This past Wednesday, I did something unusual for a workday: I skipped the emails, shouldered a 35-pound pack, and hit the Mount Falcon trail with friends. By the end of the day I’d done two hikes, shared beers and stories, taken a nap, and remembered what it feels like to actually be alive.
It struck me that this wasn’t just a day off. It was a glimpse of something deeper: Sabbath. Not as a rulebook, not as an obligation, but as resistance. A refusal to live like a machine, grinding without end.
In this week’s Staying Human, we explore The Politics of Rest: Sabbath as Solidarity in a World That Never Stops. We’ll look at how traditions frame Sabbath, why our culture resists it, and how reclaiming rest isn’t selfish … it’s revolutionary. Because when we rest, we remember we’re human. And when we fight for others to rest, we practice solidarity.
Rest isn’t retreat. Rest is resistance. Rest is how we stay human.
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The Whole Story
The gravel crunches under my tires as I pull into the east parking lot of the Mount Falcon trail system. The clock on my dashboard advances to 10:00am. It's a Wednesday morning, a workday, but work is, for once, the last thing on my mind. My friend Scott is already there with his wife, Gabby. Lacing up their hiking boots and using the frame of their car to stretch a bit before we hit the trail.
The night before, Scott and I had tossed around the idea of rucking, throwing some weight into a pack and seeing how the trail feels when your body is carrying a little more than usual. Scott, always prepared, shows up with an extra pack. Thirty-five pounds. He grins as he hands it to me like he's passing over a gift.
As I slip it on, he squints at me and asks: "Wait… is this your second workout today?"
I laugh. "Yeah. Hit the gym this morning. Luckily, it was mostly arms and chest. Legs are fresh. Ready to go."
We all laugh, and then we're off.
Sabbath as Blissful Discomfort
Five miles later, my shoulders ache from the straps and my calves are humming from the climb. I'm certain that my feet, always in barefoot Xero Shoes, will be sore the next day, not from the impact, but because I used the muscles in the soles of my feet with more vigor than I usually do. But all of it is a blissful discomfort, a delightful soreness that makes me feel alive. And my soul, it is strangely light. This isn't work. This is something else.
And it doesn't stop there. That night, there's another hike planned, this time sponsored by my gym, Gravity Haus, an outdoor adventure collective. We'll walk together, ruck free, laughing and trading stories on what I've deemed some active recovery. Afterwards, we head to a local microbrewery and share more stories over beers and Thai food.
Between the two hikes, I took a nap, just because I could. My body dropping into a deep sleep where dreams I forget the moment I wake up traverse my brain with the same vigor I'd moved in my morning workouts.
All in all, it's a day filled with laughter, sweat, and community.
And suddenly, this random Wednesday, a day that would usually be swallowed by email and productivity, feels like Sabbath.
Sabbath as Tradition
Sabbath. It's a word heavy with tradition. For many of us, Sabbath is either about prohibition or obligation.
On the Jewish side, Sabbath has often been framed by what you cannot do. Don't carry. Don't cook. Don't strike the match or drive the car or flick the light switch. A list of restrictions designed to protect the sacredness of the day.
On the Christian side, especially in the West, Sabbath got collapsed into Sunday worship. You go to church, you sit in a pew, maybe you avoid mowing the lawn if you grew up in a stricter household.
But both approaches, while connected to a beautiful devotion in their own contexts, often end up feeling either constricting or hollow, and in the process, turn something that should be restorative into just a different form of work.
Sabbath as Liberation
I was reminded of this when I think back to my friend Kurtley. We met while I was doing my doctoral work at Portland Seminary. Kurtley was a Seventh-day Adventist pastor, and if you know anything about Adventists, you know that Sabbath is central. Sundown Friday to sundown Saturday is carefully set aside. No work, no commerce, no distractions. Add to that the Adventist dietary restrictions. No pork, no shellfish, often a vegetarian lifestyle, and absolutely no alcohol. What you begin to see how the entire rhythm of life gets shaped by rules of what you can and cannot do.
