Fallow
On rest as resistance — and why this newsletter is going quiet for August
I am taking the month of August away from this newsletter; and most of it (though not all) as vacation from work, too. No new posts until September. And I want to say why — not as an apology for the silence, but as an extension of the very things I keep writing about here.
A few years ago I started returning, again and again, to a phrase that has since become almost a slogan: rest as resistance. It comes most powerfully from Tricia Hersey, founder of the Nap Ministry, whose book Rest Is Resistance names what a lot of us feel in our bodies before we can put it into words — that grind culture is not neutral, that the demand to be endlessly productive is doing damage at a cellular level, and that lying down can be a refusal. Hersey is clear that this is not a lifestyle tip. It is a confrontation with an economy that has taught us to measure our worth by our output, and then to feel guilty for needing to stop.
I want to press on that claim again, because it is easy to soften. Rest as resistance gets picked up by the wellness industry and sold back to us as self-optimization — rest so you can perform better, recover so you can produce more, unplug for a weekend so you can return to the grind sharper. That is not resistance. That is the same machine with a spa day bolted on. The kind of rest I mean does not justify itself by what it produces later.
Here is where the tradition I work in has something old and stubborn to say.
The word sabbatical comes from Sabbath, and Sabbath, in scripture, is not a reward for work well done. It is commanded. It is woven into the order of creation before there is any economy to be productive within. And the tradition does not stop at the seventh day. Every seventh year, the law says, the land itself is to rest — fields left unsown, vines unpruned, the ground allowed to lie fallow. The word for it is shmita. And the same sabbatical rhythm reaches toward justice: the seventh-year release of debts, the jubilee return of what had been lost. Rest and release arrive together, because they turn out to be the same refusal — the refusal to treat the land, or the neighbour, or the body, as an asset that must never stop yielding.
Ask any farmer what a fallow field is doing. It looks like nothing. Nothing is being grown, nothing is being harvested, no yield is being posted. And underneath, the soil is regenerating — rebuilding what relentless cropping strips away, restoring what cannot be restored while the field is still being worked. The fallow field is not idle. It is doing the one thing that constant production makes impossible.
I have a section in my forthcoming book about regeneration — that the seeds we want to see in the world have to be planted in our own bodies, too. August is me letting the field lie fallow. Not so that I come back in September with more to say. Just because the ground needs it, and because I would rather practice what I keep preaching than write one more post about rest while running myself into the ground producing it.
Those of you who have been reading a while know I do not tend toward silence. The posts have been frequent, the projects many. So let me be honest about the temptation, which is to frame even this rest as productive — to promise you I will return refreshed, brimming, better. I am not going to promise that. Sabbath that has to earn its keep is not Sabbath. The fallow year is not a productivity strategy dressed in liturgical clothes; the whole point is that the land rests whether or not it is convenient, whether or not the yield can be spared, because the God who made it does not measure it by its output. And neither, it turns out, are we — however loudly the culture insists otherwise.
So: no posts in August. I will not be gathering. I am trusting — the way the manna story asks us to trust — that the provision will still be there when I come back to the field. I will rest. And I hope, wherever you are, you find some fallow ground of your own this summer, and the nerve to stand on it without apologizing.
See you in September.
Dear Carmen,
Thank you for this beautiful meditation. I found myself reading it slowly rather than quickly, which may be one of the finest compliments one can offer an essay on Sabbath.
Your image of the fallow field has stayed with me. At first glance, it appears empty. Yet beneath its stillness, countless relationships are quietly being restored—the soil with its hidden life, the roots with the rain, the earth with the creatures that inhabit it. Nothing spectacular is happening, yet everything essential is.
As I sat with your words, another thought gradually emerged.
Abraham Joshua Heschel called the Sabbath a “cathedral in time.” I have loved that phrase for years. But your essay led me to wonder whether the fallow field is itself a cathedral in time.
Not because it is producing something greater for the future, but because it is a place where time itself is made holy. In the fallow field, time is no longer measured by yield, efficiency, or productivity. It becomes the quiet rhythm by which creation remembers itself before God.
I have been working on a book exploring what I call the Civilization of Wa—a way of understanding the world in which relationship is more fundamental than possession or achievement. Reading your essay, I found myself thinking that perhaps the deepest purpose of the fallow year is not simply to heal the soil but to heal time itself.
Modern life teaches us to experience time as something to spend, save, manage, or conquer. Sabbath gently refuses that illusion. The fallow field whispers another truth: that time is not a commodity but a relationship. When we cease our relentless extraction, time itself begins to breathe again.
Perhaps that is why the field lying fallow feels strangely sacred. It is not empty at all. It is filled with God’s patient work—the slow, hidden restoration of relationships that constant production can never accomplish.
Thank you for reminding us that Sabbath does not need to earn its place by what follows. Like grace itself, it is complete in its own giving.
May August be for you such a cathedral in time—a place where neither words nor silence need justify themselves, because simply dwelling in God’s presence is enough.
With gratitude, friendship, and every blessing,
David
Thank you so much for sharing the thinking behind your month of rest from this newsletter. We will miss your wisdom and insights but pray that it is time of blessings in the less tangible paths of faith.