Body of Work: Sabbath With Your Hands

Last weekend, I did a lot with my body. On Saturday morning, I started with a traditional Pilates sequence, then my trainer moved me over to the Gyrokinesis machine to try some new-to-me exercises. Later in the day, I did a lot of full body singing in choir rehearsal. On Sunday afternoon, along with my beloved choir I engaged in a very lively (and physical) vocal performance on Sunday afternoon. In between, I did some spring cleaning and my usual neighborhood walk. By Sunday night, I could feel my body in that pleasantly tired way. It felt good to ache a little.

Across town, my sister was having her own kind of weekend workout. She spent hours in her makeshift shop doing woodwork: sanding, hauling, coaxing big pieces of furniture back to life. At the end of the weekend, she was able to literally point to what she'd made: this table restored, that dresser smoothed and stained, this pile of sawdust swept aside. I love that she has something solid to show for her work that you can touch and lean on.

This year, I'm experimenting with a short series I'm calling “Body of Work,” midlife reflections on what my body is teaching me about living and leading. This particular reflection begins where sore muscles, sawdust, and a sentence about sabbath all meet.

Most of my days don't look like that. I work with my mind – writing, planning, facilitating, teaching, holding space for other people. The things I "make" for a living often live in documents, slide decks, or conversations that leave no visible trace once the Zoom room closes. I do love that work. I love the feeling after finishing an essay or a presentation, the private, quiet satisfaction of a session that lands. But I also love the feeling of being physically tired after a good workout or after helping my sister lug a table down her front stairs. Those are two very different kinds of tired, and lately I'm paying more attention to the difference.

Recently, I came across a quote attributed to Abraham Joshua Heschel: “If you work with your hands, sabbath with your mind; if you work with your mind, sabbath with your hands.” I can't stop thinking about it. I do work with my mind, most of the time, so what does it mean for me to sabbath with my hands?

For me, “hand work” includes my art practice and my nascent gardening as well as the ordinary, unromantic tasks of cleaning the kitchen, weeding, chopping vegetables, sorting my ever‑growing collection of papers (something very much related to my creative practice). These aren’t just hobbies or more‑fun‑than‑I‑like‑to‑admit tasks; they’re part of how I come back to myself. They give me a before and an after I can see: a stack of folded t‑shirts, a sink that's now empty, a colorful and textured 9x12 canvas that was once white and flat.

On paper, none of that looks particularly “strategic.” It certainly doesn't show up on a work plan. Pilates, walking, singing, lugging furniture with my sister could all be filed under “weekend” and left there. But my body keeps telling me that they matter. They feel less like extra and more like cross‑training.

In fitness, cross‑training means you don’t ask the same muscles to do all the work all the time. You vary physical activities so your body can get stronger and avoid overuse of particular muscles. The same is true for leadership. When I spend days or weeks living only in my head – writing, designing, connecting with others through email or Slack or text, my system starts to fray in familiar ways: my shoulders creep up, my sleep gets interrupted, my patience wears thin. A few hours of “hand work” doesn't magically solve any of that, but it does help redistribute the load.

I keep noticing how different it feels to do work that ends with something I can actually see or touch. After helping my sister, the big hunk of wood has been relocated from place A to place B (most often from her SUV to her back porch). After doing laundry, there is a stack of towels where there used to be a heap at the foot of the bed. After cleaning the kitchen, the counters are clear and the sink is empty. In contrast, the work of leading and facilitating rarely wraps up so cleanly; instead, there’s a meeting that raises more questions or an initiative that will take months or years to bring to life

“Sabbath with my hands” gives me concrete – even if small – moments of completion.

“Sabbath with my hands” reminds me what it feels like to finish something today, even if the “big” work will take a long time. That matters more than I used to admit. It feeds my sense of agency and makes it easier to return to the slow, messy work of change.

It also teaches me to listen differently. My body is pretty direct: If I lift anything too heavy for me, my low back aches. If I ignore that feedback, I pay for it. If I honor it, I get stronger over time. Leadership has its own signals: the bone‑deep depletion that feels like too much, the Sunday dread, the way decision‑making starts to feel fuzzy. I'm learning to treat those feelings not as failings but as data, as signs that one part of me has been overtrained and needs rest while another part takes a turn.

So I've started to think about my calendar more like a training plan and less like a series of tasks. If I have a string of days full of heavy “mind work” – facilitating, writing, holding space – I try to build in places where my hands can take the lead: a 10-minute collage at my dining room table, a pot of soup that takes time to chop and stir, an evening of folding laundry with a true crime podcast. These hours are not separate from my leadership. They're part of how I'm trying to lead in a way that's sustainable.

I am actively responding to Heschel's invitation. Because I work with my mind for a living, I absolutely need my sabbath to live in my hands.

For those of you whose work is primarily intellectual, I wonder what “sabbath with your hands” might look like for you. Maybe it’s woodworking like my sister, gardening, painting, weightlifting, or simply walking around your neighborhood without an agenda. Maybe it’s cleaning out a drawer, baking bread, or clearing off that one surface that always seems to collect piles.

As you think about your own body of work, you might ask:

• What forms of hand work leave you feeling “good tired” instead of just plain drained?

• How might you build those into your week on purpose – as part of your leadership practice, not apart from it?

• What might “sabbath with your hands” make possible in the rest of your work?