Sabbath time. Sabbatical time. Jubilee time. Time to rest, to delight in what is given, to breathe in the beauty. Time to be fallow, to heal wounds, forgive, regenerate. Time to restore the world to its primal pattern. Time to anticipate a new world in which justice, mercy, and peace truly flourish. Time that anticipates the end and fullness of all time when tears, mourning, and death itself will yield to the bountiful, blooming garden of God’s own time.
This state of presence is extraordinarily important to know and taste in oneself. For sacred tradition is emphatic in its insistence that real Wisdom can be given and received only in a state of presence, with all three centers of our being engaged and awake. Anything less is known in the tradition as "sleep" and results in an immediate loss of receptivity to higher meaning. To return to that favorite Wisdom metaphor, it is like the disciple Peter suddenly sinking beneath the surface of the waters.