How did you all “do”Sabbath growing up?

When I was growing up, watching ANY television on Sunday was strictly forbidden. If the deacons (who acted as the “enforcers”) found out we had watched television, we could be brought before the church for “discipline”.

This, of course, extended to other forbidden activities, such as reading forbidden books, watching forbidden movies, having friends outside of our denomination, dating of any kind, etc. Life was certainly grand in the 1960s!

My cousins, who were also my best friends, belonged to the Church of Christ, which my church considered “liberal”. When my family visited their house on Sunday evening, we got to watch “heathen” television programs such as “Disney’s Wonderful World of Color” and (wait for it!) “Bonanza”. Since we were visiting g someone else’s house, and it was a fair distance from church, we got to watch “heathen” television programs and we were excused from church.

I was excommunicated and formally shunned when I was 15 after coming out as gay. It wasn’t long before I was attracted to the Episcopal Church, which meant I was “triple damned”: 1) I was gay; 2) I was no longer part of the “Elect”; 3) I was a “Whiskeypagan” (which is Reformed Baptist-speak for a cancel-prancin’, reads-their-prayers-outta-a-BOOK, and drinks-the-WAHN-durin’-their-services EPISCOPALIAN jus’ one step from ROME!).

Fast forward 20 years. I hadn’t been Reformed Baptist for two decades, but I couldn’t make myself watch TV on Sundays. My partner was raised Catholic, and they had no problems watching TV on Sunday (or any day). I was music director at a church, and I came home after church to find him watching TV on Sunday.

I knew that Satan snd a ring of demonic angels were going to appear, form a ring of fire and brimstone around us, and cart our souls off to Hell like the penultimate scene from Mozart’s opera “Don Giovanni”. (If you’ve never seen Don Giovanni, watch it: the penultimate scene is generally considered to be THE GREATEST operatic scene ever written!)

Guess what?

Nothing happened .

THAT was when I deconstructed Reformed Baptist “Sabbath”.

I still have some routines that I follow to observe Sabbath: I light a Sabbath candle at home, first thing on Sunday morning; I attend church and sometimes participate in the service since I’m an ordained deacon; I fix a semi-formal, sit-down dinner which we eat around 5 pm; I attend an Al-Anon* meeting in the evening; and when I blow the Sabbath candle out before going to bed, I drink a small glass of wine to remind myself that even though Sabbath is over, life is still sweet. (I borrowed this from Judaism. I really like Judaism, so I’ve borrowed liberally from it for my own spiritual practice. Ditto Buddhism.)

Here’s the difference: I do these things because I want to do them, not because I have to do them — OR ELSE.

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*Al-Anon is different from Alcoholics Anonymous: both use the same 12 Steps, but AA is for alcoholics who wish to stop drinking. Al-Anon is for families and friends of alcoholics. Al-Anons who are not also alcoholics may drink. My three previous partners were all alcoholics. My current partner of 34 years is not an alcoholic.