Holidays, Holy Days

Many humans aren’t good at relaxing.  This is why both holidays (whether in the British sense of vacations, or the American sense of festivals) and holy days (such as Sabbaths) can be fraught with tension.  They can become just another list of things to do.  Going away involves booking hotels and planning travel times; Christmas involves buying presents, writing cards, inviting guests and planning and cooking a meal; church services require someone to preach, someone to lead prayers and celebrate Communion, someone to lead the music, and someone to serve coffee and biscuits afterwards.

On the other hand, if we don’t set aside specific days for not getting on with practical work, we don’t actually get any more of our usual work done.  We just spend more time feeling guilty about not getting things done.  Yes, there are relaxing leisure activities, like reading or playing board games, but it’s harder to enjoy them if we feel that we are putting off getting on with something that needs doing.

For me, church services – and especially Christmas and Easter – can be a stressful time because of my ambivalent relationship with faith.  It isn’t that I don’t believe in God, or don’t believe that Jesus is God, but that I can’t make up my mind what God is like and whether I trust Him.

For PDB11, that isn’t the problem.  He could more easily disbelieve in God altogether than believe in a God Who is other than loving.  And as he has repeatedly said to me, since the central doctrine of Christianity (much more so than the idea that Jesus is God) is that Jesus is the Saviour of the world, it makes no sense not to trust that Jesus cares about us and wants to save us, but still to believe that he is important.

PDB11’s problem is more that, as church organist, he is almost cut off from the service.  From the organ stool, tucked away to one side of the church, it can be difficult even to hear the prayers and the sermon, let alone engage with them.  He describes himself as ‘a Christian and a musician, not necessarily in that order,’ but when he wrote this on his Bookcrossing profile, he also added that he was ‘at weekends, a church organist, although after 12 years playing twice a Sunday I don't want a regular slot again!’ 

Shortly after writing this, however, he didn’t have much choice; our church organist was becoming older and frailer and sometimes didn’t make it to church or wasn’t well enough to play, so that PDB11 often had to fill in for him at short notice.  After a while, it made sense for the old organist to retire and be able to be once again a normal member of the congregation, and PDB11 took over from him on a regular basis, which at least meant that he got a list of hymns to rehearse in advance.

There is also the fact that we are outsiders.  PDB11 at least grew up in Somerset, but we have only lived a few years in this parish, and while we are middle-aged, we are still a generation younger than most of the established congregation who have lived in the area and known each other all their lives.

Also, while I’m not suggesting that we are more spiritually advanced than other members of the congregation, we do have a different intellectual response to the Bible from many of them, since PDB11 has a degree in theology and I compulsively overthink everything.  When I listen to a Bible passage, if I don’t overreact and have a panic attack, I ask myself, ‘How have I misinterpreted this in the past?  What might be a better way of understanding what Jesus is saying here?’  But when I ask other members of the congregation what they think about the passage, they are quite likely to retort, ‘I don’t “think” anything about it.  I’ve heard it before.  You just need to accept it.’

So one answer is for the two of us to try to be church to each other.  We can still come together with other Christians on Sunday morning to receive Communion, but perhaps we need a smaller, more informal setting in which to study and pray.

As a follower of Esther Hisza’s blog, I was intrigued by her idea of organising one-day prayer retreats.  She and her friends do them once a month, but I couldn’t see any reason why PDB11 and I couldn’t set aside one day a week for prayer and contemplation and trying to be open to God.  After all, neither of us is in full-time regular work, and we’re both trying to find direction in our lives.

I suggested this as something we might do together – well, together but separately, as the idea of the retreats is to start by reading something together, then dispersing into two separate rooms for two 75-minute reflection sessions with a 90-minute break in between, and coming back together for the final hour.  I felt that it needed to be something we did in unison, because if I disappeared for most of the day while PDB11 was trying to get on with normal activities, he would be sitting worrying about me, and worrying about whether he could do anything that made a noise.

PDB11 cautiously agreed that we might do this, but pointed out that we don’t have a lot of commitment-free days.  Mondays or Fridays might generally be the least crowded, but on this week, we have things we need to do both days.

How about Sunday afternoon this week, I said?  After all, if we were home from church by 11.30 and started by 12, this gave us plenty of time, and Sunday was supposed to be the Christian day for keeping holy, and it seemed a good way to start 2023.  Looking again at Hisza’s blog, I even found several New Year resources.

As I got distracted by other activities, I didn’t begin discussing the details of what we might do until late yesterday evening.  I tried to discuss how we might adapt the pattern: for example, if PDB11 was uncomfortable about being in separate rooms for much of the day, knowing how emotionally volatile I can be, would it be better to have a lunch break together?

As I talked on, looking at my computer screen and jotting down notes, I realised that PDB11 was deeply uncomfortable about this.  My timing was awful; he had slept badly the night before and had been feeling tired and emotionally vulnerable for much of the day, and I was pressuring him to commit to spending six hours the very next day on something he didn’t know much about.

More than that, though, he knew all too well how, for me, trying too hard to plunge into spirituality can just result in plunging into depression.  My religious life is much more emotional than his, and sometimes I go through a phase of deep depression (not merely feeling sad or wistful, but absolute despair) and even paranoia and self-loathing, before breaking into joy at reassurance that God does love me after all.  And even that joy can express itself in tears, which can look not much different to depression from outside.

Of course, this is part of the reason why I wanted separate time, to digest ideas in our own ways, before we came back together.  But if PDB11 can see me crying, he’s going to worry about me, and if he can’t see me, he’s going to worry that I’m crying even if I’m not.

It can be frustrating, when I want to attempt to take on a new regime of spiritual discipline (treating it like a programme of exercise or academic study), having to be aware both that I may not be ready for it, and that I have to consider the effect it has on people around me.

However, the truth is that loving PDB11, and being loved by him, is probably the most important spiritual discipline in my life, in that it is the thing most likely to teach me about God’s love.  Relationships depend on being flexible, rather than following a rigid schedule.  Obviously, there sometimes needs to be planning involved, but it is more along the lines of, ‘I’d like to have sex sometime soon, how about you?  Good.  Well, I’m feeling a bit tired tonight and we’re busy tomorrow morning, so shall we go to bed early and have sex tomorrow evening?’ rather than either, ‘We have to have sex regularly every five days,’ or, ‘I want your body so I’m going to take you right now, whether you like it or not.’

God created us to live in relationship with one another, not as solitary hermits.  We all do need solitary time sometimes.  For example, it’s good for me occasionally to extend my physical fitness on long walks which don’t have to be bound to the limits of PDB11’s stamina, and he needs time to go to choir and orchestra practice without worrying that he is excluding me because my musical ability doesn’t equal his.  But, after being alone for most of our lives, the ability that we most need to practise is that of living together.

I still think that we do both need to spend more time praying, both separately and alone.  Rather than setting aside full days with detailed schedules, we probably need to make more times for praying for a short while, throughout the week.  But, knowing how many times I have embarked on ambitious projects and failed to follow through with them, it’s probably just as well that I have PDB11’s more cautious attitude to stop me from trying to do too much, too soon.