Emmaus minutes

Well, everybody's headed back from Thanksgiving now--back to normal from their Emmauses and Kentuckys.

We don't get much about why the two followers in Luke 24:13-35 and Mark 16:12-13 were headed to Emmaus. We know they were sad and wanting to reflect on what just happened. We can imagine that they would've been angry. I would've been scared and inclined to retreat to a place that felt safer, calmer, homier.

My wife once read me something that someone wrote about sabbath being so useful to humans because observing a weekly break from earthly, compete-for-resources business is a testament and renewal of faith in clockless, deadlineless, abundant reality. Holidays are similarly valuable, but they are a different sort of tool.

They are a little harder and often longer breaks. We impose holidays a little more strictly on one another than we do sabbath. (Business, by and large, rewards the employee who catches up on work on Sundays, but, in a lot of companies, the worker who sent out a bunch of email and voice messages time-stamped Dec. 25 would be flagged by management as one who is unable to reasonably manage his or her responsibilities.) Also, holidays often involve rigmarole--traveling, special cooking, preparation. Sabbath might include a trip to church, a run or bicycle ride, a Sunday-afternoon car ride, whatever, but it's a recharge-by-relaxing situation; on the other hand, holidays often involve so much rigmarole that they are more exhausting than business. We even sometimes schedule a day at the end of a holiday break to relax before going back to work. The relax might be necessary, but the recharge of holidays frequently is found in the rigmarole.

There isn't much relaxing in the Emmaus story. Cleopas and his buddy are recharged in the rigmarole of traveling, reviewing recent events, hosting a fellow traveler, putting together a meal, dialing in to the moment, discerning the divine and hurrying back to the work of sharing what they experienced.

Headed back to normal now. Hard to leave.