Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel writes about sacred time –the Sabbath. His book is uplifting. His prose speaks to the heart and soul. Rabbi Heschel teaches us that things are not sacred in the same way that time is sacred. He exhorts us to remember the Sabbath. It is a day God separated from the rest of the week. It is a day to bring God, the holy, into time, rather than a specific space or place. It is a time of remembering all that is good. It is a time of gratitude for all that one has. It is a time to be with loved ones, held close, sharing time together.
I am not an observant Jew. But that does not mean that I cannot learn from his teachings about the sacred. He taught me to recognize the difference between the sacred and the profane; the holy and the mundane, and that sacred time is not limited to a day. We have the opportunity each day to make time for the sacred-for family, friends, the community. We can choose to turn off all the electronics and sit together for a meal, for a cup of tea, for quiet contemplation.
Bringing the idea of sacred into our lives helps us to separate that which makes us better human beings from that which drags us back into our natural selfish selves. The morals, values and ethics bequeathed to us by God are sacred and must be practised in order to keep the profane from eating away at our society.
Few of us take a day and separate it completely from all the other days. I sometimes think that life would be so much better if we all rested the animal within for just one day a week. But, it is not that difficult to put aside sacred time during the day. And that is a beginning.
