The case for taking a holiday

The reasons we need to rest and re-boot.

Natalie Garrett

Natalie produces and narrates The Seen & Unseen Aloud podcast. She's an Anglican minister and a trained actor.

On a beach lounger someone holds a book aloft to read.

Well, here we are, either literally or metaphorically breaking up for the summer. School’s out and the long evenings demand al-fresco dining – even in the UK where it’s far more likely than not to rain. And of course, it is time to Live Our Best Life as we chase the fantasy and book an eye-wateringly expensive holiday – to “get away from it all”.

In my early adulthood, holidays were unquestionably lying on a sun-drenched beach with a very large pile of novels. It was escapism pure and simple. And sun worshipping. Then I went on a skiing holiday for the first time in my 30s and was amazed how refreshing it was. When you’re concentrating on not dying, hurtling at high speed down a slippery mountain, the regular patterns of thought are left behind; there is simply no headspace to worry about the things that normally occupy the mind. I came back from a week on the snow with my body feeling completely trashed but my mind fresher than ever before.

But whatever our holiday preference, be it active, sedentary or a cocktail of both, it is short-lived. A fortnight is the average length of a holiday, maybe it’s just a cheeky long weekend. If you’re really pushing the boat out (literally if going on a cruise as many people do these days a) – a luxurious three or even four weeks. But however long it is, it is – by definition – not lifelong. We build up to it – “can’t wait to get away” and there can be huge expectation for all the things we’ve been struggling with to be magically less stressful “when I get back”. We think all the exhaustion we carry, all the frustration or disappointment, the overworking we live with on a daily basis, will disappear. We binge on relaxation and put huge pressure on ourselves to HAVE FUN and – that which has become the sly new marketing strategy – “making great memories”. Which can all turn out to be even harder work than what we’re trying to get away from.

Last summer, we went to the Lake District. And it rained. A lot. I mean coming in under the doors/through the windows sort of a lot. So we played Monopoly. And watched the Mission Impossible films. We went for walks in the rain and ate picnics quickly between showers. It was rather like we were living through a low budget British 1980s adaptation of an Enid Blyton novel, instead of the big budget Caribbean fantasia of one’s dreams. By any official descriptor, it was a holiday – but I’m not sure it felt like one.

There is a call for some time to be kept holy, time set apart when we’re not busy being busy, when we remember that we are human and limited and need rest.

So, as I’m keenly interested in the etymology of words, I looked up holiday* to find out whether I had achieved the objective. Holiday = a period of time when you are not at work or school – check; holiday = a period of time spent travelling or resting away from home – hmm, not sure about the resting but we were away; holiday = holy day – hang on, what?

Most world religions or philosophies have some sort of rhythm or pattern for life which includes times of rest. These often (though not always) coincide with some sort of worship or festival. These are times set apart from the day-to-day occupation of “normal life”. Interestingly, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, rest is baked in right from the beginning. After a six “day” working week, so the beginning of the Creation story tells us, God rested. And just to underline the point, sometime later, that same God gave his people the 10 Commandments, one of which is – take a day off.

The word “holy” means set apart, sacred and right at the heart of the Jewish and Christian lifestyle there is a call for some time to be kept holy, time set apart when we’re not busy being busy, when we remember that we are human and limited and need rest. When we can get some objectivity on our productivity; when we can see (as God did all those years ago) that what we have done is good and we can enjoy it.

In our 24/7, I-achieve-therefore-I-am culture, we almost certainly don’t do nothing for a day a week. We are always doing something. Even on our day(s) off, we’re reading or scrolling or running or “making memories”. Where is the rest? Where is the holy?

We don’t function properly – by which I mean we don’t flourish – if we never switch off. That’s how we were made.

There is an ironically busy industry that has flourished in recent years around mindfulness and retreats; an industry which highlights the ultimately human need for rest. There are apps which help us breathe, there are gurus who massage us in body and mind. Cynically, some say capitalism has caught on to the ancient necessity of acknowledging and attending to our humanity, our need to stop doing and simply be. I think God would say, hooray! Or as Jesus put it, “Come with me to a quiet place and find some rest.”

How can we put rest back on the agenda of our own lives? It’s different for each of us. One person’s rest is another person’s nightmare. Whatever it looks like, we need to learn how to have “a period of time not working” (whatever work may occupy us, paid or unpaid, seen or unseen). It’s a well-recognised fact that if your electronic device stops functioning properly, if you turn it off for a bit, it’ll restart happily and we are encouraged to restart our devices regularly. We all know that we’re a bit like that and yet... We don’t function properly – by which I mean we don’t flourish – if we never switch off. That’s how we were made.

We need those moments when we put a spiritual umbrella in the glass of our life, kick back and look at what has been. We can give space for gratitude; for reconnection with ourselves, with our life and even with the omnipotent God who role models rest.

So, this summer, we’re going to the South of France. I’m absolutely exhausted already. I’ve been organising a rota of (very kind) people to look after our dog; preparing work so I’m ready for the day after we get back; buying gallons of sun cream (just in case France runs out); booking trips and Googling where the nearest boulangerie is so we can have idyllic, spontaneous visits for life-changingly delicious croissants… Going on holiday is really hard work and I haven’t even gone yet. But this year, as I put on my sunglasses and factor 30, I am determined to make time to put the holy in my holiday. And holy days in my life.

* (of course, if you’re not British, you might be interested in the etymology of the word vacation = "formal suspension of activity, time in which there is an intermission of usual employment"/state of being unoccupied. Which to my mind is summed up by the old adage, a change is as good as a rest, with which I have always taken issue….)

