Holy Leisure

Slide 1: Holy Work and Holy Leisure Oblate Retreat Saint Paul’s Monastery 29 September 2007 Sister Edith Bogue, OSB

Slide 2: Leisure In modern society, leisure is pursued to balance the stresses of work and overwork.

Slide 3: Time off  Common phrase for time devoted to leisure  Derivation: prison sentence  Work is unpleasant, so we seek “ time off” from it  Time off is limited  Therefore precious  S eek intensity of leisure  Most recently, “ extreme” as a descriptor  Indicates division of life, attempt to balance rather than integrate aspects of living

Slide 4: Relaxation  Healthy impulse: release tension  S ometimes activity, sports  S ometimes rest, sleep  Duration may be very brief  Change of routine  Time to relax is different from work  Even when it happens at work  Workplace gyms, massage, break rooms  B alance rather than integration

Slide 5: E ntertainment  S omething which captures our interest in a pleasurable way, and which passes the time  M ay involve other people M ay be solitary  Directed from outside  Purpose is often vague  No inherent moral code  In society, must compete with other sources  E volves to keep audience

Slide 7: V acation  L iterally: to leave, vacate  S aint B enedict, distressed by the student life in Rome, took a permanent vacation by fleeing to a hillside cave.  Can be a time to revitalize ourselves  Live a more integrated lifestyle  A ctive entertainment and relaxation along with manual labor  Commercially: special entertainment that requires a lot of work in preparation

Slide 8: Pleasure  Natural component of everyday life  from food, drink, music, events  from companionship & family  from many individual sources (reading, hobbies)  Tends to have external source  Responds to an appetite  can become a craving  appetites can take over = addictions  M ore often sought & found outside of work

Slide 9: Holy Leisure Leisure is a form of stillness that is the necessary preparation for accepting reality. Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture

Slide 10: The L ilies of the Field  Jesus reminds us of the utter leisure of nature  Unplanned, unsought  B eautiful beyond human capability to create  Does not tell us to stop working or doing  B ut to stop worrying  No need to seek  L eisure is openness to God’s work in us

Slide 11: The Holy Rule  Regulation of time  Order rather than chaos  Rest is regularly scheduled  Lectio gets the best time of the day, not the leftovers  Prayer regulates work  Regulation of roles  Jobs are described  Personalities prescribed  A lignment of goals

Slide 12: The Contemplative Gaze  A ristotle – eudaimonia – happiness or thriving  Exercise of vital faculties according to their design  Not achievable by human effort, a divine gift  B ut we can train and prepare for it through a life lived well with time for contemplation  Thomas A quinas – beatific vision – only in heaven  Hints of it here on earth, through life well-lived  We live our lives in preparation and training  John Paul II – Fides et Ratio – culture & faith  Culture of skepticism of truth, seeking for self  Need to recover the contemplative gaze - leisure

Slide 14: Festival Time  The heart of leisure consists in “ festival”  Relaxation  Effortlessness  A scendency of being at leisure over mere function  L eisure then derives its force from the source of festival and celebration  Worship  When religion is displaced, we have secular worship  Worship is to time as the temple is to space

Slide 15: Resting in God  Leisure cannot be done as a means to something else  Even rescuing the culture  Even reaching happiness  The celebration of God’s praises cannot be realized unless it takes place for its own sake  “ In leisure [we] overcome the working world of the work-day not through uttermost exertion but as in withdrawal from such exertion” (Pieper p. 60)

Slide 16: Wholly L eisure  “ God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work he had done in creation”  “ Come unto me all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.”  “ A sabbath rest still remains for the people of God. A nd whoever enters into God’s rest, rests from his own works as God did from his. Therefore, let us strive to enter that rest.” (Hebrews 4:9-11)