COMMUNITY SENSE

WE WON'T PLANT CORN TODAY

Mark R. Wenger

The Martins have been farming the land here in Augusta County, Virginia, for generations. This past spring they had it especially rough. The weather is often quite dry, but not this year. It rained and rained. For weeks on end the ground was too wet to work. "I can’t ever remember having trouble getting the corn planted," one Martin remarked.

Late one week, finally, the sun came out for a couple days. By Sunday things looked promising. Some suggested, "Why not plant on Sunday? They’re calling for rain on Monday."

The reported reply from the senior Martin: "No, we won’t do that."

Sunday was for worship and rest, for doing only essential work. And that didn’t include planting corn, even though the sun was shining and rain was once more approaching.

If you go to the mall on a typical Sunday afternoon, you are liable to get run over. It’s one of the busiest shopping days of the week. Companies and factories run 24/7, and employees need to be scheduled for Sunday work. The motor of modern life races along without pause. All of which might make the Martins’ decision seem quaint and foolish.

But not for me. Not planting Sunday corn reflects a seasoned community wisdom.While not rational in strictly material terms, wisdom understands the meaning of work, activity, and commerce as discovered and enhanced only in a regular life rhythm that sets time aside for something completely different: rest and worship. If you don’t get rest and worship right, work and busyness aren’t right either.

Maybe this is the time to show my hand and explain the perspective I’ll try to drawn on as I contribute to DreamSeeker Magazine’s collection of "voices from the soul." Ever since I encountered it in graduate school, Aristotle’s concept of phronesis has intrigued me. Variously translated as "practical wisdom," "shared knowledge," or "sensus communis" (the community’s "sense" or wisdom), it refers to the gathered, seasoned knowledge gained by a people through actual life experience.

Phronesis is different from theoretical, technical, or intuitive knowledge; it is the sediment of shared knowledge laid down over time in a community. These strata accumulate as fertile soil for the better life.

Phronesis is not bedrock, rigid and immovable; it can change with the times. Nonetheless, it represents the underlying structures, values, habits, and ideas that have demonstrated human benefit. You could call it "common sense" in the truest sense. And that’s where the column title "Community Sense" comes from.

Which brings me back to the Martins’ not planting corn on Sunday—and the ancient wisdom of the Sabbath. No, I’m not arguing for a return of the "blue laws" and legislated Sabbath-keeping. Let the marketplace rule; just don’t let it rule us! A great gift Jews bestowed on the world is their one-day-in-seven set aside for rest, relationships, and worshipping God. Jewish folks have kept the Sabbath for millennia, but not, they claim, so much as the Sabbath has kept them.

Jesus affirmed the Sabbath was made to bless humanity. Many Christians call the first day of the week—the day of Christ’s resurrection—their Sabbath. But for busy people, the Sabbath as a sanctuary in time is becoming an inheritance lost. It is being squandered in the frenzy of perpetual movement, prowling the stores, surfing the Net, accomplishing one more task. And we are thus spiritually poorer and enslaved.

Tim McGuire, former editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, quoted an unnamed pastor in his June 2003 newspaper column. "Practicing Sabbath is proof that the world does not own us." McGuire mused, "That statement stopped me cold. The world does own me. Even on Sunday, I feel compelled to stay on the move. I owe my son a movie, or I want to watch that ballgame, or I need to catch up on some work I’ve put off."

I know what McGuire is talking about. Too many of us recognize the symptoms but don’t make the choices to break the tyranny of productivity and activity. Why? Because practicing the Sabbath can be hard. We are restless people, easily bored. We don’t want to waste time. And we’d like to think we’re smarter than our parents who put silly restrictions on us.

Meanwhile the payoff (a word money-driven folks love) of regular worship, meditation, and rest is not immediate—not like finishing a PowerPoint presentation. Plus everyone else is treating Sunday as just another day. Why not plant corn!

Because the best things in life are received, not achieved. Practicing the Sabbath is an ancient wisdom—a way of remembering God’s love and reveling in life’s sheer wonder and beauty.

Sabbath-keeping is akin to engaging in informal play in its suspension of pursuing fortune, power, and fame. Sabbath-keeping is lovemaking, conversing, hiking, reading, laughing with friends. Sabbath-keeping is much deeper than being entertained; it relishes time not captive to production pressure. Sabbath-keeping is slowing down to be expectantly available to God and neighbor.

In Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal and Delight in Our Busy Lives (Bantam/Doubleday, 2000), Wayne Muller tells this story: "Rabbi Levy saw a man running on the street and asked him, ‘Why do you run?’ The man replied, ‘I am running after my good fortune.’ Rabbi Levy tells him, ‘Silly man, your good fortune has been trying to chase you, but you are running too fast.’"

Many of us are running too hard, too long. We feel it in our bones and gnawing at our souls. Still, discovering the long-proven benefits of the Sabbath will take more than nodding our heads. Getting to know the Sabbath will require making decisions, drawing boundaries, and changing habits.

Some folks like to say the Sabbath is more than a day of the week; it’s an attitude and a way of life. I agree. But I hasten to add: Unless we take specific steps to set aside a Sabbath day as a sacred rhythm, each day tends to become like the rest—a generic brand of relentlessness. And the bloom of Sabbath is choked and forgotten.

But tended as a flower garden, gently and regularly, the Sabbath adds its beauty to the whole landscape of life. Sabbath doesn’t need to be Sunday, but it needs to be Someday!

In the short term it made no sense for the Martins to refrain from Sunday corn. Viewed across a lifetime, however, blessings beyond price flow from keeping the Sabbath. We call them spiritual values, relationship fruits, health benefits. Practitioners of Sabbath have preserved a key clue to the secret of attaining a priceless treasure. I am trying to learn from them.

—Mark R. Wenger, Waynesboro, Virginia, is copastor of Springdale Mennonite Church and Associate Director of the Preaching Institute, Eastern Mennonite Seminary. This is the first of his "Community Sense" columns, slated to be a semiregular feature of DreamSeeker Magazine.