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By Jeff Gang, June 10, 2011 5:00 pm

A quote to begin the Sabbath:

If you … call the Sabbath a delight … then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth.

- Isaiah 58:13-14

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By Jeff Gang, June 3, 2011 5:00 pm

A quote to begin the Sabbath:

And so we are given a commandment: Remember the Sabbath. Rest is an essential enzyme of life, as necessary as air. Without rest, we cannot sustain the energy needed to have life. We refuse to rest at our peril—and yet in a world where overwork is seen as a professional virtue, many of us feel we can legitimately be stopped only by physical illness or collapse.

- Wayne Muller, Sabbath, p. 19

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By Jeff Gang, November 5, 2010 6:00 pm

A quote to begin the Sabbath:

“Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work (Exodus 20:8). Is it possible for a human being to do all his work in six days? Does not our work always remain incomplete? What the verse means to convey is: Rest on the Sabbath as if all your work were done. Another interpretation: Rest even from the thought of labor.

Abraham Joshua Heschel
The Sabbath, p. 32

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By Jeff Gang, October 29, 2010 6:00 pm

A quote to begin the Sabbath:

The great Swiss theologian Karl Barth wrote, ‘A being is free only when it can determine and limit its activity.’ By that definition, I have a hard time counting many free beings among my acquaintance. I know people who can do five things at once who are incapable of doing nothing. I know people who can decide what to do without being able to do less of it. Since I have been one of these people, I know that saying no is a more difficult spiritual practice than tithing, praying on a cold stone floor, or visiting a prisoner on death row.

Barbara Brown Taylor
An Alter in the World

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By Jeff Gang, October 22, 2010 6:00 pm

A quote to begin the Sabbath:

When I find a sabbath moment, hour, or day, it is like an island of calm in a hectic life.  It is like a sigh of relief after putting down a knapsack full of obligations, schedules, and deadlines. It is like an invitation to enjoy a vacation with my Divine Friend. It feels like being unshackled from whatever I am allowing to enslave me and getting a new perspective on life.

Don Postema
Catch Your Breath, p. 64

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By Jeff Gang, October 15, 2010 6:00 pm

A quote to begin the Sabbath:

The fact that society no longer protects a sabbath should not awaken either nostalgia for cultural homogeneity or desire for economic slowdown. Rather, it should alert all of us, whatever our faith, to become more mindful about opening the gift of time. If we are not mindful, the culture will not be mindful for us.

- Dorothy C. Bass
Receiving the Day, p. 59

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By Jeff Gang, October 8, 2010 6:00 pm

A quote to begin the Sabbath:

Just as God’s shabat completes the creation of the universe—by demonstrating that the proper response to the gifts of life is celebration and delight—so too should our Sabbaths be the culmination of habits and days that express gratitude for and joy in the manifold blessings of God.

- Norman Wirzba
Living the Sabbath, p. 13

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By Jeff Gang, October 1, 2010 6:00 pm

A quote to begin the Sabbath:

In the temptestuous ocean of time and toil there are islands of stillness where man may enter a harbor and reclaim his dignity. The island is the seventh-day, the Sabbath, a day of detachments from things, instruments and practical affairs as well as attachment to the spirit.

- Abraham Joshua Heschel

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By Jeff Gang, September 24, 2010 6:00 pm

A quote to begin the Sabbath:

The meaning of Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to the holiness of time.

- Abraham Joshua Heschel

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By Jeff Gang, September 17, 2010 6:00 pm

A quote to begin the Sabbath:

He was not able to rest until the seventh day because the creation was not completed until the end of the sixth day. The world, once it was made, was not complete in the sense that it was “done” or “finished.” It was complete because it was whole. Its maker had so filled it with living creatures so invested with his spirit and breath that it could keep on working, it could live on its own, while he rested. It was an active and ongoing wholeness. It was a wholeness that could adapt and change’ it could “evolve”, as you may say if you wish. That too.

-Wendall Berry
Foreward to Living the Sabbath
by Norman Wirzba, p. 12