Posted by Tyler Kirkpatrick | July 5, 2020
I was recently inspired to write a poem for each day of creation–(which are written as poems themselves). I will be posting a new entry each day. Today: Genesis 2:1-4.
The Seventh Day
The ancient rabbis saw that it was the seventh day in which creation was completed. Not a bonus day, not a day of recuperation in order to make the Six Days' work possible or more efficient. No. The telos of Creation, towards which the six days are always moving.
Tasks and to-do lists lie in their places untouched Statuses and identities of the workday world are unimportant and forgotten; all are at rest in the "palace in time," impregnable walls fortified against the onslaught and tyranny of things the six-day conquest of space.
Turbines and trucks and tractors power down Blue glow of unread emails and Reddit's rabbit trails and Instagram's filtered reality and Facebook's fury now a dull black.
The sudden Interruption of noise gives rise to what first appears as eerie silence but is not silence. The sounds of the Seventh Day now no longer unnoticed: conversation unhurried laughter unfettered suppers savored and unrushed Doves cooing in aspens rattling their leaves in gentle wind Spirit songs and people's prayers Stop. Cease. Sabbath. The Seventh Day.
[1] “Pilgrim bound by staff and faith, rest thy bones”, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54922 [retrieved July 5, 2020]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wooden_pilgrim_-_geograph.org.uk_-_778390.jpg