Taking a Breath: Reflections on Sabbaticals

Dear Readers, As I get ready to put this blog to rest and begin new adventures in blogging I thought I would share an edited version of a sermon I delivered this past week at my church, the Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship and sprinkle it with a few pictures I took this year.

Taking a Breath: Reflections on Sabbaticals

Drew Lenore Betz

August 30, 2015

I was the guest speaker at my church on Sunday this week .  I volunteered to do the service because I spent the first six months of this year on a professional leave from my regular work at WSU.  I was on sabbatical and it never failed to amaze me when someone would ask me in a very friendly and well meaning manner how my trip was or when they showed surprise to see me in town as if I should have been in a remote place in the world.  I winced when I read the following references in the book, Time Off, The Upside to Downtime by Enea and LaTourette (2005) -  “gone are the days when the word sabbatical was used to describe the wacky university professor who needs a year overseas to study the mating habits of the Australian Wombat.  The authors refer to the professors who take sabbaticals as madcap.  Really? 

Many people have a vision of what they think a sabbatical is or should be and it is fun to explore that with others. The real rubber hits the road when you have to define it for yourself and do the work of sabbatical.

 Part One: Historical Roots

All Souls Church in NYC

Sabbaticals have their roots in ancient Hebrew traditions.  Most of us know that the Sabbath is celebrated on the seventh day of the week.  Also known as Shabbat, it is a time to be and to love. 

Rabbi Arthur Waskow, in Take Back Your Time (John deGraaf ed, 2003) in his Chapter, “What Can America Learn from Shabbat?,” explains the scriptural roots. 

            “For all the religious traditions that take the Hebrew Scriptures seriously, there is a teaching we call Shabbat. (The word is usually translated into English as “Sabbatch,” and comes from the Hebrew word for pausing and ceasing.)

            In Exodus 20:8-11, the reason given for the Sabbath is to recall Creation; in Deuteronomy 5:12-15, it is to free all of us from slavery.  In the Jewish mystical tradition, it is taught that these seemingly two separate meanings are in fact one.  Meditate on them, and we can see then that way.

            And we are taught not only the seventh day Shabbat: there are also the seventh year and the seven times seven plus one year, the fiftieth year, the Jubilee.

            In the seventh year, the land must be allowed to catch its breath and rest, to make a Shabbat for God, the breath of Life.  Since everyone in ancient Israel was a shepherd or farmer, this meant almost the whole society rested.  Since no one was giving orders and no one was obeying them, hierarchies of bosses and workers vanished. 

            In the year-long Shabbat, even debt – the frozen form of stored up hierarchy- was annulled.  Those who, because of poverty, had been forced to borrow money were released from the need to repay; those who out of wealth, had been pressed into lending were released from the need to collect.

            And in the fiftieth year, the land could breathe freely once again and the and not be worked.  All land was redistributed in equally productive shares, clan by clan, as it had been originally held. …

            These year long Jubilee observances that the Bible calls “shabbat shabbaton,” “Sabbath to the Sabbatical Power,” or deeply restful rest” are times of enacting the social justice, and times of freeing the earth from human exploitation.  They are times of releases from attachments and habits, addictions and idolitries. “Pp. 125-126

The seven-year break for reflection and change remains with us and sabbaticals can be one of the benefits in academia and for ministers.  I will suggest ways in which the sabbatical can be of benefit to a wide range of people in part three of this talk.

The modern sabbatical is not a time to let fields lay fallow or to have all your debts forgiven or to free the slaves.  It is a time for one to set aside of period of time in which work as usual is suspended and perhaps when we free ourselves of slavery to the routines that keep us busy in the Doing of our lives.    The typical modern tradition in the academic world is to grant sabbatical or professional leave as it is called once every seven years to faculty and staff who are eligible.  In ministry there are similar rules.  Sabbaticals can vary in length from a few months to a year.  In many cases some or all salary is paid during the leave.  In my world, a six-month leave is fully paid and a full year leave is supported at 50% of salary.  Churches who budget and save for sabbatical leave for their ministers and for the expenses they incur in the ministers absence are honoring the renewal that our professional leaders need.

