Norman Wirzba: Sabbath, Soil and the Sacred Life

Ciara: The recent pandemic has in many ways forced the world into a Sabbath so to speak, giving us pause and causing us to slow down. You write that Sabbath is ultimately about delight in the goodness that God has made—in everything we do, every day of the week. What ways have you found delight and seen God’s goodness during this prolonged and painful pandemic? What lessons might we learn and cling to about the Sabbath as this pandemic lifts?

Norman: Over the years, I have become even more convinced that the failure to practice Sabbath and perceive/evaluate the world through a Sabbath lens, is doing tremendous damage to people, communities, and our world. We live in what some scholars call “the Great Acceleration,” which is a time where everyone is trying to maximize/optimize everything. But for what? People are buying more, doing more, worrying more, trying to be more, but it doesn’t seem that they are measurably happier.

I think what the COVID pandemic has done is force people to slow down, even stop, and ask, “What’s the point of all our striving and exertion?” That, of course, is the fundamental Sabbath question. The Sabbath answer is that the point of life is to share in God’s “rest” in a created world that is wonderfully and beautifully made.

The opposite of rest is not activity, but restlessness. Sometimes restlessness is a good thing, as when it is born out of dissatisfaction with injustice. But so much restlessness is life-degrading because it is premised on a deep discontent with life as given. What Sabbath asks us to do is to pause and slow down so that we don’t overlook the beauties and graces of our shared life. That has happened for me with COVID.

I’ve spent much more time at present walking, being outside, reflecting, and cherishing the times I could be with people. No question, COVID brought about so much suffering to too many people. That fact should strengthen our future resolve to do better in the spheres of public health and workplace justice. A Sabbath perspective can help us figure out what “doing better” in these spheres would mean.

Ciara: You gave a public lecture recently during your appointment as visiting Senior Fellow at Oxford University on how soil and agrarian ways can teach us something about our faith in God. Can you unpack this a little for us here? Is there something inherently spiritual about soil, the earth and the living things that God has made?

Ciara: Tell us more about your new book, This Sacred Life: Humanity’s Place in a Wounded World. What is our place in a wounded world? How might we find hope and healing in a world ravaged by things like environmental degradation, social injustice, greed and war? 

Norman: The first task is not to turn away from it or despise it as being of only temporary interest (the perennial temptation of the dualist spiritualities that govern some expressions of Christianity, but also recent transhumanist ways of thinking). God loves this world. Period. Every creature and every inch of it. And God does not ever abandon it. As Revelation makes clear, in the end God will live here with us mortals forever.

The question then is how followers of God will join with God in its healing and reconciling. That is not a simple thing, because it means we need to rethink ourselves as finite and vulnerable beings that need each other and this earth, and then figure out how our shared need can be the basis for new economies and political systems. This means we should be thinking about what a Chirstian-inspired built environment looks like and requires of us, and then work with others to create the many homes where God will feel welcome and will want to live with us.