When Moses approached God on the mountain, “God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said … ‘Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground'” (Exodus 3:4-5). The place which Moses was entering had been sanctified, and made into a holy place. As such, Moses was to perform customs that signified that he acknowledged the sacredness of that location (removing his shoes). That mountain side was where Moses would reverentially approach the Creator Himself, and was therefore separated in purpose, meaning, and significance from the surrounding environment.
I have my own sacred space where I go to approach God for special blessings and important questions. It is on a mountainside, away from traffic and human activity, and it is a great spot to read, ponder, and otherwise peacefully enjoy nature. I visit that spot often, but even when I’m not there to commune with God, I’ve made it a point to never engage in irreverent activities while in the area. Because of spiritual experiences that I’ve had there, the location has been sanctified in such a way that I feel as if I would desecrate it if I went there and read Harry Potter or the Far Side. In that way, I instinctively perform certain personal customs to acknowledge that the location is sacred to me. As a result, whenever I visit that spot, I can almost instantly feel the presence of the Spirit.
The modern day temple is also a sacred space. We collectively acknowledge its sacredness by acting, talking, and dressing differently in the temple than we would elsewhere. Most of us would agree, for example, that talking about a recent sports game while in the temple would likely transgress the sacredness of the location. We’re generally very good about acknowledging and treating the temple with dignity and respect. This is possibly due in part to strong social pressures that incentivize treating the temple differently than we would treat a chapel our own own home. More likely, this is due to an almost universal acknowledgement among Latter-day Saints that the temple walls really do demarcate a space as sacred as the ground upon which Moses stood when He encountered God on the mountainside. This is particularly true since much of our experience in the temple is a symbolic reenactment of Moses’s approach to God and the visions of history that he experienced there (which he then recorded in the book of Genesis).
Recently, I was reading a CNN article in which Richard Bushman responds to a critic’s complaints about the secrecy that surrounds Latter-day Saint temples. In his response, Bushman said, “I see Mormon temples as an effort to create a sacred space in a secular world, a quest followed by numerous religious peoples throughout history. They are a spatial equivalent of the Christian and Jewish Sabbath where a sacred time is demarked from the rest of the week.” I thought that it was interesting that Bushman used sacred times as a familiar point of reference to defend the existence of sacred spaces. Today, much of the Christian world intuitively recognizes that the a certain day of the week should be considered sacred. However, they have forgotten that Semitic traditions have also believed certain locations could and should be considered sacred as well.
Sometimes I wonder if we, as Latter-day Saints, have done the reverse. We’re really good about recognizing sacred spaces (such as the temple), but how good are we at acknowledging sacred times (such as the Sabbath)? I think part of this is cultural. In that past, we have too often used the Sabbath as a way of scrutinizing our neighbors and proving to ourselves that we are superior in some way. To compensate for this unfortunate trend, we are often meticulously careful not to insist that there is any particular way we should keep the Sabbath day holy, for fear of appearing judgmental of others. In addition, I think we sometimes sense that we could do better at this than we currently do, so our consciences react when others talk about it. And since some of us are mired in habits of self-deprecation and feelings of helplessness, I think we sometimes fear that by talking about the Sabbath, we might exacerbate feelings of inadequacy in others. For these reasons, we sometimes tiptoe around the issue when that particular lesson arises in Sunday School.
And there are truths to some of our reservations in addressing this subject. Just as I cannot judge anyone else for “desecrating” my personal sacred space on the mountainside, we cannot impose our own views of keeping the Sabbath on others. I included that example to illustrate the individual and personal nature of our sacred times and places. However, because I have developed personal ways to treat that mountain location as holy, I feel a spirit there that gives me a taste of God’s presence when I visit. In the same way, developing personal customs that acknowledge the Sabbath as a sacred day will help us to uniquely feel the Spirit on the Sabbath in an amplified way, just as we can feel the Spirit differently in the temple than we do in the surrounding world. I think it is wise not to try to universalize what those particular personal customs should be, because this would then provide us with ways to scrutinize our fellow Latter-day Saints. Rather, we should each decide for ourselves the ways in which we will demarcate the Sabbath from the rest of the week.
The only universal customs I believe we should recognize on the Sabbath are those outlined in Preach My Gospel: “We should refrain from shopping on the Sabbath and participating in other commercial and sporting activities that now commonly desecrate the Sabbath. Latter-day Saints should set this holy day apart from activities of the world by entering into a spirit of worship, thanksgiving, service, and family-centered activities appropriate to the Sabbath.” In other words, we should all agree that we should include an avoidance of commercial and sporting activities and a focus on the family as part of our Sabbath day customs. Beyond that, I believe the rest is up to personal discretion. However, I believe that it is important to develop personal and habitual ways of demarcating the Sabbath from ordinary weekdays.
There are two important caveats to this: (1) I wrote in a recent post about the dangers of relying on rules and customs for spiritual safety. They can sometimes be to our detriment if we begin to rely on them as a measure of our spiritual well-being. For this reason, we must consistently gauge whether our hearts are in the right place, or if we are simple following custom in a perfunctory way. (2) We must always follow the Spirit, even if this means violating the personal rules and customs we’ve set up for ourselves to separate the Sabbath as a sacred day. We must never allow our personal application of God’s law keep us from paying strict attention to the Lawgiver Himself and His messenger.
With these two caveats in mind, I would love to hear your ideas about how you make the Sabbath a sacred day. What I don’t want to hear is rationalizations about why it isn’t important to keep the Sabbath day holy, or about why we shouldn’t talk about it or emphasize it. I believe what Preach My Gospel says: when we “endeavor to make [our] Sabbath activities compatible with the intent and Spirit of the Lord, [our] lives will be filled with joy and peace.” Therefore, I’d like this post to spark a brainstorming discussion about ways in which we can sanctify the Sabbath and make it holy, and more than just the day we attend church. I want to learn about ways in which we can feel the Spirit more strongly by virtue of the fact that it is the Sabbath (just as we can feel a difference in the Spirit when we enter the temple). One way I do this is that I don’t do homework on the Sabbath. As I’ve said before, this doesn’t make me a good Sabbath-keeper—rather, I’m an awfully poor one. However, I’d love to hear how you do it. Please comment! =)