How to Relax and Be Abnormal

A reminder to sabbath hard in spite of the world

We live in an age of anxiety. It’s partly why I started How to Begin with the chapter “There are Very Few Emergencies.” There is so much going on *all the time,* and it fries our motherboards so we can’t compute what is actually important and what is just noise, or perhaps important but not ours to deal with, or not ours to deal with right this moment. As my 14-year-old niece Ambrosia says, “That’s a problem for future me.” 

I’ve never been an anxious person myself. Driven, maybe. Alert. But not particularly anxious, unless I’m 30,000 feet up in a tin can and being shaken like a grain of rice in a homemade 4th-grade music class shaker. Then I’m climbing the walls and clawing my seatmate’s arm and hollering for a quadruple gin and tonic, but that’s just good common sense. 

But something is different lately. I find it harder to power down, as if I’m going to miss important marching orders, an early warning of the next Apocalypse in time to avert disaster. I can’t even identify what I’m anxious about, apart from the situation in Israel/Gaza, which leads me to give equal-opportunity-anxiety to refugees in Sudan, and the women in Afghanistan and Iran, and the children kidnapped from Ukraine by Russian troops because apparently Russia is depopulating–literal child-snatchers like I grew up fearing from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Maybe we should just call the world Shitty Shitty Bang Bang at this point. 

And there’s plenty of day-to-day nonsense right here in the American political universe, as we roll toward Election Day 2024 and what feels like a referendum on the sanity and survival of the entire human race. I can’t possibly sustain this level of vigilance for 355 more days. It’s going to be a long year, with a lot of unexpected twists and turns. Anything can happen between now and then, and the future is not yet written, whatever the latest poll says. I can read Heather Cox Richardson once a day and be a reasonably engaged citizen. I don’t need to doomscroll all day long. That will actually just exhaust me and trick me into thinking I’ve actually done something meaningful when I haven’t. I need to gird my loins for targeted political engagement when the time is ripe. And part of girding is actually resting really well when I can. 

I encountered this New Yorker comic recently and decided I need a refresher tutorial in relaxing, because relaxing is Not Normal these days: 

I’m doing some things right: particularly, learning how to sleep again, which involves making a glass of wine the exception instead of the rule, and taking exactly four of these gummies an hour before bedtime.  

But I’ve not been doing the thing I know will help the most: keeping a clean sabbath on Mondays. As a result, I have been grumpier and sadder, which does not serve me, the people around me, or whatever my role is in averting the End of Democracy.

This past Monday I tried to sabbath. It was a good day, but I still found myself turning to my phone again and again, as if there were an emergency I had to respond to. There was not. 

When Tuesday arrived, the start of my workweek, I felt like my body and brain had *just* remembered how to relax. But the sump pump of sabbath turned off and my inbox immediately flooded again.

Don't be like me! Listen to God. One of the first things the Bible advises humans to do is to rest  one day out of seven. God role-modeled this and later enshrined it in the Hebrew Bible, the longest and therefore meatiest of the 10 commandments, in fact. And note: a traditional Jewish sabbath is not just one day, but in fact 25 full hours, which I find delicious. So extra. 

You can define the terms of your sabbath: how tech-free to be, what activities are verboten and which are encouraged. In case you, too, have forgotten how to relax and be normal, here’s a short list of activities that Judaism *encourages* on the sabbath (annotated by me): 

• Reading and talking about sacred texts. What if you include good novels and poetry as sacred texts?

• Praying: Simone Weil calls prayer “absolutely unmixed attention.” What can you do that gets you into flow and crowds out all other thoughts, especially the anxious or to-do-list thoughts

And the 4 S’s: 

• Socializing with family and friends at a homemade meal

• Singing 

• Sex

• Sleeping

I’m gonna add to this list: LAUGHING. It might feel like a betrayal to laugh when the world is so Shitty Shitty Bang Bang. But honestly: the dread and anger and fear will be there waiting patiently for you when you’re done with sabbath and laughter. To laugh at times like this is to laugh at the Devil, and undermine him, throw him off his game. Let’s aim for what one of my favorite authors, the hilarious and profound R. Eric Thomas, calls 100% pure mirth. (btw he is coming to my church! Next! Sunday! I can hardly believe it! Don’t miss it online or in person!). 

Another important reason to sabbath is that it helps us focus on what is eternal and lasting, and regain perspective. Bill McKibben just wrote this Substack post about the Middle East, and how we can’t let human wars distract us from the opportunity to turn the tide on the climate crisis, which is the biggest threat to our survival, including the survival of both Gazans and Israelies. He says: 

“It’s impossible to look away; our humanness is defined in part by the short-term fascination with the violent and sad. Human nature has been conditioned by long experience to see the real fights as the ones between humans—that’s what Scripture is about, and history, and drama, with the natural world forming a backdrop. But quite suddenly that backdrop needs to be the foreground; the most essential fight on earth right now is between people and physics.” 

Sabbath helps everything in the foreground become the background, one day a week. It gives Nature a chance to curl little green tendrils around our feet and reclaim us as part of Creation. Spending one day a week–or better yet, part of every day in Nature–not only heals us somatically and spiritually, it reminds us what we love and want to protect and preserve. A 10-minute tree-hugging session will do more to restore and equip us for the most important fights than frittering our life-force on ceaseless worry and doom-loop workaholism.  

So: sabbath HARD, loves. And yes: I’m aware of the privilege inherent in taking sabbath. Scads of people never get to take a full day off each week. *And* that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be a goal for those of us who can, as part of the resistance to grind culture and a radical step toward normalizing sabbath for every human soul. Another weird byproduct of people who don’t know how to sabbath, besides generalized crabbiness disorder, is that we start resenting anyone else who rests. Don’t be that guy.

Sabbath is a radical act, especially for women and POC. Let’s undermine that “Growing up, I never knew a relaxed woman” meme obsolete for the next generation. Do it for them if you find it hard to do it for yourself.

Speaking of privilege: I set up our vacation rental in the Sierra foothills so that it would feel like home for everyone, a place where sabbath sense begins as soon as your feet cross the threshold. I go there as often as I can, which is not very often, but when I’m there, even work feels like rest. Someday, I hope to be in a position to let lots of people come rest there for free. 

Ok, it’s time to get on a plane for Portland, to visit my dear sister Sam and start making pies, snuggling with the 2-year-old, playing Legos with the 8-year-old and making fart jokes with the 14-, 17- and 21-year-olds. 

I hope and pray you use your pointy elbows to make some good sabbath for yourself this coming week. Aim for MORE than one day, or some sabbath every day. Escape your childhood home to take a walk with your spouse or sibling to gossip in a loving way about everyone else’s shenanigans. Watch one of these dog spa videos which should be included in the canon of sacred texts. When you don’t know what to do next, turn off your phone entirely and get in the shower and sing at the top of your lungs. Wake up early to pray and greet the sunrise alone, with the last piece of pecan pie as added incentive. Say God told you to do it.

Thanksgiving week recommendations: 

I’m making this Shaker lemon pie for our feast on Thursday. It’s zingy, chewy and wonderful. Start the lemons macerating tomorrow! 

Do yourself a favor and read R. Eric Thomas’ new book of essays, or just feast on his old politics-n-culture columns for Elle Magazine, then tune in First Church Berkeley’s livestream next Sunday!

And of course, soak up everything the Nap Bishop Tricia Hersey says and does~

Yum,
Molly

ps 2023 Alternative Advent & Christmas Calendar coming later this week! Get ready for more magick and relaxing!