological limits that we and our friends are working to live within, and the limits of good work and labor.

I love the work of Creation Justice Ministries, and I already can’t wait to return to this sacred work in October. But for now, I go to embrace the delicious gift of slowness, silence, and solitude that God (and the Creation Justice Ministries board) has given me through this sabbatical.

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​Avery Davis Lamb
Executive Director 
​Creation Justice Ministries