But here's what struck me. Over time, Kurtley came to realize that what he had thought was faithfulness was really just more work. Sabbath wasn't rest. It was labor. All of those rules, all of that restriction, had become another way of trying to earn God's approval rather than simply receiving God's grace.
One night after one of our doctoral intensives, I took Kurtley to a bar. He decided, for the first time in his life, to order a beer. And then he did something even bigger. He ordered ribs. Pork ribs.
When the plate arrived, he picked one up, took a bite, and his whole face lit up. His body almost vibrated with delight. He was so excited he pulled out his phone, called his wife, and told her, "I'm eating pork ribs and they are amazing!"
In that moment, Sabbath broke open for him. It wasn't about proving himself to God by what he denied. It was about receiving the good gifts of God with gratitude and joy.
Reimagining Rest
So what if we remixed Sabbath, making it not about less, but about more?
Not about restriction, but invitation.
Not about empty ritual, but full humanity.
The word Shabbat literally means "to cease." But notice what God ceases from in Genesis. God brings to close his creative act of naming and giving purpose to everything in creation. The heavens above and the earth below. The depths of the sea and the bountiful land. And of course the living creatures that animate all of it. Then God stops, not because God is tired, but to delight. To savor. To call creation good. The Creator rests not out of exhaustion but out of joy.
Sabbath as Freedom
Later, in Exodus, Sabbath becomes a liberation story. The former slaves who'd spent centuries working seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year are told: "You will stop. You will not grind seven days a week. You will not make bricks without straw forever. You will have a rhythm of resistance."
Sabbath says: You are not a machine built to produce.
Sabbath says: You are not a consumer built to spend.
Sabbath says: You are beloved. Whole. Worthy of delight.
The Psalmist echoes this in Psalm 23:
He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.
This isn't just rest, it's re-creation. Soul restoration.
Rest Across Traditions
This isn't unique to Abrahamic traditions. Across the world, wisdom traditions have understood the necessity of sacred pause.
Buddhist Mindfulness
In Buddhism, the practice of mindfulness offers a kind of ongoing Sabbath. Rather than setting aside a specific day, Buddhism invites practitioners into present-moment awareness throughout their lives. The Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh teaches what he calls "mindful consumption," being fully present with what we eat, what we read, what we watch, and how we spend our time. He writes, "When we can slow down and really enjoy our food, our life and our health, we can see the true face of the world."
This mindfulness extends to movement practices like walking meditation, where each step becomes a kind of prayer, a Sabbath rhythm that reminds us we are more than our productivity.
Indigenous Wisdom
Indigenous traditions often build rest and re-creation directly into their cultural rhythms. Many Native American communities incorporate ceremonial cycles that honor changing seasons, with periods of both activity and rest built into their calendar. The Pueblo peoples of the Southwest, for example, observe days of silence and prayer following major ceremonies, allowing the community to integrate spiritual experiences.
Taoist Non-Action
The Taoist concept of wu-wei, often translated as "non-doing" or "effortless action," echoes Sabbath wisdom. It's not about doing nothing, but about acting in harmony with the natural flow of life rather than forcing or striving. The Taoist sage understands that sometimes the most powerful action is non-action, allowing space for natural processes to unfold.
Modern Reflections
Even secular philosophers have recognized this need. Philosopher Josef Pieper, in his book Leisure: The Basis of Culture, argues that true leisure isn't idleness but a receptive attitude of celebration and wonder. He writes that leisure is "an attitude of contemplative celebration" that stands in stark contrast to the "world of work" dominated by effort and achievement.
The wisdom of Sabbath even echoes through the spiritual but not religious. Poet Mary Oliver whispers a Sabbath truth in her poem The Summer Day, where she describes spending hours observing a grasshopper, wandering through fields, and kneeling in grass. The poem celebrates the kind of attentiveness that Sabbath invites, a day devoted not to productivity but to presence.
