My Own Personal Sabbath #16

Yesterday, my sister created a new graphic for the posts she does for her blogs on Sundays called “Sunday Bookends.” Another blogger I follow regularly, Ti of Book Chatter has a theme called “Sunday Matters,” with the sub-theme of “Rest, Regroup, Reflect.” Over several years and several blogs, I have belonged to The Sunday Salon, now hosted by Deb Nance of Readerbuzz. Now inspired by sister, Ti, and Deb, I want to do my own Sunday-themed post: My Own Personal Sabbath.

For the past 16 Sundays, I already have been doing it, without a graphic or a post. It began with the simple premise of putting my phone in a desk drawer all day, with all notifications shut off, to focus on reading, journaling, listening to music, watching what I want to watch with no news and no work. My wife usually works two 12 hour shifts, from Saturday night to Sunday morning and then Sunday night to Monday morning, so Sunday afternoons, she is asleep so you don’t think I’m abandoning her...or if you did. Since then, it has evolved in other ways:

• using my phone but taking apps such as Instagram off it for the day and only using it to listen to music and play Solitaire.
• not using my Kindle Fire which still shows notifications but using an “old school” Kindle that has no web browser or notifications.

And not initially planned, but I also have been reading mostly British or mystery books on my Sundays. In June, I finished the All Creatures Great and Small series by James Herriot and I’m continuing to make my way through the novels and short stories of Sherlock Holmes. Yesterday, I read The Case of the Famished Parson by George Bellairs and in July, I read Smallbone Deceased by Michael Gilbert, both British murder mysteries. The latter was better than the former, but both were good.

The other mysteries I read were The Rat Began to Gnaw The Rope by C.W. Grafton and Gold of Our Fathers by Kwei Quartey. I’ve also read four other books:

• The Best Poems of Jane Kenyon
• All Systems Red and Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
• Spiritual Practice for Crazy Times: Powerful Tools To Cultivate Calm, Clarity, and Courage by Philip Goldberg.

I’m also continuing to meander my way through Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver and am about halfway through, enjoying it so far.

Next up: In addition to Mary Oliver and Sherlock Holmes, I have a couple of other Inspector Littlejohn books by Bellairs that I picked up on Kindle. I have the next three of The Murderbot Diaries by Wells checked out of the library, but since I haven’t gotten to them yet in the last couple of weeks, it is unlikely I will get to them right now and they probably will get returned tomorrow when I go to work at the library.

I’ll leave you with what we’ve been watching:

We finished Season 1 of Teenage Bounty Hunters last night and are finishing up Series 1 of Brassic today.

Addendum: I don’t have a graphic yet for this new feature, but I’ll work on it in the near future and might have it by next week.