Cycles and Rhythms

Day and night. That must be the most common cycle we humans experience.  That dramatic contrast between light and dark has also encouraged the evolution of different species of animals to occupy the shifting scenes of day and night.

The next most common natural cycle on Earth is that of the annual seasons as our planet tips back and forth on its axis in relation to the sun.  In some places, that alternation is primarily between dry and wet seasons.  Familiar to more people are the seasons of summer, fall, winter and spring.  It is the plants that primarily mirror that cycle with their dramatic annual changes.

The sun's cycles of days and the Earth's cycle of seasons come together to make our secular calendar of one solar year.  So where did the months come from?  They are derived from the less obvious cycle of the moon -- from new moon, through crescent shapes, and into a full moon.  That cycle takes 29 to 30 days.  People who live their lives at the ocean's edge have been more familiar with that cycle because they have had to adjust to the rhythm of the tides, which are caused primarily by the moon's gravitational pull.  Other cultures have found it valuable in other ways to keep an eye on the moon with its luminous glow, so different than the sun's heat.  One town in Japan has arranged the placement of residential plots so that each house can have an inspiring window-view of the rising, full moon.

So where did those seven-day weeks on our calendar come from?  That number seven is different:  There is no cycle of celestial bodies visible to the naked eye that completes its cycle at the number seven.  Nevertheless, there seems to be a human need to periodically take a break from the mere repetition of day and night, work and sleep.  Having nothing but that daily cycle can get monotonous.  People got a sample of that monotony when the coronavirus pandemic forced people who could work at home to do so.  Gone were the weekly cycles from Monday to Thank-Goodness-it's-Friday.  Also gone was weekend revitalization through sports, eating at a restaurant, and worship services.  Each day became tiringly the same.

Cycles can be comforting, but one rhythm alone in our lives can become oppressive.  In 1930, the dictator Joseph Stalin chopped off the two-day weekend from the Soviet calendar.  He was attempting to increase the nation's productivity by creating a five-day week filled only with work, and with no weekend-break.  How confining that would have been!

Down through history, various numbers have been tried by varying cultures for breaking up life into weeks.  The number of days has ranged from five to ten.  The seven-day week of today's secular calendar was established by Jewish people in ancient times as being six days of work followed by the Sabbath.  On that Sabbath, there was a mandated pause from work, commerce, and trying to get-ahead of other people financially.  As the 20th-century psychoanalyst Erich Fromm put it in the title of one of his books, the Sabbath was aimed at being a shift of mode from "To Have" to "To Be."  Similar to the way that the number seven transcends the natural cycles, the Sabbath was designed to transcend humans' easy habits.  It was an opportunity to bask in the grace of the world, and experience God's grace more deeply.

Not that the Sabbath meant getting away from experiencing Nature.  To the contrary, it can be the opportunity to experience the renewing power of Nature more fully.  Oppressors have known that power too, and have tried to keep the oppressed away from Nature.  In George Bernard Shaw's play Saint Joan, the imprisoned Joan of Arc points to her being separated from Nature as evidence of her captors' evil character.  She says to them:

"It is not the bread and water I fear.... But to shut me from the light of the sky and
 the sight of the fields and flowers... and keep from me everything that brings me back to the love of God....  without these things I cannot live; and by your wanting to take them away from me, or from any human creature, I know that your counsel is of the devil,
 and that mine is of God."

~ ~ ~

(When and how have you found renewal through Nature?)

(The quotation is from Shaw's Saint Joan, Scene IV.)
(The picture of the Earth is used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.)