According to Pieper, leisure is an attitude of the mind and a condition of the soul that fosters a capacity to perceive the reality of the world. Pieper shows that the Greeks and medieval Europeans, understood the great value and importance of leisure. He also points out that religion can be born only in leisure -- a leisure that allows time for the contemplation of the nature of God. Leisure has been, and always will be, the first foundation of any culture. Pieper maintains that our bourgeois world of total labor has vanquished leisure, and issues a startling warning: Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the ability for non-activity, unless we substitute true leisure for our hectic amusements, we will destroy our culture -- and ourselves. (Barnes and Nobles' online review of the book.)
The story of the Exodus is the primary story of the Jews; God commanded them to celebrate and to re-tell, generation after generation, the story of their deliverance from slavery roughly 2000- 1500 years before the birth of Christ. And, as it turns out, there is a definitive reason for embedding the story within annual ritual and re-telling. It is the story not only of the Jews, but of all humanity. Israel is humanity personified: what happened to Israel is what happens to every person who sets out on a journey of faith. [This pattern is characteristic of Biblical history -- the Bible is more about what happens than it is about what happened. It is our history, not just Jewish history.] The story of Israel also describes the experience of every person liberated by God.
Here is the way Richard Rohr explains the connection:
The stories of Exodus make religious sense to people only to the extent that they are converted, only to the degree that they are walking the journey of faith. If you are walking in the Spirit and listening to the Spirit, you can relate these stories to your own life, you can identify with the experience of Israel. The person who is alive in the Spirit can recognize spiritual things. If, on the other hand, you are playing a social game called religion or an academic game called theology, this story will never speak to you ( The Great Themes of Scripture, p.20).
According to Moses standing before Pharoah, the slave-owner and master of the Israelites, God wanted Egypt to "set my people free, that they might go into the desert and worship Me." Now here is a great truth which most people today do not see -- until we are free from the things that enslave us, we are not free to worship God. No true worship occurs in slavery to the things of this world.
When we live in fear or bondage to the past -- to the trauma we have experienced as children, to the fears that were embedded in our hearts and minds--- when we have become enslaved to habits of sin and addiction, etc. -- we are not free to worship. We are chained to old habits and to the past habits of reacting to the world around us. We are not free to create, to break free, to sing and to dance, to invent ways of expressing the spirit of joy, of praise, of thanksgiving. We are slaves to sin.
Look at the media images of criminals, of the man who held the three girls captive for 10 years. Can you imagine this man in some creative endeavor, in the freedom of worship of God? He is as much enslaved to evil as his victims were enslaved to the evil he expressed outwardly. Jesus promised us two things: You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free, and He also promised us that we would have the Advocate, the Counselor, who would lead us into all truth. He promised us FREEDOM! Freedom from the slavery to sin and to the past, freedom to enter into the true worship of the Father, freedom to be led by the Spirit of God rather than the spirit of evil and untruth.
It was only the Israelites' leisure in the desert that unchained them from the past forms of slavery--slavery to idols, slavery to endless labor, slavery to other men. Now they were free to worship Yahweh and to learn creativity. They began to build a Tent of Meeting, where they could enter in and worship the God who led them to freedom -- and in the building, they learned creativity. The entire book of Exodus, after escape from slavery, is about the building of the Tabernacle and about how God "filled [them] with the Spirit of Practical Wisdom" (Ex. 28:3) -- i.e., creativity-- to construct the Tabernacle, the priestly garments, the jewelery, the lampstands, the engravings, the colored vestments and tent coverings, the ropes, braids, the blue-violet, the purple, the scarlet, the carnelian topaz and sparkling-emerald, etc.
In the process of constructing the Tabernacle in the wilderness, the former slaves of Pharoah's tombs were learning the trades of freed men. They were learning the crafts that could support them and their families forever, once they entered the Promised Land. God was raising them up from slavery to freedom.
Until we are freed, we will never learn the uses of leisure -- contemplation, creativity, the arts of healing, of music, of art, of culture, of worship. "Let my people go, that they may go into the desert and [there learn the leisure, the freedom of] worship." God has done great things for us, and we are glad indeed. My prayer is that every man, woman, and child may discover what God has in store for those He brings from slavery to the freedom of true worship!
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