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I remember very clearly the moment when I first glimpsed the possibility that my Christian faith might be a source of guidance through the time crunch that was my life. It was a Saturday night, and a few teachers were sitting around a dinner table. Tomorrow, we complained, would not be a happy day. Great piles of papers needed grading, and we had promised our students that we would return them on Monday. And so we whined, and as we whined our complaints gradually shaded into boasts. Someone listening in might have thought that we were competing to see who had to grade the most, who worked hardest, and who was most put upon by the demands of his or her job. That's when it hit me. "Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy." This was a commandment, one of the ten laws in the basic moral code of Christianity, Judaism, and Western civilization, and here we were, hatching plans to violate it. I could not imagine this group sitting around saying, "I'm planning to take God's name in vain"; "I'm planning to commit adultery"; "I think I'll steal something." Yes, we might occasionally break one of the other commandments ("You shall not covet" is an especially hard one for me), but if we did, we would hardly boast.Our approach to the Sabbath commandment was different. We had become so captivated by our work, so impressed by its demands on us and by our own indispensability, that it had simply vanished from our consciousness. We were in the habit of churchgoing, though our whines included a little complaint even about this. But I knew in my bones that we were a long way from keeping the Sabbath holy. I began to wonder what that meant and why it mattered.This "aha!" moment set me off on an exploration of the ancient practice of keeping Sabbath. Though I had never used the expression "keeping Sabbath" much, the practice was not altogether unfamiliar to me. The Sundays of my childhood, though not governed by strict rules, had the quiet atmosphere of a traditional Protestant Sabbath, complete with Sunday school, worship, a family meal, and quiet hours of reading or play. A great many things have changed since I was a child, however, and I knew that whatever Sabbath practice I might discover for today could not be shaped by nostalgia.When we keep a Sabbath holy, we are practicing, for a day, the freedom that God intends for all people. We are practicing life outside the frantic pace set by financial markets and round-the-clock shopping and entertainment venues. We are practicing independence from the forces of injustice. We are trying on a new way of life as we begin to allow our weeks to be changed in response to God's promises. We are practicing—pun intended. Like a novice learning to play a musical instrument, we may be off-key at times. It may be years before we are in harmony, and we will never get it perfect. But that need not stop us. Besides, stopping is less a problem than getting started.During the years since the Saturday night when my friends and I whined about our work, I have talked with many people who engage in this practice in one way or another, and I have tried taking a few steps of my own as well. The forms of Sabbath keeping that bring joy in creation, freedom from bondage, and the experience of new life will vary from household to household. Each person needs to consider what forms this practice can take in his or her life, and each local community, family, or institution needs to discern the life-giving shape of Sabbath within its own unique context. With this in mind, I humbly offer the following suggestions as resources for this process.

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March (Web-only) 2000, Vol. 44