In the poem, Oliver moves from careful observation of nature to profound questions about existence itself. She asks, "Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear?" These are not just scientific inquiries but spiritual ones, the kind of wondering that emerges when we step out of urgency and into eternity.
Oliver's poem culminates in perhaps the most beautiful Sabbath question of all:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Sabbath is the practice of answering that question, not with productivity or perfection, but with play, presence, and delight.
The Body's Wisdom
I want to linger here for a moment on what happens in our bodies, minds, and spirits when we dare to embrace this reimagined Sabbath. Not as religious performance, but as life-restoring practice.
Our bodies know things our productivity-obsessed culture wants us to forget. They remember what it means to be fully human.
When we step off the hamster wheel of constant production and consumption, our nervous systems begin to tell a different story. The parasympathetic system, that sacred part of us designed for rest and restoration, finally gets to speak.
The science here isn't cold; it's a love letter to our forgotten humanity. When we practice true Sabbath, stress hormones like cortisol begin to recede like an outgoing tide. Blood pressure softens. Breath deepens. Our immune systems, so often compromised by the relentless pace of modern life, remember their strength.
This isn't luxury. This is survival.
The Mind's Secret Garden
Our brains, these miraculous organs we've reduced to productivity machines, have a secret life that blossoms in the spaces between doing. Neuroscientists call it the default mode network, brain regions that light up when we stop focusing on external tasks.
In our culture's twisted logic, this mental space feels like wasteland. But it's actually fertile ground where:
Memories consolidate into wisdom
Creativity sparks unexpected connections
Solutions to problems emerge unbidden
Our sense of self and meaning has room to breathe
The great irony: our most brilliant insights rarely come when we're grinding. They arrive in the shower, on a walk, or staring at the ceiling during a nap. Sabbath isn't unproductive; it's differently productive in ways capitalism cannot measure or monetize.
The Medicine of Connection
Those beers and that laughter after the hike weren't just pleasant extras. They were medicine. When we gather without agenda, not networking, not producing, just being, our bodies release oxytocin, that beautiful bonding hormone that whispers: you belong here.
Study after study confirms what indigenous cultures have always known: humans need community not just for practical survival but for soul survival. Meaningful connection reduces everything from heart disease to depression to mortality itself.
Yet how many of us have replaced true connection with the hollow substitute of social media likes? Sabbath calls us back to tables and trails, to conversations without screens, to the holy ground of being truly seen.
The Awakening of Awe
Beyond the measurable benefits lies something science struggles to quantify but wisdom traditions have always honored: the awakening of awe.
Whether standing beneath mountain peaks or sitting in sacred silence, these moments of transcendence connect us to something larger than ourselves. The research names this "self-transcendence," but the experience feels more like remembering who we really are.
These encounters with wonder aren't spiritual luxuries. They're ecological necessities that reshape how we relate to each other and to the earth itself. People who experience awe regularly show greater compassion, less entitlement, and more care for the natural world.
In a time of climate crisis and social fracture, couldn't we use more of that?
Embodied Wisdom
The truth is, our physical selves aren't machines to be optimized but gardens to be tended. When I let my body move on that trail, carrying weight and finding rhythm, I wasn't just exercising. I was remembering what it means to be an embodied creature.
The strain in my shoulders, the steady pace of footsteps, the breath moving in and out, this wasn't punishment but communion with the body's ancient knowledge. And later, the sweetness of that nap wasn't laziness but necessary integration, the body's way of weaving exertion into strength.
In a culture that alternates between worshipping and punishing the body, Sabbath offers a third way: honoring the body as worthy of care simply because it exists, not because of what it produces or how it appears.
