“This office is all about Sabbath,” says Rick Chrisman, Director of the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life. The many different things that religion and spirituality represent could plausibly be summed up in this single term, which in Hebrew means “cessation, desistance.” In effect, the activities sponsored by the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life are every one of them invitations to the community to stop what we’re doing periodically and step aside from the usual, hurried campus paths in order to get a larger perspective on ourselves, by sitting in the presence of the Eternal.
Sabbath has always meant choosing an alternative way of being for a moment and entering into an “altered state of consciousness.” That moment could be the hour you spend at one of the “Religious Life Dialogues;” that moment could be the day-long retreat you spend at an off-campus yoga center; or that moment may be just the little time you can afford to sit quietly in Wilson Chapel for a while.
The Wilson Chapel is an invaluable spiritual resource as a safe harbor, a place of
meditation, worship, and reflection. The Jewish Chaplain leads a yoga-type movement/meditation
session every Tuesday from 5:10-5:55 p.m.There are student meditation groups who use
the Chapel, and the Student Chapel Manager hosts Study Breaks on week-day evenings
there.The Chapel is open from 8:00am to Midnight seven days a week.
So Sabbath is something this Office has to offer the community, from the same people
that brought you “the week-end” and from many other traditions which also call us
to prayer and contemplation when “the world is too much with us.”
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