The 24 Rhythms of Hearth & Hinterland: Sabbath Rest & Seasonal Retreats

Words on the Art of Learning to Say "Enough" of You and "More" of God through Cyclical Rest

In the beginning, God said “Let there be light,” but before He said anything, God hovered. God waited. God brooded over the waters like a mother hen, gently holding the chaos before she separated it into order (Genesis1:1-2). That hovering was the first act of God, the Wind before the Word.

God was still before God spoke.

Why then are we so hell bent on starting the creation narrative with action, when it is clear that a key part of what separated the Israelite creation from other similar narratives was this idea of rest?

Because the fallen spirit of humanity is the spirit of brick making, or more specifically, and left unchecked, it will always lead to people with power making those without power the brickmakers for them.

We always want to begin our stories with the bricks, with action that earns rest. Pharaoh doesn’t care about waiting. Pharaoh wants a headcount. Pharaoh keeps score.

But the Kingdom of God doesn’t ask, “What have you done?” It asks, “Have you been present in me?” (Matthew 11:28-290

In the words of singer, song-writer Josh Garrels, “My rest is a weapon against the oppression of man’s obsession to control things.”

Our “goodness” apart from production is the foundation of what God wants to remind us about being human well.

Sabbath as Resistance

Ancient Israel was given the Sabbath not just as a day off but as a declaration of war against the way of life and economy they had learned under pharaoh. In Egypt, rest was tantamount to open rebellion. Sabbath laws said that was the entire point.

St. John Crysostom said, “The Sabbath was given, not for idleness, but that we might be free from worldly cares and devote ourselves to spiritual things.”

Sabbath rest is not for the weary, it’s for the free.

And though most of us have read the creation narrative hundreds of times, we’re still trying to learn what that kind of freedom tastes like. Sabbath becomes a training ground for our imagination.

“Six days you shall labor,” God says, “but the seventh is a Sabbath unto the Lord your God. On it you shall do no work…” (Exodus 20:9–10)

But here’s the kicker: that commandment doesn’t start with the work, it starts with the memory, “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.”

Our Creator knows we forget. That’s why God tied it to the rhythms of the moon and stars (Genesis 1:14), into the very fabric of keeping time within creation. That’s why He let manna rot after one day but stay fresh on the sixth, so that we’d have no choice but to treat the seventh day as a holy hush (Exodus 16).

So, why do we still fight so hard against it? Why do we still make excuses to fill our Sabbath with productivity?

Because if we’re honest, silence is unnerving. Silence exposes how much we rely on noise and tasks to distract us from the chaos of our internal chaos. But silence is the sound God makes when God is shaping things. Silence is the hovering. Silence is the still small voice. Silence is the Wisdom.

You Are Not What You Produce

When God gives the Ten Commandments a second time in Deuteronomy 5, He adds a new reason for Sabbath not present in the first:

“Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out … Therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.”

Sabbath is freedom school. It’s where we unlearn our empire addiction.

We are not the bricks we make.
We are not the sermons we preach.
We are not the children we raise or
We are not the papers we file.
We are not the likes we tally.
We are not the followers we amass.

You are a beloved image-bearer of the Creator.
Full stop.

Work proceeds from rest, not the other way around.

St. Maximus the Confessor went even further, saying that it is not what we do, but how we learn to love that is the true measure of our faithfulness.

“He who rests in God does not measure himself by what he does, but by what he loves.”

If that’s true, then Sabbath becomes the anchor for every other rhythm of our lives. It becomes the root system not only for what kind of energy with which we work, but also the place where we gather the love from which we will work. It’s not a pause in the “real week.” It’s the place we begin again. It’s the place where we learn to say, “Enough”, of ourselves and “More” of the Creator. (Galatians 2:20)

Enough is Holy

“God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all the work of creation that He had done.” (Genesis 2:3)

We often miss something crucial there.

God didn’t bless the first day he entered the chaos or the day God created humans their own image. He blessed the seventh. The day God stopped creating.

God made our rest holy.

It is not as if God needed a breather. He wasn’t tired. He could have kept going, but he didn’t. God knew when to say enough. He knew when what needed to be done was done, and that it was time to stop and enjoy the fruit of the labor.

