Halfway through my month of practicing discipline, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about rest. By rest, I mean not only taking a break, although that’s valuable. I mean rest in the Jewish sense of the word. In other words, Sabbath.

Sabbath is called a day of rest because it is a day to remind yourself, ever so gently, that you are not in charge of the universe. You cannot fix everything, change everything, or ruin everything. You’re just not that powerful. Sabbath is a weekly reminder that there’s a God, and it’s not you.

Regardless of whether you’re a person of faith or not, Sabbath rest teaches us to put ourselves in proper perspective, not take ourselves too seriously, and remember our limits. It’s about humility. (There’s a God, and we’re not God.) What a bummer/what a relief.

But Sabbath is also a declaration of your inherent worthiness. It’s a day to remember that you are not only valuable for what you do; you are valuable simply because you are. For those in the Abrahamic faiths, this echoes the declaration in Genesis where God creates humanity and declares us “very good.” This goodness isn’t anything we earned, and it’s not something we have to work to keep. It’s simply part of our identity as being made in God’s image.  In Buddhist terms, this is called basic human goodness.

In a society like ours, where we’re so often judged by what we do and how well others think we do it, sabbath rest is a refreshing reset, and even a healthy little rebellion. As Anne Lamott says, people often want us to be human doings rather than human beings. The beauty of Sabbath rest is that it returns us to the healing space of human being.

We are worthy, simply because we exist.

This is so critical to the practice of discipline, because the danger of discipline has always been legalism, strictness, and control. We can make ourselves miserable trying too hard to be perfect, as if that’s possible- or even desirable. As much as we want to set up rhythms and structures to create integrity in our lives, we don’t want to be so beholden to the rules that we become prisoners of it. In other words, we want to follow the spirit of the law, not just the law itself. Which simply means holding our discipline with unclenched fists, not holding onto the rules with bleeding knuckles.

Sabbath is rest from all that striving, all that work, all that effort. It’s a return to breath, to body, to being.

As much as I want to create ways to become more in harmony with my values, sabbath rest reminds me not to force it so much that I lose sight of those values along the way. The process is part of the process. It matters how we travel toward discipline.

Lastly, Sabbath rest reminds us of the power of joy and celebration, whether that’s joy in a loving Creator or joy in the created world itself. It’s important to take time to appreciate life, celebrate it, be grateful for it, just as it is. Sure, there is always need for improvement, but when we rest in the is-ness of the world and the is-ness of our own selves, we often find we’re more ready to tackle the hard task of discipline when it comes our way.

And when we inevitably fail, Sabbath reminds us that all is not lost. There is always another beginning. We can always start again, try again. And we can do so trusting in the goodness that already sits at the center of our souls.

This post is part of the Paramita Project. You can learn more about the Project here and read my previous posts about discipline here, here and here.