The Lord's Day

In terms of ‘setting my students free’ from their work, there was a massive cultural clash that went unnoticed. Here, children are used as laborers just like everyone else. But at the monastery some of the monks often call upon students to do work and generally the students are bound by some unwritten rule of not leaving until being allowed to out of fear of retribution come the next class with whomever they are working for. In my case, the students weren’t mine, I asked them to come without any obligation, I told them that they would be rewarded for their efforts, I asked how long they could/were willing to stay, and I fed them, twice. They were there by their own wanting to be there. I paid them each 500CFA, which is more than most people in the country make in a day, but would put me on par with abusive practices around the world had the conditions been somewhat different. Hell, that’s enough money to feed their families for close to a week!

As for not working on Sunday, well I think part of that spiel was due to the fact that we were working right below his window and he likes his post lunch quiet/nap time. Respectable, and I understand that aspect. But I am a little fuzzy on why we’re not supposed work on Sunday (not that I follow it in any case). If you go to the Bible, you’ve got the whole ‘keep holy the Lord’s day.’ I don’t recall seeing much if anything relating work and holiness.

Frankly, the Bible can be interpreted in any one of a billion ways and I choose to see it somewhat differently than most. Keeping holy the Lord’s Day means more to me than just simply going to church. I am not one of the ‘spent my hour thinking about football while some guy in a robe gave some spiel about money, God, and community and now I am free for another week’ type of people. In fact I would be almost the complete opposite. That train of thought runs through a station that is similar to Valentine’s Day (that’s St. Valentine’s Day for those who didn’t know it is a feast day). Let’s take one day and make it so that everyone who loves someone has to say I love you in a special way, while trying to surprise them at the same time. If you get something, you’re inevitably happy about it, but in reality slightly disappointed that it wasn’t what you had built up in your mind, it wasn’t from whom you wanted it to be from, or it wasn’t anything at all. All that aside, the meaning gets lost in translation. Yes, you love me, but you had to do this because society tells you to and I will be mad as a hornet if I don’t get my heart-shaped box of chocolates! Now I am no revolutionary, but wouldn’t that box mean a little bit more on any one of the other 364 days of the year when society isn’t telling you that you have say ‘I love you’? It would for me.

Pulling that one back in I would rather do that and go to mass any other day of the week to show that “Hey, God, gotchya on my mind, let’s chat” and work in a productive way using the gifts and talents that have been given to me on the ‘Lord’s Day.’ In any case, the Lord’s Day technically isn’t Sunday. The 7th day of the week (going off of the God rested today theory) is Saturday by all contemporary calendars.