Nature's Rhythm
Nature itself practices Sabbath. Trees don't produce leaves year-round; they shed them to conserve energy. Fields must lie fallow to regain fertility. Rivers pause in still pools before continuing their journey. Even the Earth keeps seasons of dormancy before renewal.
What we call burnout, nature recognizes as extinction. When we push ecosystems beyond their capacity for regeneration, they collapse. The same happens to our bodies, communities, and spirits when we deny them necessary Sabbath.
Perhaps the deepest ecological wisdom is this: nothing in nature produces constantly. Creation itself began with divine rest on the seventh day, not as an afterthought but as the culmination. What if we understood Sabbath not as withdrawal from productivity but as participation in the sacred rhythm that sustains all life?
Radical Love
And at its core, Sabbath practice is radical love embodied. It's loving ourselves enough to honor our limitations. It's loving our communities enough to be present rather than productive. It's loving future generations enough to model sustainable existence.
When we practice Sabbath, we're making a declaration: I am worthy of love and care simply because I exist, not because of what I produce. And if that's true for me, it must be true for every other being.
Our capacity to love expands when we're not depleted. The compassion we cultivate in rest becomes the foundation for justice work that sustains rather than exhausts. Sabbath doesn't just prepare us to love better; it is love in action, love for our bodies, our communities, our planet, and the sacred rhythm that holds us all.
In other words, embracing Sabbath is holy ground.
But here's the rub: our culture doesn't want you to Sabbath.
The Consumption Treadmill
Capitalism runs on endless consumption. If you're not producing, you should be consuming, because over-production demands over-consumption to make sure that the system keeps growing. Work harder, buy more, scroll longer, binge faster. Even our "leisure" gets monetized. Concert tickets, vacations, streaming subscriptions, all wrapped in the logic of consumption.
We talk about wanting experiences over things, but then we turn our experiences into things as the social media posts and the relics prove we were there, but our souls show no sign of transformation from what we encountered on the journey.
Even when we rest, we often don't recreate. We numb. We medicate. We escape. We collapse.
But Sabbath is not collapse. Sabbath is creation renewed.
The Fisherman's Wisdom
Let me share a story that captures this Sabbath wisdom perfectly:
A capitalist was walking along the beach when he spotted a fisherman lounging by his small boat, enjoying the sunshine.
"Why aren't you out fishing?" the capitalist asked.
"I've already caught enough for today," the fisherman replied.
"But why don't you catch more?"
"And what would I do with more fish?"
"Well, you could sell the extra fish and make more money. Then you could buy a bigger boat to catch even more fish."
"And why would I do that?"
"So you could hire people to fish for you and expand your operation. Eventually, you'd have a fleet of fishing boats and a processing plant. You'd be rich!"
"And then what would I do?" the fisherman asked.
"Then you could retire, move to a small coastal village, sleep late, fish a little, play with your children, take siestas with your wife, and spend evenings drinking wine and playing guitar with your friends after an afternoon relaxing on the beach."
To all this the fisherman smiled and replied, "What do you think I'm doing now?"
A World Opposed to Sabbath
So what happens in a world that doesn't want you to Sabbath? The answer differs dramatically depending on where you stand.
The Illusion of Scarcity
For those with some level of economic stability, the obstacle isn't actual lack but manufactured fear. The system convinces us there isn't enough, or that if we pause our productivity, what we have will vanish. This artificial scarcity becomes the stick that drives us forward when the carrots of consumption no longer satisfy.
We don't keep working because we need more. We keep working because we're afraid of having less. Less than we have now. Less than our neighbors. Less than we believe we deserve.
These invisible yet powerful forces keep us chained to our desks, afraid to claim the rest our bodies need. The voices whisper: If you stop, you'll fall behind. If you rest, someone else will take your place. If you aren't producing, what value do you have?
Real Scarcity in a World of Plenty
But for others, the barrier to Sabbath isn't psychological, it's painfully real. While some battle with artificial scarcity, many genuinely struggle with true deprivation. Families forced to choose between medicine, food, or keeping the lights on. Workers putting in full-time hours yet unable to afford rent. Parents skipping meals so their children can eat.
