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Slavery and Sabbath

Recently we have been reading Walter Brueggemann's "Sabbath as Resistance - Saying no to the culture of now" as part of our Circuit Book Group. Its a short but deep book with profound implications if we were to take it seriously. It, together with a couple of recent conversations and my cyclical low mood, combined to produce the following. I am not implying that any of the experiences alluded to here can in any way be compared to historic or contemporary slavery. That is an evil of an entirely different order. But there is no doubt that modern life involves a lot of voluntary and involuntary complicity with systems that rob us of agency, or affords us excuses to blame others and circumstances for where we are in a manner that seems to have begun shortly after the first ever sabbath... I could say a lot more, but you are probably better off reading Brueggemann's book... it's much more coherent.

Enslaved.
Shackled by the system.
A pawn in the great game.

Enslaved.
Caught on the conveyor belt.
Entangled in the network.

Enslaved.
Servant to many masters.
Building a pyramid of slaves.

Enslaved.
Snared by the salary.
Wedded to the wage.

Enslaved.
Owned by the bank.
Mortgaged to materialism.

Enslaved.
Manacled to the market.
Devoted to the divine economy.

Enslaved.
Dictated to by the diary.
Tyrannised by the to do list

Enslaved.
Tied to technology.
Digitally dependent.

Enslaved.
Bound by basic biology.
Constricted by that double helix.

Enslaved.
Driven by appetite.
Addicted to avarice. 

Enslaved.
Circumscribed by circumstance.
Neutered by nature and nurture.

Enslaved.
Burdened by the weight of history.
Undone by what cannot be undone.

Enslaved.
Delineated by religious rules.
Restricted by respectability.

Enslaved.
Bordered by nationalism.
Boundaried by denominationalism.

Enslaved.
Dictated to by petty politics.
Disempowered by “democracy.”

Enslaved.
Bounded by binaries.
Boxed and filed away.

Stop!
Take a chance to step back.
Make a choice to say “No!”

Selah  







 

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