I am working today. Sunday trading! Breaking the sabbath. We are in the island of Bute, selling pottery at an art fair. All around me are people meandering through their version of sabbath, browsing, chatting, buying things that are not about need.
I have tussled with this aspect of how I now make a living. In order to slow down, to live more simply, we sell art. What value has art?
Then I find myself in a conversation with someone who is weeping after reading some words on one of our pieces. We talk about the sweet pain of grief, how the words contain and give space for this. How the pot hold it. How objects become conduits for meaning.
I hope my sabbath breaking is forgiven.
It’s ‘funny’. I went to the supermarket today and, well, I guess it’s my upbringing, but I still feel that, even if it isn’t ‘wrong’, it’s not ideal. But for what you’re doing, there is something different. Perhaps it’s about choice. That is, you choose to do this. Some people, perhaps those staff in the supermarket, have less choice.
I remember when I was a ‘proper’ Christian watching people doing the post-church nervous shuffle round Sainsbury’s! Obviously I was doing the same. I do think the privilege and principle of sabbath is important though… building in time to rest. Different seasons of our lives seem to make this more or less possible though, huh?
I remember when I was a ‘proper’ Christian watching people doing the post-church nervous shuffle round Sainsbury’s! Obviously I was doing the same. I do think the privilege and principle of sabbath is important though… building in time to rest. Different seasons of our lives seem to make this more or less possible though, huh?