Rest and Play

By Andy Singleterry

Image by Jezrael Gandara

“You are what you produce.” No one ever says that, and most people if you asked them explicitly would deny that they think this way. Yet, so many of us act as if this were true. We define ourselves by our work and accomplishments. When we introduce ourselves, what key truths do we cite by which new acquaintances can best understand who we are? Where humans used to talk about their families or their homelands, we usually talk about our jobs. 

Quick – what’s the opposite of work? I don’t know what word popped into your head, but likely it was one of these two: rest or play. Have you ever thought about that? Work has two opposites. Rest is the internally-oriented opposite of work, what one does for one’s restoration rather than making something of the world outside oneself. Play is the externally-oriented opposite, doing something in the world but not aiming at some outcome beyond the play itself. If work and production is all that matters, both rest and play can seem like wastes of time. Among such work-centered people as ours, they can seem counter-cultural. Yet, in our wiser moments, we know that we need them.

Rest, play, production, wasted time . . . all these themes have been on my mind recently. As Editor of Servant Partners Press and The Mural, I had planned to produce four issues of our zine in 2024. The Servant Partners All-Staff Gathering happened in June, a chance for us to play together (among other activities) and I had planned an issue on the theme of Gathering and Convening, using some of the artwork from the conference and asking some staff to reflect on the experience. Then, around now, I planned an issue on the theme of Sabbath and Sabbatical. One of the perks of working for Servant Partners is a lengthy sabbatical every six years – I’ll be concentrating on schoolwork and some other writing for the next year. So I and some others would produce some pieces around this theme. And through my year away, I planned to have a guest editor so that The Mural would keep going, producing another four issues without me.

But “the best-laid plans of mice and men / often go awry.” My key partner in making The Mural, who has designed and published everything we’ve done in the zine, had moved on from Servant Partners. He was holding onto his work with SP Press as a contractor, but that production ground down to a slow trickle as his primary work got up to speed. Eventually, he acknowledged the truth of his situation and called his time with Servant Partners to a stop. Thankfully, he has moved on to produce valuable work for a vital cause.

So, we are collapsing our two planned themes into one issue, Rest and Play, and then we’ll be taking a break for a year. We know that this is a counter-cultural step, a challenge against our culture’s fixation on work. But we believe that, in God’s provision, it’s not a waste of time but a restorative, recreative choice for meaning. 


Andy co-leads the Servant Partners site in San Jose, California and is Editor of SP Press. He is the author of The Gifts for the City.

Posted on October 25, 2024 .