休息日你怎么过
What Happened to Sunday
佚名 / Anonymous
Today our life and work rarely feel light, pleasant or healing. Instead, the whole experience of being alive begins to melt into one enormous obligation. It becomes the standard greeting everywhere: "I am so busy."
We say this to one another with no small degree of pride. The busier we are, the more important we seem to ourselves and, we imagine, to others. To be unavailable to our friends and family, to be unable to find time for the sunset, to whiz through our obligations without time for a single mindful breath — this has become the model of a successful life.
Because we do not rest, we lose our way. We lose the nourishment that gives us help. We miss the quiet that gives us wisdom. Poisoned by the belief that good things come only through tireless effort, we never truly rest.
This is not the world we dreamed of when we were young. How did we get so terribly rushed in a world saturated with work and responsibility, yet somehow bereft of joy and delight?
We have forgotten the Sabbath. Sabbath is the time to enjoy and celebrate what is beautiful and good—time to light candles, sing songs, worship, tell stories, bless our children and loved ones, give thanks, share meals, nap, and walk. It is time to be nourished and refreshed as we let our work, our chores and our important projects lie fallow, trusting that there are larger forces at work taking care of the world when we are at rest.
Sabbath is more than the absence of work. Many of us, in our desperate drive to be successful and care for our many responsibilities feel terrible guilt when we take time to rest. But the Sabbath has proven its wisdom over the ages. Many of us still recall when, not long ago, shops and offices were closed on Sundays. Those quiet Sunday afternoons are embedded in our cultural memory.
如今，生活和工作已经很难让人感到轻松愉悦或是颐养身心。相反，生活的全部体验里都融入了巨大的职责。“我很忙”变成了一种标准问候语。
对他人说这句话时，我们会引以为豪。我们以为，自己越忙，于人于己，我们就显得越重要。抽不开身来与亲朋好友相聚，没有时间欣赏日落，为履行职责奔忙不停而无暇用心呼吸——这一切已成为成功人士的生活模式。
因为得不到休息，我们迷失了方向；失去了于己有益的滋养；错过了赐予我们智慧的宁静。我们深受这个信条的毒害，而永远得不到真正的休息——成功源于不懈地努力。
我们年轻时梦想的世界并不是这样。我们怎么就一头扎进了如此可怕的世界——一个充斥着工作和责任，却又被剥夺了欢乐和喜悦的世界。
安息日，我们已经忘却。它是享受和庆贺美好事物的日子——是点上蜡烛、唱歌、做礼拜、讲故事、为孩子和爱人祈福、感恩祷告、共享午餐、小憩和散步的日子，也是将工作、家务杂事和重要规划搁置一边，滋养放松身心的日子。我们坚信，休息过后可以更好地应对这个世界。
安息日不仅仅是指不工作。休息时，很多渴望成功和肩负重任的人会有负罪感。随着时间的推移，安息日的价值就会日益显露。不久前，周日里商店停业，公司员工全体休息，那样的日子，很多人仍念念不忘。那些宁静的星期天下午，在我们的文化记忆中烙下了深深的印记。
休息，在当今工作和生活节奏日益加快的今天，显得是那么重要！繁忙的人生旅途中，你只有驻足停歇的时刻，才能欣赏沿途的风景和体悟自己的感怀！
obligation [,bli'gein] n. 义务；责任
Are we under any obligation to support the company?
我们是不是有义务支持这家公司？
whiz [hwiz] v. 发出嗖嗖声；发出嗡嗡声；嗖嗖掠过
The bus whizzed by him.
公共汽车嗖的一声从他身旁驶过。
nourishment ['nrimnt] n. 滋养品；养料；营养
Plants absorb mineral and other nourishment from the earth.
植物从泥土中吸收矿物质和其他养料。
saturate ['s鎡reit] v. 使渗透；浸；使饱和
We lay on the beach, saturated in sunshine.
我们躺在沙滩上，沐浴在阳光里。
如今，生活和工作已经很难让人感到轻松愉悦或是颐养身心。
抽不开身来与亲朋好友相聚，没有时间欣赏日落，为履行职责奔忙不停而无暇用心呼吸——这一切已成为成功人士的生活模式。
因为得不到休息，我们迷失了方向；失去了于己有益的滋养；错过了赐予我们智慧的宁静。
This is not the world we dreamed of when we were young.
dream of：梦想；渴望
...trusting that there are larger forces at work taking care of the world when we are at rest.
take care of：负责；照顾；关怀
一座好谷仓
It Was a Good Barn
佚名 / Anonymous
An old friendship had grown cold. Where once there had been closeness, there was only strain. Now pride kept me from picking up the phone.
Then one day I dropped in on another old friend who's had a long career as a minister and counselor. We were seated in his study—surrounded by maybe a thousand books and fell into deep conversation about everything from small computers to the tormented life of Beethoven.
The subject finally turned to friendship and how perishable it seems to be these days. I mentioned my own experience as an example. "Relationships are mysteries, " my friend said, "Some endure. Others fall apart."
Gazing out his window to the wooded Vermont hills, he pointed toward a neighboring farm, "Used to be a large barn over there." Next to a red-frame house were the footings of what had been a sizable structure.
"It was solidly built, probably in the 1870s. But like so many of the places around here, it went down because people left for richer lands in the Midwest. No one took care of the barn. Its roof needed patching; rainwater got under the eaves and dripped down inside the posts and beams.
"One day a high wind came along, and the whole barn began to tremble. You could hear this creaking, first, like old sailing-ship timbers, and then a sharp series of cracks and a tremendous roaring sound. Suddenly it was a heap of scrap lumber.
"After the storm blew over, I went down and saw these beautiful, old oak timbers, solid as could be. I asked the fellow who owns the place what had happened. He said he figured the rainwater had settled in the pinholes, where wooden dowels held the joints together. Once those pins were rotted, there was nothing to link the giant beams together."
We both gazed down the hill. Now all that was left of the barn was its cellar hole and its border of lilac shrubs.
My friend said he had turned the incident over and over in his mind, and finally came to recognize some parallels between building a barn and building a friendship: no matter how strong you are, how notable your attainments, you have enduring significance only in your relationship to others.
"To make your life a sound structure that will serve others and fulfill your own potential, " he said, "you have to remember that strength, however massive, can't endure unless it has the interlocking support of others. Go it alone and you'll inevitably tumble."