The Sabbath, Sunday, and the Eighth Day

As someone with family roots in the Seventh Day Adventist Church, I found that the following article in the Orthodox Study Bible pulled together a lot of previously half-clear ideas, in a beautiful, compelling, and highly satisfying way.

 

THE SABBATH DAY

"When the Lord commanded the Hebrews, in the fourth of the Ten Commandments, to "Remember the Sabbth day, to keep it holy," He also gave them the reason: "For in six days the Lord made the heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it" (Ex 20:8, 11 cf. Gn 2:1-3). When Moses restated the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy 5, he added another reason: "Remember you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore, the Lord your God ordered you to guard the Sabbath day and to sanctify it" (5:15).

The Hebrews were called to "remember" (Ex 20:8), to "keep" (Lv 19:3, 30), and to "hallow" or "sanctify" (Jer 17:19-27; Ezk 20:19, 20; Neh 13:15-22) the Sabbath by resting from almost every kind of work. God provided them this sacred time each week to help them contemplate His awesome work in creation and their miraculous deliverance from Egypt. Stipulating the faithful observance of the Sabbath was one of the main ways God ordained to reinforce the people's covenant with Him (Ex 31:12-17; cf. Lv 24.8). Originally, communal worship was not linked with the Sabbath observance; but with the development of the synagogue, probably during the Hebrews' exile in Babylon (sixth century BC), the Sabbath naturally became the day for synagogue worship, as it is for the Jews today.

SUNDAY THE DAY OF WORSHIP

At first, the early Jewish Christians continued to observe Sabbath regulations and to worship on the Sabbath (Acts 13:13-15; 42-44; 18:1-4). But they also met for the celebration of the Holy Eucharist on Sunday (Acts 20:7; 1 Co 16:1-2), called the "Lord's Day" (Rev 1:10), since Jesus rose on a Sunday. St. Ignatius of Antioch, in about AD 107, confirms that Sunday was the main day of worship for the early Church: "They have given up keeping the Sabbath, and now order their lives by the Lord's Day instead—the Day when life first dawned for us, thanks to Him and His death."

ST. Constantine the Great, the first Christian Emperor, honored the Church's practice of celebrating the Lord's Resurrection every Sunday by decreeing, in AD 321, that every Sunday would be a holy day. For Orthodox Christians, Saturday is still the Sabbath, the Day on which the Church especially remembers the departed, since Christ rested in the tomb on Great and Holy Saturday.

SUNDAY, THE EIGHTH DAY

As the day after the seventh day (when God rested from His six days of creation) and as the day of Christ's Resurrection, Sunday early on came to be understood in a mystical way among Christians as the "Eighth Day." It was on the day "beyond nature and time" (St. Maximos the Confessor), "the beginning of another world" (Epistle of Barnabas). "Wether you call it day, or wether you call it eternity, you express the same idea" (St. Basil the Great). 

Fittingly, during the week after Pascha (Easter), called Bright Week, the Church celebrates Pascha for eight days, almost as though it were one continuous day. By tradition, babies are named on the eighth day after birth. And from ancient times, Christian baptistries and fonts have been built with eight sides, indicating the newly baptized are entering the realm of the Eighth Day, the day of eternal rest (Heb 4:1-11) in Christ's Heavenly Kingdom.

A long treatment is given on the same subject by St. Gregory Palamas in his "Homily 17: Explaining the Mystery of the Sabbath and of the Lord's Day and Referring to the Gospel of New Sunday." (Click the link to download a free PDF of the homily courtesy of Mount Thabor Publishing. If you're like me, you may be amused by the numerology in paragraphs 2b-6a; I mostly skipped over those sections.)

Great Homeschool Conventions

I am really looking forward to attending the California convention of the nation-wide Great Homeschool Conventions organization. I have heard lots of good things about how the conventions are run, and I am already impressed with their low prices and amazingly large collection of speakers and curriculum exhibitors. Anyone else going?

More On Praise and Inherent Rewards

The Ambleside folks have similar things to say about praise and how best to motivate students:

Celebration

Well, I thought about it. And I decided that, instead of using prizes for rewarding progress, what seems right to me is celebration.

