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One Sunday at noon, my twelve-year-old daughter received a very appealing invitation. A friend, and the friend's parents, wanted her to go along for an afternoon at the mall. Sunday afternoons are relaxed times for us, and our kids often get together with friends. But the mall? As my daughter knew, I don't shop on Sundays; stepping out of the rat race of consumerism is an important part of my Sabbath practice. I said that she couldn't go."But Mom, I won't buy anything," she pleaded. "I'll just look." When I did not give in to her pleas, she stormed for a few minutes in her disappointment, first at me and then alone. But after a little while, we had one of our best conversations ever. What kinds of feelings are stirred up in us when we "just look" at the displays at the mall? We start to want things, but do we need them? Is this wanting good for us and for others? If we were poor, how would we experience the mall?Perhaps my daughter will remember our conversation in the future, during a weekday shopping trip. She and I will not be withdrawing from contact with the mall by any means. I hope, however, that we can help each other visit it equipped with a degree of spiritual independence from its gaudy promises. It is this sort of independence that keeping Sabbath can help us form. Although I have yet to develop the independence for which I yearn, I know that there are a number of needless things that I never got around to buying simply because I would not shop on Sundays.This episode set me to thinking about all the ways in which time and possessions tug against each other. In The Overworked American, Juliet Schor describes the treadmill of working and spending on which we scurry: work more, buy more, then work more again. And the work hours expended for the purpose of paying off credit-card balances represent only a fraction of the time we give to our possessions. Shopping, maintaining, storing, fueling, fixing: these, too, absorb hour after hour. Moreover, a Sabbath pattern of resisting consumerism awakens the parts of ourselves that cannot be nourished by possessions. When these are awake, the whole week looks different.

Abraham Heschel tells the story of a pious man who took a stroll in his vineyard on the Sabbath. He saw that his fence was broken through and decided that he would come back the next day to fix it. That evening, however, he changed his mind: "Since the thought of repairing the fence occurred to me on the Sabbath I shall never repair it." His resolve arose from an ancient interpretation of the Sabbath commandment: "Rest even from the thought of labor."Trying to take Sabbath rest this far would be difficult, particularly for those of us who find that the more we try not to think about something, the more it is on our mind. But there are ways to structure at least part of this story's wisdom into our own Sabbath keeping. We can refrain from activities that we know will summon worry, activities like paying bills, doing tax returns, and making lists of things to do in the coming week.On Sundays, one wise woman deliberately refrains from thinking about people who make her angry, practicing letting go of the slights and grudges that accumulate over the course of any week. And we can cultivate those forms of engagement with nature, ideas, and other people that really get our minds off of the week ahead. For my son that means shooting hoops with a friend, and for me, watching him do so.Unfortunately, it is often the church itself that habitually misses the wisdom of Heschel's story by filling Sunday afternoons with church committee meetings. "We will have a short service today so that we can get straight to the business meeting," one preacher announced. Of course it is difficult to find time to meet during the week, but part of the point of Sabbath is to cause shifts in weekday priorities. In many churches, it is the generous people who serve on the committees who most need to be reminded of this. Resisting the temptation to meet on Sunday would help them say to one another, "God intends rest and liberation for you, during at least one-seventh of your time." Eating, playing, and taking delight in nature and one another in the hours after worship, however, would be wonderful ways for congregations or groups within them to keep Sabbath.

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March (Web-only) 2000, Vol. 44