RECLAIMING THE SABBATH

I used to be very critical of those opposed to letting businesses open on Saturdays and Sundays. So backward! So Stone Age! Of course, as one grows older, one learns to appreciate nuance and with it, the ways of old… It is astonishing that eons before the Blackberry, shepherds baking in the hard clay of Middle East hills saw the wisdom, nay, the necessity to shut off every seventh day. What could THEY have been possibly stressing over?!?! The need to shut down is human. Regardless of your religion, discounting whether you believe in the Good Book, I’ll urge you in this column to reclaim that Seventh Day. (Don’t you think that ‘Seventh Day’ sounds rather apocalyptic? Behold the bad movie with aliens and maybe even – fangs! So – instead of seventh day, I’ll use ‘Sabbath.’ I understand that the tradeoff is sounding  like a fundamentalist nut. But never mind.) The Sabbath is essentially about rest. Religion and Politics and all that crap came after it. For the Modern Man, the introduction of the Sabbath in your life should be viewed as reclaiming sanity. It’s the answer to the loss of control in your world. Think of the Sabbath as checking your compass on that first, long hike. Or for those of you who have not hiked lately – checking the GPS as you’re trying a new route. Over the next few posts, I’ll go over step-by-step instructions on how to reclaim the Sabbath day. Sad that we need instructions to reclaim a day of rest. But so it goes.

THOUGHTS ON SMELL

Her son is 5. He is watching a children’s movie on tape. She smells his hair. It smells of skin and sweat but in a sweet way, the way that only children’s hair can smell. He is conscious of her sniffing his head but he does not complain. This will stop soon. He will become too big. He will be more demanding in becoming separate from her. That is fine. That is good. For now, she keeps parting his hair this way and that. Smelling his scalp. Being conscious of the moment. Trying to encode the moment. Package it. So that one day when they’re sitting across from each other, and he has become a completely separate being, she can unwrap this moment. Carefully. So the smell of memory does not evaporate. She can sit there, across from him and listen to the platitudes of the day. And remember the 5 year-old on this weekend day.

This is Me: Autumn 2007

Hello world!

My name is Sara Laor. I wanted to share my thoughts and emotions about work, family and achieving Serenity @ Home. It seems to me we have lost both (… lost both the concept of Serenity and the concept of Home). Hopefully over time this will bring some insights from my life to yours. And from your comments and reactions, some insights back to me. Thank you.