From the Bishop: What does your soul need this summer?

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With summer's slower pace comes an opportunity to reconnect with God. Bishop Hughes encourages us to approach the season as a Sabbath time, marked by study, prayer, reflection, and renewal. 
(Time: 5:00 | Read the transcript.)  See Bishop Hughes' Suggested Summer Reading List.
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​Video Transcript
This is Bishop Hughes in the Diocese of Newark, and it is the fourth week of June, and it’s time in our diocese where we start thinking about Summer Sabbath. Every year, someone tells me it’s “Summer Sabbath, I’m not going to church,” and I think everyone knows at this point that is not what I’m talking about. We don’t just take a pass from our spiritual life. We don’t just say, “Hey, no more Jesus for the time that I’m on Sabbath.” That is not how that works at all. But rather, summer Sabbath is a chance for us to regroup spiritually. Our schedules are a little bit more flexible. Vacation time is planned. We have less intensity to our day-to-day schedule and responsibilities. There’s no school, there’s no homework, there’s no checking anybody’s homework or getting them to various places that they need to go to during the school year, and the same thing seems to happen to everybody else’s schedule, September through about mid-June, and then things start to loosen up.

So during this time where you have a little bit more freedom, I ask you to approach this time as a Sabbath time, as a time to ask yourself, “What do I need? What do I need in order to strengthen my faith life? What do I need in order to be refreshed by God? How can I be renewed spiritually?” To ask those questions, I want to offer just a few things to think about.

One, to do some study. It’s a big year in the United States. We’re going to celebrate 250 years of our being a nation, and there’s an opportunity to really think about our history, to think about the fullness of our history. I feel so sad for people who think that if we look at the hard parts of our history, that somehow that makes us less American or means we’re less patriotic, when actually the direct opposite is what happens. When we have a full approach to who we are, we learn about what we’ve done. We also learn how God has worked through people, and most often it’s when people are working for the justice of others. So read as much as you can. Read Jemar Tisby, read Michelle Alexander, read Katherine Stewart, read Annette Gordon Reed, Kelly Brown Douglas. There’s all sorts of authors – I’ll make sure there’s a list for you – that are worth reading in terms of getting a good handle on our American history and on some of the things that we are facing right now. So, do some, do some study that way.

When you also are doing that kind of reading, do some study in the Bible. Pick a book of the Bible. You pick the one that speaks to you at this particular moment. If you have problems picking one out, talk with your priest about it. Let them help you identify something you’re interested in looking at. Pick a book of the Bible and spend the entire summer just on that one book. Just sit with it, read a part, and read, and let that sit with you. Keep going over the pieces that catch your attention. If you want to study in terms of looking at the history or the literature or deeper meanings, you can, but what I’m encouraging you to do is to stay with the words that are written and ask yourself as you read them, “What is it I’m learning about the life that I live right now? How do these words speak to the time that I’m in, in this very moment?”

And then the last thing that I would say – so asking you, spend time with people that you love and that you enjoy, spend some time studying our history, spend some time studying scripture, and then spend some time putting yourself simply in the presence of God. And for some of us, the thought of sitting in quiet makes us very nervous, so find ways to do that that bring you a sense of peace. For some people, it is sitting in sacred space. So, take yourself to the church around the corner. It doesn’t have to be your own church, but go to one that has its doors open during the week, and just sit in that quiet, and let that quiet space be a place where you can be in the presence of God. Some of us do that. I have a little prayer corner in my house, the place where I like to sit, and I have my journal with me, and my spiritual books with me, and my Bible with me. Sometimes I read, sometimes I write, sometimes I just simply sit in the quiet, listening for the sound of God’s beckoning to me.

All of these things together are ways that we renew, we refresh, we reconnect to God. I hope you try any one of these, or all of them, or maybe even something new, but I hope that summer Sabbath will be a blessing to your soul and to your spirit.