Why My Phone Goes Off One Day a Week (Unless, of Course, I Haven't Paid the Bill and it Goes Off Much More Than One Day a Week)

Turn off your phone. 

Now.

And leave it off until you finish reading this post.

There's a crazy thing that's about to happen now that I have your undivided attention:

The world is gonna keep going, but you aren't. You're gonna be still. You're gonna wonder for a little bit about how mom's gonna try to call and not get ahold of you. You're gonna freak a little about the numerous attentions that are dying to have YOUR attention right in this moment. But . . . keep hanging . . . 

      you're doing great . . . 

     that's it . . . 

Ok. Let's move on. Take a deep breath, it'll be okay.

Today I want to talk about Sabbath. I know if you're someone who cringes when words like this come up, you'll probably tune out right about now. So,

Let's change the word. Let's call it rest. 

Today I want to talk about rest. There. 

I've developed the habit of going out to the water every Sunday and turning my phone off (unless, it is absolutely necessary to turn it on, like today, when I passed my landlord on the road and had to send an emergency text to the two people who stayed at my house last night to tell them the landlord was coming aka GET OUT FAST; I turned the phone off as soon as the word SENT happened). 

There are several things that have happened in the time since I've started doing this (about six months ago it seems):

1. People get really pissed when they can't get ahold of me (even if it's for something like six hours).
2. I become the blame for the problems that happened while I was off the radar (evidently I was the only one who had the answer to the world's problems).
3. I've noticed I have more energy come crunch time Friday at work.
4. I've done a ton of reading.
5. I've learned how to share sabbath (or rest) with my girlfriend (not anyone else yet, though).

As an unexpected extension of my Sunday-phone-turnoff-day, I haven't paid my phone bill yet this month, so it's been forcibly turned off. But, that has nothing to do with the REST part of this post, even though it extends the idea of silence into the rest of my week.

It seems that turning off our cell phones for any given period of time (besides sleep, and I bet there's a lot of you who sleep with the phone on), would be like the equivalent of a 1st century Jew tying up his donkey on the sabbath. 

Technology has become such a vehicle for communication, that it seems absurd to turn it off, even when it comes to spiritual practices.

Here's my suggestion. Take it or leave it. Turn the phone for one day a week (or as many hours as you can survive phone-less for that day) and do what you restfully love to do - uninterrupted by the phone. For me, it's reading, then napping, then eating, then repeating. 

After a couple weeks of trying this, you'll find that you'll go into the next seven days with a bigger zeal to talk and listen to people you'd normally be ready to hang up on. You'll also find that come Friday and Saturday, there's a new-found burst of energy that wasn't there before.