Sometimes you’ve got to let the fields go fallow.
The times when rest is needed.
. . . but during the seventh year let the land lie unplowed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what is left.
— Exodus 23:11. NIV.
It’s day eight of my writing challenge and I can feel it.
Days 1–7 were great. The articles flowed smoothly. Yesterday it was fun to write but by the time I hit submit, I could feel something in me plummet.
The inner world came through and said, “I’m tapped out, go easy on me.”
I don’t think it has helped that I’m staying up later to get all this done.
Honestly, this is why I haven’t done a challenge like this before. I really do believe it’s necessary to let the mind rest and process.
It’s not a new concept. The Torah wrote about this need thousands of years ago.
Hence the above quote which follows the law about treating foreigners well. . .
Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners because you were foreigners in Egypt.
— Exodus 23:10. NIV.
We don’t always follow the truths we say give our lives meaning. Maybe we’re too tired.
It takes space and time to let ourselves sink into truth, to feel it out from the inside, to breathe life into truth, and give it life in our actions.
It takes moments of contemplating away from the daily grind.
As far as anthropologists know the command to let the fields go fallow was a new approach to agriculture.
If you look at most of the middle east the once lush river valleys known as the cradle of civilization have turned to desert.
Over farming and salinization are often listed as part of the cause.
Ancient environmental degradation practiced by the world’s first empires.
Allowing fields to fallow, taking a year to let the land rest, helps to reduce the impact of farming on the environment as well as allowing the soil to recover some of its nutrients.
It’s all about restoring the balance.
The Torah is filled with laws about restoring balance in systems.
Every 7x7 years is the year of Jubilee where debts are to be forgiven and the land is redistributed to all people.
Like the seventh year of rest, human obsession with financial progress and productivity is checked by a need to let things settle and restore balance.
Yang and activity gives over to Yin and stillness.
On a smaller scale, Shabbat is the day of rest.
Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest, and so that the slave born in your household and the foreigner living among you may be refreshed.
— Exodus 23:10. NIV.
We might bristle at the mention of a slave (not modernly kosher) but I wonder how many of us allow ourselves to rest even one day a week between our jobs and our need to get our errands done?
I know this was a lesson that came up for me after launching my business. I was working daily and pulled it off for a couple weeks. Then I noticed I was cranky, short-tempered, and overly annoyed with my dog.
I instituted a weekly Shabbat and things calmed down.
So today will be my day of rest.
I woke up with the sunrise, thought of this, typed it up and now I’m done.
Will you make space for rest?
What would change if you considered resting for a whole day, once a week, your sacred duty?
What if this was your sacred contract with God? The thing repeated over and over again in the texts of your mind?
I’d like to challenge you to give it a shot. Carve out as much time as you can and simply let your life go fallow.
You may be surprised at the results.
Love and share.
I’m starting something new. Writing every day as I put my random thoughts on binary paper.
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