The very arrival of Shabbat every sixth day is first and foremost a reminder to stay alert. There are invisible lines of connection happening all around us at all times, yet, we enslave ourselves to believing the impossible, that this mad life, this race through a meaningless time is all there is.
Shabbat says stop……stop and breath. It is in the recognition of the details that the road map unfolds. We have become desensitized to seeing the deeper layers of our own existence. Yet, the details are telling, but first we must attune ourselves to seeing them.
Society pushes us since childhood to be in a chronic state of fight or flight. Rush to school. Compete for good grades. Compete in sports, get the best job, make more money, perform, perform, perform. Yet our nervous system needs, quiet, play, meditative nourishment and creativity to flourish. We are humans not machines.
Dr Nicole Lepere
Shabbat is an opening. A door through which a deeper and more nourishing life can emerge. Without it, the hamster wheel will rob your life of the very possibility of authentic living. Shabbat says to us, there is more to life than meets the eye. There is more to living than the automated rhythm of consumerism. Your relationships can transcend the level of this world, your souls can connect in deeper richer more meaningful ways. Your life is filled with endless possibility. We step into Shabbat open to a higher way to live, open to a deeper meaning for the time given us and open to feeling what we cannot see with our eyes. On shabbat we see with our souls.
The hamster wheel forces us to let go of the details so that we stop being inspired to want off of the wheel. But the details are magnificent. Notice the colors in your life, the poetry of the sky, the melody of your human connections, the messages trying to reach you. Shabbat gives you this opportunity to rise it up in joyous offering, everything, absolutely everything.
Be, by Neil Diamond
Lost
On a painted sky
Where the clouds are hung
For the poet’s eye
You may know him
If you may know him
There
On a distant shore
By the wings of dreams
Through an open door
You may know him
If you may
Be
As a page that aches for words
Which speaks on a theme that’s timeless
While the Sun God will make for your day
Sing
As a song in search of a voice that is silent
And the one God will make for your way
And we dance
To a whispered voice
Overheard by the soul
Undertook by the heart
And you may know it
If you may know it
While the sand
Would become the stone
Which begat the spark
Turned to living bone
Holy, holy
Sanctus, sanctus
Be
As a page that aches for a word
Which speaks on a theme that is timeless
While the Sun God will make for your day
Sing
As a song in search of a voice that is silent
And the one God will make for your day
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