If you ask me to name the core difference between God and man, this will be high on my list—knowing when to say “enough.”

St. Basil the Great, one of the earliest Desert Fathers, had this to say.

“A tree is known by its fruit; a person by their works. A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love.”

But Basil also took regular retreats into the silence of the hills. He knew good works don’t come from burnout. They come from abiding. From pruning. From stillness. From creating space to observe the fruit of our works.

Retreat as Return

If Sabbath teaches us to stop and learn to say, “enough,” retreats teach us to return to the beginning places of our created being, our imago dei.

The two are similar, but not the same. Both are holy, and both must be carved out with intention. But each is a different window looking into the same room.

St. Cuthbert entreated us to, “Go to your cell, and your cell will teach you all.”

Sabbath is a weekly rhythm.
Retreat is seasonal reckoning.

We ask those who join the Appalachian Order to take at least two retreats a year. One to the wild. One to the hearth.

Wild: In spring or summer, we return to the wilderness—not to conquer it, but to be humbled by it. The moss becomes our prayer rug. The trail becomes our liturgy. The stars remind us how small we are, and how held we are.

Hearth: In fall or winter, we come back to the fire. To slow soups and crackling wood. To solitude without isolation. To warmth that teaches us patience and stories that remind us we are not alone.

Jesus did both.

He withdrew into the wild to pray (Luke 5:16).
He broke bread by the fire with his disciples (John 21:9).
He went up the mountain and then came down to teach. (Luke 6:12-13)
He escaped the crowds so he could love them better. (John 6:15)

The 48-Hour Rule

We recommend that at least one of our retreats each year be a full 48 hours of solitude. Not just because it’s traditional within historical monasticism, but because it takes that long to quiet the noise—which is most likely why it was a recommended period of time in the first place.

The first 24 hours are detox.
Your mind races.
You think of your phone.
You worry about what you’re missing.
You itch for a to-do list.

The second 24?
That’s when the whispers start.

The Holy Spirit does not shout. (1 Kings 19:11–13)

She waits.
She waits until the hum of traffic dies down in your soul.
She waits until you stop checking your pockets.
She waits until you sit down and exhale.

And then she says things worth hearing.

But she only speaks to ears that are ready to listen.

Sabbath Is Not Worship

Now, let me say something that might ruffle a few feathers.

Sabbath was not made for worship. It was made for rest.

Jesus Himself said it:

“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27)

Now sure, worship is good. And if worship brings you into rest, let it flow. But don’t replace rest with noise just because it’s sacred noise.

Some of us go to church on Sunday and call it sabbath, but we never stop. We go from pillow to pew to brunch to laundry to anxiety. That’s not Sabbath. That’s religion demanding more of your productivity to keep you in its rhythm.

Sabbath is when you do things that make your shoulders drop. When your breath slows. When you belly laugh. When you sit in the grass or curl up with a book or fall asleep on the porch.

It is the spiritual practice of being useless. And it is holy.

That is not to say that you should not come together for worship or gathering together for meals or teaching. I’m simply saying that it’s not the what makes a day, a Sabbath.

For myself, we hold our gatherings on Saturday evening at sundown so that those who gather with us begin their Sabbath with worship, yes, but also so they have a full 24 hours of doing absolutely nothing.

What Sabbath Teaches the Soul

Let’s name what Sabbath teaches us, clearly and simply:

We are not God. He keeps the world spinning without our help.

We are not machines.
Our worth isn’t tied to our output.

We need limits.
Even Eden had boundaries.

We are meant to delight.
God sees us as “good”.

We belong to a different Kingdom.
One built on abundance.

My brothers and sisters, you were not made for Pharaoh’s clock.

You were not made for constant scrolling or the endless grinding of over-caffeinated discipleship.

You were made for breath.
For body.
For beauty.

You were made to rest like God rests.
To say “enough” like God says “enough.”

To hover over your life and see that it is good.

The world won’t applaud you for resting or making space to get away.

But heaven will.

So go.
Unplug.
Sit down.
Watch the sky turn.
Trust the fire.

Take off your shoes and walk slowly into the hush of enough.

The Sabbath has already begun.

All that’s left is for you to remember it.