Article

America

Creed

Justice

5 November 2024

6 min read

Is it okay to be mean as long as you are mean and right?

Here's what a mean street preacher really taught me.

Nathan Betts

Nathan is a speaker and writer on topics related to faith, life and God. He lives near Seattle, Washington. His writing is featured frequently in The Seattle Times. nathanbetts.com

Behind a passer by a street peacher holds up a large yellow sign with a message on it.

Street preachers on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

LaTerrian McIntosh on Unsplash.

A few months ago, my cousin was visiting my hometown of Seattle for work. We planned to meet one evening for a Mariners baseball game during her visit. I suggested that we meet near the wonderful Ken Griffey Jr. statue near the stadium gates. What I hadn’t realized was that this was the precise spot a street evangelist had also decided to station himself in order to share (mostly shout) his message of judgement and destruction the same evening. Kind of like a pre-game verbal hors d'oeuvres. I arrived at the meeting point a few minutes before my cousin, giving me ample time to hear the preacher preach.

Now, I grew up in church, and, in fact, am myself a speaker and writer on topics involving faith and God. In other words, I’ve had over 40 years to experience the church’s, umm, “quirks”. I’d like to think that very little coming from the mouths of faith preachers could shock me. Alas, I was wrong.

As I began to listen to the preacher, lines like “weeping and gnashing of teeth” scorched through the preacher’s megaphone. Yep, nothing new there. The preacher used the word “judgment” a lot. Actually, impressively a lot. I’ve never before heard the words “God” and “judgment” used in conjunction more times within a two-minute span. There was a raging intensity to the sermon, but still in the range of normal for street preaching.

Then, my cousin texted me that she was outside the ballpark but might have gotten the location wrong. I realized she and I were at two different locations. While I texted my cousin back, I tuned out the preacher’s message. That is until I heard him shout through his megaphone, “He hates you.” I stopped texting. I looked up at the preacher. Did he just say that God the Almighty hated all of us outside the ballpark? Families, little boys and girls, and elderly? Did God hate all of us lining up for the game? It was “bark at the park” night so even the dogs were casualties in the preacher’s line of fire. If nothing else was gleaned from the man’s message, it seemed, we were all to understand that God hates us.

Minutes later, when my cousin and I finally found each other, I told her that she had had the good fortune of missing out on the street preacher informing her that God hates her. She replied, “Oh, I have plenty of others who tell me that!”

Sadly, many of us have received that negative message from different sources in our world and too often from people sharing some association with God.

In America, as election season comes to the boil, I’ve noticed (and maybe you have too) the not-so-subtle attitude that it’s okay to say mean things about another person as long as that person is on “the other side”. A verbal dig here, an eyeroll there, name-calling and slanderous nick-naming the enemy for the sake of ridicule have become all too common, if not a soft virtue in political discourse. It has become hard to discern where the moral line is, or if such a thing still exists within political dialogue.

Conversations like the following happen so frequently following a political debate or interview, they’ve become cliché: “I almost cannot believe he said that!” Response: “Well, yes, that was pretty bad. But he’s right, isn’t he?” Translation: it’s okay to be mean as long as you are mean and right.

Evangelicalism has gained a hard edge with little resemblance of the good news from which it has its very name.

The meaning of the word ‘evangelical’ here in America is a complex thing, to be sure. But perhaps one of the reasons it is understood as a political word more than a religious one is because the combative and rude nature of discourse seen in politics has become increasingly acceptable even in Christian settings. As a friend of mine said to me years ago, “It feels as though Christians have turned rudeness into a spiritual gift.”

The thing is, you probably don’t know the preacher I heard in downtown Seattle, but you’ve probably heard or know a person who makes Christian claims in the same kind of rude ways. The result is that evangelicalism has gained a hard edge with little resemblance of the good news from which it has its very name.

I’ve had the privilege of speaking to audiences on topics of faith and God for around 20 years now and I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve met who feel unlovable, already hated, and unforgivable for the decisions they’ve made in life.

So when I hear a preacher shouting a message through a bullhorn in the name of God and I hear not words of hope, peace, grace, love, and forgiveness, but strictly judgement and burning, I fail to see how this God can be the one who came to earth out of love for people in the person of Jesus Christ.

It’s true that the Bible does depict God enacting justice and judgement. But equally true is that the Bible not only displays, but out-and-out defines God as being love. My concern with the street preacher’s message is that although he might have communicated the justice of God (albeit in a warped way that would make old-time revivalists look tame), his message left little room for hearing about and feeling the love of God.

If there is anything we need to hear today, it is the message that God, in his very nature, is love. One particular writer of antiquity, and a close friend of Jesus Christ, once penned a letter to first century churches. In attempting to explain what God is like and what people of faith should be like he wrote: “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

For those of us who have never been to a church, we only need to watch or attend an American football game to see a sign with the words John 3:16. That reference, taken from one of Christ’s biographies states that, “This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life.”

This is a message we need to hear. It’s something we need to let into our bones—that those of us who feel beyond the reach of love, are in fact loved by God.

In a strange way, I can’t help but admire the guts those street preachers have, banging out an unpopular message to strangers in crowds. The problem lies in the fact that often their message, so boldly proclaimed, is God’s disappointment, disapproval, or outright hate for people.

Because this is the truth and too important to miss: God doesn’t hate you. He loves you. He always has and he always will.