What makes celebration different from prizes or even inherent rewards is it's essential communal and relational nature. It is further distinguished in being an activity performed in harmony rather than an object (or pronouncement) that is bestowed upon one person by another. In the acting together, we honor and affirm what we celebrate and experience joy communally. It is in this same sense that we "celebrate" the liturgy.

Recognizing that a kindergartener may need more proximate goals and celebrations than that far off "someday" when she can read any book in the library all by herself, I started looking for some smaller milestones we could celebrate together. Accordingly, this past Saturday, I took Katherine for a mom-and-daughter date to celebrate her successfully reaching the "half-way through Kindergarten" mark.

We walked down to the neighborhood nail spa together and got our nails done. While we were waiting for the polish to dry, we dove into Tales of the Kingdom. (The illustrations in the original hardcover printing had piqued her interest earlier when she found the book on her crowded bookshelf filled with both new and hand-me-down treasures.) Katherine seemed a little distracted by all that was going on in the salon, but she was still listening. When we left, she immediately started asking me to tell her more about the characters in the book. We tried stopping in for tea at the nearby bakery so we could continue reading, but the place was closed for refurbishment. After some discussion, we settled on Rubio's. We read until we were hungry for lunch and then enjoyed our tacos and read some more. Katherine was riveted by the Tales (and I cannot recommend them enough).

When we were home again and ready for naps, I prayed over Katherine aloud and thanked God for bringing her into my life and for helping her work diligently to finish the first half of Kindergarten. Then, as I tucked her into bed, I performed my familiar litany of affection over her with kisses and hugs: "I am so glad you were born to me. I am so glad I get to know you and be with you everyday. I love you so much. You are my special bonny, and I am so glad you are in my life." I could tell that she felt peaceful and loved and happy all the rest of the day.

Is all this attention and affirmation really different from praise? Perhaps it is merely a particular kind of praise, the kind of praise I can embrace because I find it to be authentic and loving and not manipulative. It's the kind of praise one would be able to freely give to a peer or even a superior without fear of being pedantic or condescending. It's a praise that is actively with the other, that honors and affirms the other, a praise that is inseparable from gratitude and festivity. It is less like the praise we give a dog in training and more like the praise we give our Lord. It is a kind of praise that gives blessing to both the one being praised and the one praising. Like participation in the liturgy, these special mommy moments are gifts, foretastes of heaven given to Marthas who finally leave the kitchen and sit down to drink in the little Christs in their lives.

Prizes, Praises, Gifts, and Inherent Rewards

Today my daughter was a bit tired with her school work and was having trouble staying focused and motivated. She asked me if I would please start giving her prizes ("like maybe stickers or something") for doing a good job with her assignments.

"Hmm. I'll have to think about that, Katherine," I told her.

I understand that staying focused on penmanship and spelling seat work can be very difficult, especially when you're only five years old, and I understand that, at any age, it helps to reward and motivate ourselves along the way as we take small steps toward a larger goal. At the same time, I really don't want to give the message that my children's behavior earns them petty prizes. I don't want Katherine to do "a good job" in order to get some unrelated trinket; I want her to see that working hard is it's own reward and has inherent benefits.

Although well-intentioned, the instructors Katherine has interacted with in community classes over the years have perpetuated this idea in her mind that she should perform in order to receive evaluative praise ("good job!") and prizes such as hand stamps and stickers ("because you did such a good job today!"). The fact that, at the tender age of five, Katherine already associates her performance with behavioristic evaluations and prizes saddens me, even if it does not surprise me. I slip into this kind of evaluation and behaviorism, too, even though I loathe it in principle.

I run out of attention and energy and find myself blurting out assessments such as "Nice work, Katherine!" when what I really mean is "I am happy for you! I'm glad you accomplished what you were trying to do!" or "Thank you for doing what I asked you to do. I really like it when you obey right away/help me out/are kind to your brother/work diligently at your school work/etc."

