In such places [as the woodlands], on the best of these sabbath days, I experience a lovely freedom from expectations - other people's and also my own. I go free from the tasks and intentions of my workdays, and so my mind becomes hospitable to unintended thoughts: to what I am very willing to call inspiration. The poems come incidentally or they do not come at all. If the Muse leaves me alone, I leave her alone. To be quiet, even wordless, in a good place is a better gift than poetry (Wendell Berry, This Day, Introduction).
A good relationship has unfilled, unplanned time, when expectations are allowed to rest. In a good relationship with our Sabbath-giver, expectation draws us forward into life. When it is life-giving, it is hope. When it is death-dealing, it is dread. Some time must be spent out of the sun and rain of different expectations in this shelter-rest of sabbath.
Only in this do we find freedom. We find we are not tethered to our expectations, but we can ride them for a while, letting them bear us into new and better places. Expectation can only become hope when we can rest. Otherwise we find that we are pushed instead of invited, tied down instead of free. Dread is the result.
In the midst of rest, we find we have unintended thoughts. We will find out whether we have been tending to our thoughts or letting them grow into distorted and grotesque weeds of the mind. Rest allows us time to tend our thoughts and dig up the weeds that are intruders in the ecology of our life with God. Then rest can become a garden of delight, where the unintended thoughts are beautiful and surprising, helpful and holy. What grows in the mind rested on God is hope, the wordless silence allowing the relationship we have with God to speak and create anew.
