Paper short abstract:

I propose adapting and adopting sabbath, a weekly Earth Day, as an ecological ritual practice for our era of ecological catastrophe. A weekly day of rest will help reinforce political, economic, or technological environmental solutions, unify them in a meaningful armature of culture and intention.

Paper long abstract:

The Green Sabbath Project that I founded in 2019 and direct seeks to adapt and adopt the ancient practice of shabbat (a weekly sabbath) as an ecological ritualized practice for our era of ecological catastrophe. Along with many others, I have come to see a weekly day of rest, a green sabbath, as an environmental remedy with unique potential. I am drawn to its imperative—counter-intuitive, provocative, never timelier yet still often suppressed even in environmental discourse—to “do nothing.” “Doing nothing” one day weekly is not meant to replace political, economic, or technological environmental solutions, but to help reinforce them, to unify them in a meaningful armature of culture and intention. We see more and more calls for “sabbaths” from our modern way of life and technologies, such as filmmaker Tiffany Shlain’s Technology Shabbats, cities implementing car-free days, or The Center for Emancipatory Technology’s Freeday for the Future.

A weekly green sabbath properly practiced – as radical intervention and not mere lip-service – offers a weekly interruption of the suicidal economic fantasy of infinite growth, a weekly divestment from fossil fuels, a weekly investment in family and local community, a weekly bit of rewilding, a respite for both humans and other-than-humans, and a ritualized forum for meditating on how we want to live. Green sabbaths could provide a recurring greenhouse for incubating the required collective consciousness and willpower – the ultimate renewable energies – to make the solutions reality.