Although we all mean well when we say "Good job!" or "Nice work!", at the end of the day, we're giving an evaluation, and, even though it's positive, it's still an assessment, a judgement, a "you statement" at the core. We are communicating the message that our children need us to tell them whether or not their performance measures up. And we are, in the same way, habituating them to distrust their own ability to assess their performance and to rely instead on other people for their self-worth and self-image. We are talking over their own intuitive knowledge and drowning out the still, small voice of God within them, as if they could not hear him except through us.

Of course God does call parents to communicate his truth to their children, but I am not talking here about passing on the history of salvation, the doctrines of the creeds, moral principals, or other timeless truths. I also do not mean to imply that we should withhold our warmth, love, acceptance, or affection from our children. I am calling attention to the times when we evaluate our children's performance instead of teaching them to listen to God's Spirit in their hearts and to act out of awareness of and love for God and others.

When we use "I statements," instead of evaluations, however, we communicate information to our children that they don't already have within them, information that can help them become more compassionate and relational and can equip them to make loving choices. We share our feelings, our values, and our preferences: "I am so happy to see you and your brother working together as a team." "It's important to me to have a tidy home." "I like it when you help me set the table." We express our gratitude: "Thank you so much for helping me with the laundry! I really appreciate it!"

While I empathized with Katherine's desire and told her that I do love to give her fun things like stickers, I made a distinction between gifts and rewards. I told her that I give her things like stickers or treats for fun and just because I love her; she doesn't have to do anything to get those kind of things from me because they are gifts. Then I asked her why we work hard to learn our spelling and penmanship, even when we feel tired or bored. We talked about how awesome it will be when she can pick up any book in the library and read it all by herself, when she can write letters to friends and write down whatever she wants to say all by herself. Reading and writing are the inherent rewards of learning spelling words and penmanship. We talked about how it takes a lot of hard work over a lot of days and weeks to get there, but how worth it it all will be. Then I thanked her for working hard and told her I love her.

So, today's most important homeschool lesson turned out to be less about why we don't spell "was" as "wuz," and more about why we keep at our work even when it's difficult: We do it for the long-term, inherent rewards. We get fun stuff, too, but not because of our performance. And most importantly, we are loved all the time and that, thank God, has nothing to do with anything we do.

For more insight into how evaluative praise effects children, see Po Bronson's 2007 article in New York Magazine, "How Not to Talk to Your Kids: the Inverse Power of Praise."

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When LDS Missionaries Read the New Testament Like Children

Keeping it Kinetic

I've discovered an essential key to keeping our homeschooling efforts from languishing in static boredom and ineffectiveness. Without it, Katherine would tire and lose focus and motivation. Without it, Jude would go ballistic sabotaging all our seat work. And it's as simple as "Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake."

After morning prayers, before we begin any other subjects or seat work, we sing one or two songs with movement to get energized, focused, and ready to go. We sing and move to another song or two after each 15 to 30 minutes of seat-work. This allows me to "feed the meter" on Jude's attention and active-toddler needs and also allows Katherine to get out her wiggles and mix things up. If I skip the music and movement, getting Katherine to engage in seat-work (a.k.a. penmanship, spelling, and reading) feels like pulling teeth. With the kinetic breaks, she is a whole lot more cooperative.

And, well, music and movement time is just plan fun, not to mention educational in its own right! Some of the songs also really get the heart pumping for a healthy mini-workout.

Some of our favorite songs with movement so far are the following:

• I'm a Little Tea Pot
• Pat-a-Cake, Pat-a-Cake, Baker's Man
• Head and Shoulders
• Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed (We actually jump on the bed for this one, which makes it a favorite of favorites.)
• Open and Shut Them
• Ring-a-Ring-a-Rosie
• Father Abraham
• I'm in the Lord's Army
• See How I'm Jumping
• If You're Happy and You Know It
• Praise Ye the Lord, Alleluia (We crouch down and then pop up like a Jack-in-the-box for one or other of the refrains.)

And sometimes we just play a fast song on the computer-stereo and dance like crazy people around the apartment. A kinetic round of Simon Says also works.

What are some other good movement and music songs? Which ones do you like to sing with your little people? Do share.