Sabbaticals provide renewal, time to really focus and learn new skills or knowledge that will enhance one personally and/or professionally.   I have been inspired by the sabbatical experiences that colleagues and ministers have taken.   I remember Doug Wadkins, our previous settled minister at Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship, taking a sabbatical trip to the Midwest on the train and gathering stories from passengers.  Doug loved couching his sermons in the context of the most amazing life stories and he came back with wonderful new stories that taught him and all of us about lives well lived.  I remember my colleague Sam Tower, who was the WSU 4-H Challenge Course manager, taking a year to live in India and work with Play for Peace and then sharing that with many colleagues in the Experiential Education community.  He is now retired and continues his Play for Peace work both at home and internationally.   My colleague Tom Power is an accomplished scholar and has spent a great deal of time growing the Human Development Department and Prevention Sciences PhD program at WSU.  He was granted a year’s sabbatical at the end of his 13-year term as department head (long overdue) and spent most of the time catching up with his research and writing.  I had lunch with him last week in Pullman and we were debriefing on our sabbaticals.  I asked him about his time and he said he mostly stayed in Pullman and wrote a bunch of articles.  I asked him what a bunch meant.  He grinned and told me 10 or so. I asked him about the status of those articles and he said most were in press or accepted.  I am guessing that most of you will not be able to fully grasp what is means to produce 10 articles for publication in academic journals but I assure you it is a bucketload!  His break was from all the administrative details and his sabbatical gave him the time he needed to process the results of years of backlogged research findings and to interpret the meaning for the wider community of his peers.  There are many more stories I could share and I am guessing you have some of your own. 

Part Two:  My Sabbatical Experience:

I knew when I came to work for WSU Extension in 1993 that I wanted to earn and take a sabbatical.  When I say earn, I mean that I had to first earn tenure and then I would be eligible to apply.  I earned tenure in 1999 and it took fourteen years for my sabbatical dream to be realized.  Position and life changes scuttled the idea of sabbatical more than once.  Moving to Bellingham in 2001, my daughter Kate’s death in 2002, the retirement of our county extension director and my own appointment to that administrative position in 2010 all were reasons to defer an application for leave.  I decided to focus my energies on what I could do and worked towards a promotion to full Professor (2006) and then spend five amazing years on a project that expanded our Whatcom County programming to Latino audiences. 

My work on the five year project, officially named the Creating Culturally Competent Programs for Families, provided the spark for my sabbatical proposal and consequent leave.  I have been fortunate to be exposed to Latino issues and family programs since the early 1980’s when I was working with a statewide team that also included a project with the Washington State Migrant Council.  I learned early about how the cultural values of respect and family characterize the decisions and choices people make about their lives.  In my early years with Extension I recruited cultural guides to work with the growing immigrant population in Lewis County (Centralia and Chehalis).   We worked to establish a small family support center for Latino families and I learned that the Catholic Church had not migrated north with these families, meaning there were no masses in Spanish being offered and the families who built their lives around faith were being supported by a few Rogue nuns (from the words of Sister Catherine, a Dominican sister who worked in the area at the time).  It explains the religious diversity that exists in the Latino population in the northwest.

 It was not until I began working with families here in Whatcom County that that I became aware of the devastating impact that our US immigration policy was having on families.  I will tell you the story of one mother and her children and how that experience propelled me into my sabbatical.  Rosa (not her real name) came to our Fortaleciendo Familias program with her oldest child.  She was an eager student and our facilitation team was so impressed they invited her to come to training to become a facilitator.  She attended the training and it was suggested that we hire her when we had the chance.  I followed through and received her application.    The night I went to complete the paperwork with her and get copies of her official documents (in my world it is called I-9 documentation – social security card, driver’s license, green card, passport, etc), all she could give me was a pay stub from a dry cleaners.  I said that I needed her actual documents and she looked upset and said they were at home.  I was speaking to her with the help of one of my bi-lingual staff.  Rosa’s English was limited.  I will never forget the vigilance of her two sons who were watching the process and looked really concerned for their mother.  It took me a moment to realize that Rosa did not have legal documents and the reason why.  I quickly assured her and her sons that I although I could not hire her I would not share the information about her status with anyone else.  I assured them that they were safe.  I knew then that I needed to learn more about the whole immigration system and process and how it impacted the family system for our growing Latino population.  That experience was the spark that I needed to plan my sabbatical.

 

Art at the Wall in Nogales, Mexico

A poster in one of the shelters we visited.

Our learning community - Borderlinks journey

I dove into sabbatical planning.  The time was right and I had vision for doing some work that I had talked about for a long time.  When I wrote my first proposal and sent it for review to our Extension administration, I was advised to focus less on producing and more on learning.  I panicked at first.  I was so used to doing and to being a producer.  I was convinced that if I could rewrite the curriculum we were using with Rosa and other families to include contemporary issues that included immigration, acculturation, talking about personal safety, etc. that would be a huge benefit.  I was surprised that I was being asked what I would learn and how my study would benefit the larger community and the university.  I realized that I needed what authors Bob Sessions and Lori Erickson in their chapter,” A Case for Sabbaticals” in Take Back your Time (2003) call the true benefits of a sabbatical, rest and a new perspective.  