It's the cruel paradox of our age: While we produce more than ever before in human history, this abundance isn't equally distributed. More than enough food exists globally, yet people starve. More than enough houses stand empty, yet homelessness rises. More than enough wealth has been generated, yet economic insecurity spreads.
The Brutal Truth
For both groups, though in profoundly different ways, we sacrifice Sabbath at the altar of security that never arrives. We trade presence for a future that keeps receding. We push our bodies beyond their limits, not for abundance but from fear or necessity.
And that's when we burn out. Break down. Our bodies give us what our minds refuse to concede.
The truth is brutal but liberating: In a system designed to keep us forever insecure, be that insecurity real or imagined, no amount of productivity will ever feel like enough. The only way out is to step off the hamster wheel entirely. To recognize the lie and refuse it.
But this truth comes with an uncomfortable recognition: for those trapped in actual scarcity, stepping off isn't a choice they can freely make. Which is why we need Sabbath solidarity.
The Privilege of Rest
Truth be told, my ability to take a random Wednesday and string together gym time, a five-mile ruck, a nap, and a brewery hike with friends is not something accessible to everyone. It’s a privilege, possible because I'm self-employed, which is made possible right now because I live in my parents' old house which dramatically lowers my monthly expenses. That means my schedule flexes in ways many people's do not. And I recognize that.
I approach this with deep humility. My ability to practice Sabbath is a gift that many cannot access due to economic necessity, caregiving responsibilities, or systemic injustice. And while there could be an impulse to feel guilt because of the privilege, it is far better for everyone if I approach it with a sense of responsibility.
From Rest to Resistance
Those of us with "Sabbath privilege," our response must be twofold: fully embracing our own rest while actively working to expand that possibility for others.
First, practice Sabbath without apology. When privileged people reject rest out of misplaced solidarity, nobody benefits. Your Sabbath practice physically embodies the world as it should be for everyone. So what if the most radical thing we could do in a world bent on extraction isn't to work harder for justice but to embody the world we're fighting for?
What if rest isn't retreat but resistance?
What if joy isn't frivolous but foundational?
What if Sabbath isn't selfish but revolutionary?
Our bodies know the truth. They've been telling us all along, in the language of exhaustion and illness, anxiety and disconnection. Now it's time to listen, not just for our own sake, but for the healing of our common home.
So receive this gift gratefully while acknowledging its unequal distribution.
Sabbath as Solidarity
Second, leverage your privilege with intention:
Use your rested body and mind to advocate for living wages and humane working conditions
Create Sabbath spaces that welcome others who might not otherwise access rest
Support mutual aid networks that ease burdens for overworked communities
Vote for policies that expand workers' rights and economic justice
Share resources that make rest more accessible to others
This isn't about saviorism but solidarity. Our individual Sabbath practices exist within social systems that determine who gets to rest and who doesn't. The goal isn't to feel guilty but to create conditions where Sabbath becomes possible for more people.
That means Sabbath is never just personal; it's profoundly political.
Reclaiming Our Humanity
So let’s show the world what it’s like to reclaim our humanity in a world that wants to strip it away, and then fight to make that reclamation possible for everyone, however they choose to Sabbath. Be it:
rucking through the woods with friends.
enjoying beer and laughter after a hike.
taking a nap in the middle of the day with no apology.
enjoying art, music, sex, play, joy, connection.
Whatever form it takes, Sabbath is the Spirit whispering: This is what you were made for.
It's about filling your soul.
Sabbath is about staying human.
Practices For Sabbath and Solidarity
Here are three practices to help you both step into sabbath and solidarity. Whether your day only allows for a 60-second reclamation reflection, your week a one-hour resistance ritual, or you find yourself ready for a full on rebellion against a world that assaults your humanity, I have something for you.