Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!umich!yale!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!ucsd!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!andrea
From: andrea@hp-sdd.hp.com (Andrea K. Frankel)
Newsgroups: alt.recovery
Subject: Happy New Year
Summary: rediscovering sabbath
Message-ID: <3126@hp-sdd.hp.com>
Date: 17 Jan 90 00:48:29 GMT
Reply-To: andrea@hp-sdd.UUCP (Andrea K. Frankel)
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, San Diego Division
Lines: 42

(Susan S.:  previous mail path to you no longer works!  Do you know
what's happening?)

I had a pretty out-of-control stretch there for a while - but I'm starting
to pull out of it.  It will take a while to reverse the damage from all
that uncontrolled eating (chocolate is my substance of choice ;@); I've
rejoined Weight Watchers, and have started calling around to find an OA
meeting nearby.  Oh, yes, and trying to find time to relax ;@)

I am reading an incredible little book, Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow
Lindberg.  A real classic.  You can read it either as a feminine
mid-life crisis being creatively resolved, or as spiritual growth
happening consciously to a woman involved in normal living and
relationships.  Her description of the hurried, harried life and the
need to spend time alone for recentering goes deep.

Then (by one of those coincidences that isn't) I was in a local Jewish
gift shop which was having a going-out-of-business sale, and picked up a
"Shabbat Manual", designed to re-introduce those who have been
nonreligious to the meaning and observance of the sabbath.  They
included some exerpts from modern writers on the sabbath, and some of
them hit me right between the eyes.  Suddenly, it seems quite wonderful
to carve out an evening and a day (sundown Friday to sundown Saturday)
and preserve it as a sacred time for rest, study, worship, renewal, and
joy.  No 3-foot-long lists of errands to be done, no working from home,
no shopping.  My reading of it is that hobbies which are truly nurturing
and renewing to the spirit are OK (painting, watering plants), but
hobbies that feel like work (pruning fruit trees, sewing clothes) are
not OK during the sabbath.  I'm going to start observing Shabbat in a
small way this weekend, and see how it goes.  I can still remember how
my mom used to do it, before she got too emotionally ill to hold it
together.

Best wishes for a sane, sober, and healthy new year!

Andrea Frankel, Hewlett-Packard (San Diego Division) (619) 592-4664
	"wake now!  Discover that you are the song that the morning brings..."
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