What a gift it has been to take a break from my normally busy and productive work life to rest, recuperate, and dive deep into an area of study and potential work that I deeply care about.  I know that some of you have been reading my blog (more proof of my drive to produce – albeit in a new and fun way) and I am beginning to connect my sabbatical learning to my work at the university.  Taking this break to really explore has been life changing for me and the benefits go beyond the learning about immigration.  A few things that have come for me:

-       I really enjoyed traveling with Michael to the Southwest and to NYC and involving him in the process, not something I can do when my work is office based.  He and I both participated in the UUCSJ border justice experience. He went to visit family support centers, graduate seminars, worker justice organizers and spoke to field workers and professionals with me.  I think he has more appreciation about why I work.

Mike in blue coat waiting to go into the Kino Center.

-       I took the time to look at my priorities and where I was spending my time.  I am not so caught up in the fury of daily e-mails as I used to be and am less likely to jump into new projects that are not central to my personal and professional goals. 

-       I rediscovered the joy of writing and discovered how to journal (aka blog) on line.

-       I feel renewed and really ready to work for a few more years and to have a productive late career instead of passing time until I feel ready to retire.

-       I was also able to come back.   A true sabbatical involve re-integration into that which was left for a time.  Coming back can be as hard as leaving.  I am so grateful that I was welcomed back with open arms the day I returned to the office. More on that in Part 3.

Part Three:  Creating Sabbatical Space

I have shared a bit about the roots of the sabbatical tradition and the modern traditions in academics and religion.  I know that sabbaticals exist in some other workplaces but they are more rare than not outside of the traditional forms.

I believe that it is possible for many people to take a sabbatical.  Session and Erickson contend that sabbaticals are for everyone.  They are referring to Americans who are employed in full time jobs and who lead very busy lives.  They argue that we could all benefit from more time to nourish our spirits and develop other parts of our lives and that our workplaces would benefit from having employees who are invigorated, refreshed and ultimately more productive because of their time away.  They emphasize that planning is key.  I think there are several key elements to having a successful sabbatical experience and I believe these principles serve for those who are employed or not. 

1.     Before any planning can take place, it is important to dream a bit.  Imagining what, how, when, where and why you would use your time.

2.     People who are employed in any setting must identify the job from which they can take leave.  If there are essential functions that have to be covered, those need to be identified and someone or a group of someones need to take over.  In my case, I had colleagues who stepped into various management roles in my absence and it worked.  In a church community, committees, visiting and associate ministers fill the gaps in the pulpit and pastoral care. 

3.     One must be prepared to really let go and then to integrate upon return.  Neither is easy if done intentionally, especially in today’s world of instant communication.  One of the many stories I have heard about ministers who take sabbaticals is that they fear their congregations will like have them gone better than they like having them there.  I was in a church in which that happened but I suspect it is the exception rather than the rule. 

4.     If one is retired or employed less than full time there may be something that is occupying more time than desired or in which one has reached the point of burnout.  Taking a break, a leave or time away from a committee or a group is something that can be done but it is rarely done with a plan to come back.  I have left several groups and have often wished I could have taken a sabbatical from the groups.  I attempted it once with a quilting group so I could focus on creating art quilts and it had limited success.  I therefore think that sabbaticals work best where there is a community to support the process whether it is a family, a workplace, a church community or a club. 

5.     The process works when there is some intentionality and there are plans and accountability that speaks to the learning and changes one is making.  I think it is important to share the sabbatical experience with at least one other person or to somehow recognize what has changed.

6.     I think it is important to focus some aspect of the sabbatical on feeding the spirit.  Although a sabbatical is not a vacation, it does provide more time for rest and focus.  Engaging in beauty, travel, art, cultural and service learning experiences can be part of that spiritual experience.

I invite you dream a little about taking a sabbatical.

Imagine a friend, loved one or colleague coming to you and saying that you could take six months off from your normal work, whether paid or not, if you could make a plan and a commitment to learning something that could help yourself or others. 

How would you start?

What might you let go of?

What might you learn?

How would you share it with others?

I will close with wisdom from Sessions and Erickson.

            Taking a sabbatical isn’t often easy.  It typically requires creativity, hard work, and a significant financial commitment.  But those who have taken them say that these life changing experiences are more than worth the effort…..

            What we need, clearly is a better balance between work and rest.  As Wayne Muller says, “If certain plant species…do not lie dormant for winter, they will not bear fruit in the spring.  If this continues for more than a season, the plant begins to die.  If dormancy continues to be prevented, the entire species will die.  A period of rest – in which nutrition and fertility most readily coalesce – is not simply a human psychological convenience: it is a spiritual and biological necessity.”

            We remain convinced: everyone needs a sabbatical. (p. 171 in Take Back Your Time).

Reference: DeGraaf. John (Ed), Take Back Your Time: Fighting Overwork and Time Poverty in America.  San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. 2003.

As always,

Thanks for reading.