The Two Paths

Let's consider this blog our guide and meeting place as we journey through 40 days of sabbath together.

Because this is a live blog, I am aware that many of us will be strangers to each other. If you feel comfortable, please send me a message telling me a little about yourself and letting me know you that have joined us. I would love to know who you are and what this experiment brings up for you. My desire is that over time we will become more like neighbors working through our Sabbath Experiment together and supporting each other.

I encourage your feedback and responses. They will add to our community and add to the experiment.

Participating in this anonymous Sabbath Survey will provide me with useful information as well as serve you as a starting place. At the end of the 40 days you will have an opportunity to fill out a follow up survey as a way to measure your understanding, growth, and spiritual development through this experiment.

There are two ways you can participate in this 40 day experiment. As you begin this process, you may find yourself drifting between both paths. That is completely up to you and okay with me.

Choose Your Own Adventure: For those longing for less structure or already feeling that their days are too full for assignments, you will be on the track I'm calling "Choose Your Own Adventure". Each week, I will post a theme for the week. This theme will be your guide as you develop your own rituals, actions, remembrances, reflections, and more. Though this will be much more free form than the other track, I won't leave you hanging. I will provide a list of prompts that you can use during the week. Each theme will build upon itself. So, while the theme changes each week you are meant to continue the practices you began in the week/s beforehand.

The only things I expect from you are that you follow the themes, checking in once a week, and keep a journal of some sort for yourself where you can reflect through writing or art throughout the process. Depending on your goals for this experiment and/or how you work, this journaling may occur once or twice a day, or once a week. If you hate journaling and it's just not the way you work, please commit yourself to some sort of beginning response to the Experiment, where you're starting, and some sort of closing reflection. I'll write a little more about that later too, as we get closer to the ending of the 40 day period. 

Daily Order: Some of us need structure. Some of us need a stronger external motivation to hold us accountable to a process. I'm one of those people. While I've gotten better at holding myself to daily commitments as I've gotten older, I've still never been able to take a daily vitamin consistently for longer than a week. But instead of dwelling on those little failures, I've also learned to lift up the things I have done.

This 40 Day Sabbath Experiment will include a big push to practice self love and self support. While we may not be able to completely eliminate the dramatic voice in our heads counting every "failure," we will add the practice of balancing, maybe even out-weighing the negative voice, with an awareness of what we are doing. I will say more about this as we journey on this Sabbath Experiment, but for now, just muse on that idea. How will it feel to go through a day with an awareness of what you've done, not just what you've failed to do? How will it feel to go through a day without assigning value judgments to what you are or are not doing?

I will especially encourage conversation and daily participation with those of you following the Daily Order path. This is important because sabbath is as much about the community as the individual. We will build our community together on this blog, as well as participate in our face to face communities off-line. If this is too personal a process for you to engage in publicly on this blog, please consider me your partner in this experiment and send me personal messages. 

Before I close this post, I want to make a few clarifying points you may be wondering about.

1. My grammar is not perfect. Or should that say, my grammar is imperfect? whatevz.
2. I will only capitalize sabbath when referring to the Sabbath in reference to the Sabbath of the Jewish and Christian religions. You'll also see it capitalized when referring to the Sabbath Experiment. I will do my best to keep this consistent as practice for the actual thesis I'll be writing, but as mentioned above, it may go the route of the daily vitamin...
3. I'll be figuring this out as I go, just like you. I've got some research and ideas in my back pocket, but everything I write here may not always make sense or be successful for this experiment. That's even more reason for you to respond and let me know how it's going for you. Let me know what you tweak and why, how it works and how it doesn't, all that good stuff.
4. This blog is about more than me and what I write. As you grow more involved, please respond to each other in respectful, honest, even vulnerable ways. I do not have all of the answers, but together, we may come to some powerful conclusions.
5. I am Christian, but this will not be a blog littered with verses, stripped of their context to make you feel good or special. I will not use the Bible to proof-text every single thing I write. In fact, I hope this blog is written in a way that anyone could find something useful, no matter their religious beliefs or non-beliefs. Just be aware that my Jesus following ways will probably show up in one way or another. 

If you have any other questions, please let me know. I'll do my best to respond in a helpful and timely manner.