Why Sunday?

I wondered, when I first found the Ethical Society of Austin, about the Sunday meeting.  I found it just a tad ironic, Sunday being claimed as the Sabbath by Christians.  Of course, Saturday is claimed by Jews as the Shabbat, and Muslims mark Friday noon with Jumu'ah, although whether a day of rest follows Friday prayer may vary by local/national custom.  Was it necessary to have a special day for the purposive meetings of the Ethical Society?  Did it need to be the same for each Society, or could it vary by the desires of the local group?  Why set aside a particular and regular day?

A day of rest for prayer and meditation is found in many religious belief systems, not only the religions of the desert.  These days may be timed to natural cycles as well as to the human constructs of the week/month/year.  After a more or less long work week, anyone would need a break to clear the mind and rest the body regardless of religious belief.  Personally after being around people (whether that is social, working, or otherwise) for three days in a row, I start longing for a period of quiet, stemming from the very simple reason that, being stimulated by events and people, I need time to process new information, slow my mind and body to rest, yes, but also to think about what I have been experiencing.  It's too easy to make commitments in the rush of meetings and gatherings and then to forget them as we rush on to the next encounter.  If you are like me, a week will fill your hands with handouts, receipts, instructions, prescriptions, lists, mail, every sort of thing that can be scribbled or printed and that must be filed for future need, shredded for security, and otherwise acted on--if you can keep track of them long enough to find the time to deal with them.  Or just add them to the growing pile of things you need to do.

Felix Adler's Founding Address very specifically refers to Sunday as the special meeting day for Ethical Societies.  He gave the very practical reason for meeting on Sunday because in 1876, as now, and in the United States, Sunday is generally, although not in all cases these days, a day on which workers are free of obligation to their employers.  If an Ethical Society were meeting in Saudi Arabia, no doubt the group would choose Friday as the day for its weekly meeting.  It was not the day of the week that mattered in Adler's thinking but the meeting--the need to gather in a community of like-minded people for an hour spent in "serious contemplation" which would "give a higher tone to all our occupations, and lend a newer and fresher zest even to those enjoyments, which we need and seek."

"Why Sunday?" is the wrong question, then.  Adler clearly indicated that he neither cared what others did on that day nor what they might think of Ethical Societies choosing that day for meetings.  The choice of day was, it seems, a distraction that he wished to dispense with so that he could get on to addressing his proposed solution to the great ills that he had identified earlier in his Founding Address:  A weekly meeting that would fill the void of morals, inspiration, goals, values, learning, purpose, vision, emotion that he found around him at that time.  A void that we still see today, I think.

Sunday--nowadays--is an inconvenient day because there is so much else that needs to be done on that day, little enough of which involves rest.  It's, just as Adler recognized, a time--a limited time--in which to visit with family who have work obligations during the rest of the week.  Anything which takes one away from that family time should be evaluated carefully to determine whether its merit equals or outweighs the time spent with loved ones.  (More on Family later, I think.)  Adler's notion is that we need still more than mere rest, more than the very important time with family--we need to elevate ourselves, our lives, our community, our world with a clearer understanding of their value, their potential, their relationships to each other and our relationships to them.  OK, Adler didn't say all of that.  Those are my words.  But I think that his intention aims toward that goal or something very like it.  It's not enough just to exist, to survive the day.  Living demands thought as well as action toward the goal of making ourselves and our world--better.  To do that, we need to stop our ordinary daily activities--no matter how worthy and important they are--to take stock, to evaluate, to consider them in the broader context of our lives and our community.  We can do this on our own, but we can often do it better together.