Sabbatical - What's in a name?

I have been doing some thinking, reading and meditating on the concept of Sabbatical over the past few months. This has been part of my own personal Getting Ready before we left the US, and part of my process now that we are here in Oaxaca.

The first thing that was helpful was watching the TED Talk, "The Power of Time Off" by Stefan Sagmeister. The speaker has developed a practice of taking a full year Sabbatical every 7 years. He says he wasted the first one for lack of structure, and did much better on his second one by having a weekly schedule, like the ones we had back in school. I took this advise to heart, and came up with a rough plan for my time, though I will say life does not always cooperate with your plans and theories. Still, I find it helpful in making sure my time is spent intentionally, not eaten up by email and FB. :-)

The second thing that was helpful for me in Getting Ready was that Travis Norvell (our pastor at Judson Church in Minneapolis) loaned me a couple of books on the subject.   "The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man" by Abraham Joshua Heschel gave me a view of how the Sabbath is observed and experienced from a Jewish Rabbi's point of view. Heschel refers to the Sabbath as more than just a day to relax in preparation for another day of work, but as a taste of eternity. He says that the coming of the Sabbath is greeted ceremoniously as a bride is greeted on her wedding day.  "Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time" by Dorothy C. Bass explored the practical, modern aspects of practicing a weekly Sabbath. She points out that Sabbath is about saying "no" to say "yes" (not a new idea), and that the saying "no" is at times not easy. Sarah and I are trying to clear away time on Sundays to spend together doing nothing much except taking leisurely walks and talking.

El Pedregal ("The Rocky Field"),
the permaculture site where I am volunteering this winter.

A Sabbatical to me is different from a vacation. A vacation is a break from work where you maybe get out of town, rest, do as little as you like, indulge yourself, and then come back to work, hopefully refreshed and ready to go. A Sabbatical, on the other hand, is not just a break FROM, it is a break TO - in order TO do something. We have been to Oaxaca twice before on vacation, and we had a great break FROM work, sleeping in, eating in restaurants, seeing the sights, trying out our Spanish. But this time we are here more TO do things - TO volunteer, TO improve our Spanish, TO meet people and in my case TO explore new vocational possibilities. We expect this Sabbatical to to change us, not just refresh us.

My commute.

The parents of some of Hannah's friends came to visit for "Dia de Muertos", and they used a term to describe what we are doing that I had not yet heard ..."Mid-Life Gap Year"…but I am not sure it fits as well for me as Sabbatical. I am certainly in "Mid-Life", so that fits. But to borrow the term "Gap Year" from high school kids who delay starting college doesn't really work for me. First, the kids presumably know what they are going to do the following year, maybe even where they are going. And I have to admit the suspicious parent in me thinks they are just trying to delay having to do the work required of a college student, and to prolong their childhood dependency on their parents another year! So I guess for me the word Sabbatical has weight and power, whereas "Gap Year" sounds like something missing from your resume.

Whatever you call it, this is an experience that everyone should be able to have, that everyone deserves, but few ever get. I think everyone should be given a year off when they turn 50. Few are "given" a Sabbatical, but I encourage anyone who can pull it off to "take" one.

Just a friendly reminder that
nobody lives forever