Sabático
By Rev. Elizabeth Rechter, Executive Director
A friend of mine who is a musician shared with me his experience when we entered our COVID lockdown. He had never taken a break from preforming since he first began his vocation as a young child. To take time off meant losing the next opportunity to develop in his music. He was burned out, but didn’t have a way to tend to it until the pandemic. His pandemic sabbatical was life changing. Even gifts need rest. He has told me he is happy to be back now with a new sense of joy about his giftedness as a performing artist, and gleeful to be sharing this gift with audiences again.
This July will mark seven years since I became Stillpoint’s executive director. It has been such a great privilege for me, and not without some surprising challenges, like a global pandemic. During the months of July and August, I will be taking a study sabbatical to attend a language school to study Spanish. It will be a sabbatical from my every day work, but also a sabbatical from the English language.
It has long been my desire to become a fluent Spanish speaker, and during the pandemic hours of prayer and discernment, this desire grew stronger and clearer. As a resident of Southern California and especially my city of Santa Ana, I long to communicate in the first language of my neighbors. With new facility with this language, it is my desire to help expand Stillpoint’s offerings of Spiritual Direction in Spanish.
The word sabbatical literally means ‘of the sabbath’. It grows out of the wisdom of the weekly Sabbath, when six days you shall work and on the seventh day you will rest from all your work. The Sabbath rest is meant to free us, week after week, by fasting from our identification as employees of the world, and resting in our truest identity as loved ones of God. On the seventh day, God rested. Made in the image of God, this is meant to be our schedule as well.
Yeshua said: If you do not fast from the world, you will not find the Kingdom.
If you do not celebrate the Sabbath as a Sabbath, you will not know the Father.
-The Gospel of Thomas
Scripture also teaches in the holiness code of Leviticus: six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather in their yield; but in the seventh year there shall be a sabbath of complete rest for the land, a sabbath for the LORD: you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. Lev. 25:3-4
The vinedresser and the vine must rest. Both must lay fallow from putting out, producing, bringing forth harvest. The ground under us, the soil that feeds the plant, nurtures the root system, brings forth the blossom, must be restored. We know this even from our potted plants. It is not enough that we are watered regularly, not enough that fertilizer is added on occasion. For growing things to prosper, on occasion they must be repotted and ground replenished.
For some, the global pandemic created a forced sabbatical. It couldn’t be business as usual. I wonder what gift you might have received in the sabbatical not of your own choosing?
I am grateful to Stillpoint for allowing me this rest and opportunity, and for the able Board, Staff and Faculty who will care for our work while I am away. It is my hope that, upon my return, I might encourage those of you who speak Spanish to join me in opening wider Stillpoint’s doors to those whose first language is Spanish. We are hoping, for instance to offer our Spiritual Journey program in Spanish in the Fall of 2023, and will be looking for participants and spiritual directors who have the gifts to lead a Spiritual Journey class.
Bendiciones para su Viaje,
Elizabeth+
