Writers very often need to be away from a place to write about it well. Ibsen wrote his Norway plays when he was living in Italy. Willa Cather wrote her prairie novels when she was living in New York City. James Joyce wrote his Dublin novel and Dublin short stories when he was living in Paris. Mark Twain wrote about Missouri when he was living in Hartford. Walt Whitman wrote about life outside and they found out recently he barely left his room. That’s called critical distance or something. You have to have it.
– Annie Dillard

I left our home recently under the guise of a family trip, but what I was really hoping for was some “critical distance.” By which I meant, I suppose, that I would suddenly see all the practical answers I needed for life by getting away far enough: does it matter that my child learns an instrument? Are our calendars already filling up too fast? What changes in work hours should I make in the fall? 

I got no answers. Mostly I just suffered through a period of disorientation that I now recognize as withdrawal: where, I wondered, are all the Asians and Tesla’s? Am I the only one wearing yoga pants outside the gym? Is there no boba to be found?

Once that wore off, I did realize one thing: the world did not stop because we took a break from normal life. That may sound like a pompous thing to say, but I began to see that I live as if I run the world. I live as if it is up to me to make sure my kids turn out alright. I live as if it’s up to me to generate ideal surgical outcomes, to train a model canine companion, to maintain the house and build relationships. Moreover, I tend to run that world at a high level of acuity—and I don’t mean acuity as in intellectual or visual—I mean acuity in the medical sense. I live as if everything is urgent, as if our lives are at stake and I must constantly optimize to achieve the most we can with the resources we have.

I began to realize all of this was both absurd and self-imputed. Here we were, miles away from home. I was not multi-tasking or trying to get everything done by noon. I was not answering emails. The world went on. And in this new world, I observed my children a little more. I gave myself permission to go sit somewhere by myself. I did things more slowly, one thing at a time, and what needed to get done still got done.

I came back determined to live a bit differently: not in content so much as pace, and manner. The word that makes sense to me in describing this is one I heard from a friend: Sabbathly. I want to live as if I am not running the world. As if it is not up to me. I know this to be true, but some toxic mixture of culture, background and personality tends to blur that reality.

This is not strictly Sabbath, but more of a breathing in of the Sabbath-spirit into the most granular elements of life. It’s working without the inner restlessness that drives me to prove something through my work. It’s allowing the space between diagnosis and resolution to draw out, without rushing to make progress. It’s releasing the need for immediate or visible recognition or results. It’s quelching the impulse to optimize in favor of recognizing God’s sovereign, active, and powerful work in every situation—a work that requires its own kind of space, attention, and sometimes sheer time.

Abraham Heschel writes, “We are within the Sabbath rather than the Sabbath being within us.” This is not a state of mind I try to pull out of myself; this is a reality that I am either living into or not. It is a truth I am either functionally believing, or slipping further and further away from: the truth that God holds the world together, not I.