We were supposed to leave Los Angeles Thursday morning for a long weekend in Zion National Park. But when I called Pep Boys late Wednesday afternoon, the mechanic reported that our van was still comatose. Thursday afternoon brought no improvement. Friday about noon, my wife and I crammed kids and camping gear into our Subaru and 11 hours later, after stops for restrooms, gas, food and restrooms we arrived at the park. The campground was silent and dark. Scouting the message board I found the promised note: “Griswolds are in campsite 34; we’ve registered you in site 35.” I turned off my headlights. With the amber glow of the parking lights we found our site, pitched our tent and slept.

Sabbath morning over breakfast we met the others, the Bryants and their college-age kids, the Griswolds and their youngsters and Bill Jackson and his two boys. Strangers meeting in Zion. After breakfast we loaded into cars and headed down to the Virgin River, where we found a spot for church. We sang and talked about the creator and redeemer while watching the sun play on the massive formations around us. After a vegetarian lunch we climbed Angel’s Landing, a breathtaking pinnacle. At the top we met a group of college kids, one of whom was a drama student. There against the backdrop of stone and immense blue space he recited a poem for us with marvelous pathos and intensity.

Late that afternoon the group scattered across a landscape of cross-bedded sandstone, the younger kids scampering here and there like squirrels, older kids, women and men drifting into little groups here and there for conversation. The men chewed on questions that arise at the intersection of geology and theology. We talked the afternoon away, luxuriating in the social and spiritual space created by our Sabbath habits.

It was not a gathering of like minds; not in the sense of sharing common educations–our group included a geologist, an engineer, an entomologist, a theologian–and not in the sense of shared opinions about how creation happened and when. But we did share a haunting sense of the paucity of our knowledge and a deep appreciation for the complexity and beauty of nature.

Sabbath was the wordless sacrament that created common ground for us, not by dictating our paleontological opinions, but by offering an opportunity to cultivate wonder, awe, humility and quietness. Sabbath linked us men to one another and to the community of women and college kids and youngsters.

For people whose theology is characterized more by questions than by confidence, Sabbath provides a way to participate deeply in the community of faith. Through walks in the park, shared meals with fellow believers and community worship, Sabbath provides a concrete way for intellectuals to practice believing. Sabbath practices–Friday night meal rituals, attendance at church, walks in the park, campouts filled with an awareness of God’s presence and favor–provide a bodily way for us to honor God and confess our own incompleteness, frailty and evil. By keeping Sabbath we worship.

Sabbath is the most visible of a collection of distinctly Adventist habits–eating vegetarian, abstaining from alcohol, making prudish choices regarding videos and movies, counting 10 percent of our income as God’s. In these and other traditions, we find a pattern for living as a believer in spite of our doubts. It offers a wholesome form of religious life we can teach our children without having to answer all their questions about the formal beliefs and institutions of Adventism or Christianity. We don’t claim that everything we do is unambiguously commanded by Scripture or that our beliefs and norms are flawlessly consistent. Rather, we claim that our community has grown in the soil of Scripture. We honor the work God has done in the larger communities of Christianity and Judaism as members of these communities have studied the Bible through the centuries. They have been our mentors as we have developed our own distinctive norms through 150-plus years of reading the Bible and seeking God–together.

Vegetarianism

Adventists are vegetarians. Not that the majority of Adventists strictly avoid meat, but we honor our idealists by not serving meat at our community meals. This vegetarianism is linked with several ideals. First it is rooted in the picture of peace and harmony of the creation story. In Eden there was no death or predation. Vegetarianism is a way of walking lightly in the world. It is a social application of the wilderness ethic of minimal impact on the environment. Historically, Adventists have opposed participation by our young men in war. We are aware of the evil that sometimes erupts and calls for forceful response, but as a community we have embraced a nonviolent ethic.

Vegetarianism also grows out of our conviction that body care is a moral issue. We view our bodies as masterpieces of divine art and temples for the activity of the Holy Spirit. Therefore we have a moral obligation to safeguard our health. Eating nutritious food, exercising, getting adequate sleep and other health practices are seen as essential elements of the normal Christian life. And public instruction regarding healthful practices is a normal part of our church life. The result of this emphasis on healthful living is increased longevity and decreased incidence of disease among Adventists who follow healthy practices.

Our advocacy of wholesome food goes beyond a concern for biological health. There is a substrata of inchoate conviction that abstinence from Twinkies and McDonalds is somehow more congruent with radical moral and ethical purity. Smoking is not just unhealthy; it is “unclean.” We are teetotalers, not because we think the Bible explicitly prohibits drinking alcohol, but because we are convinced a community that scorns alcohol consumption is a safer place for children and all the other unknown men and women who for genetic or other reasons are specially susceptible to alcoholism.

This carefulness, this abstemiousness, is carried over into our consumption of entertainment. Just as we are careful about what we eat, so we are careful about what we watch and read and play. We teach that people are responsible for input into their spiritual systems. We encourage members to actively seek esthetic, intellectual and recreational input that will foster spiritual sensitivity and faithfulness.

We know our eternal destiny is not determined by attention to food, holy days, environmental stewardship or by abstinence from tobacco and other drugs. We know lying is much more evil than, say, smoking. But as parents and friends, spouses and neighbors we are committed to building a community that promotes personal and social well-being as well as preparing people for the hereafter. In this, we are simply following the example and teachings of Jesus.

Saying Grace

Bill and I pushed our way into a crowded eatery in West Yellowstone on the last day of a geology field trip. We ordered our sandwiches–he, a hamburger with the works, and I, avocado, cucumber and sprouts on nine-grain bread. Our food was delivered. Bill picked up his hamburger and began devouring it. I paused for a second to say grace and then began inhaling my sandwich. After we had taken the edge off our hunger, I eyed the professor, then laughingly accused him. “Bill, you left out the human part of eating that hamburger.”

Bill didn’t get it at first. He thought I was teasing him for his carnivorous lunch, but that wasn’t it. “You ate that sandwich the way my dog would have. You forgot to say thanks.” Bill grudgingly acknowledged the rebuke.

Saying grace (or thanks or “the blessing”) at meals is a way to turn eating into a spiritual exercise. In this pause for prayer we bring some of the holiness of the Lord’s Supper into our ordinary experience.

“To the death of Christ we owe even this earthly life. The bread we eat is the purchase of his broken body. The water we drink is bought by his spilled blood. Never one, saint or sinner, eats his daily food, but he is nourished by the body and the blood of Christ. The cross of Calvary is stamped on every loaf” (Ellen White, The Desire of Ages, p. 660).

As a community, Adventists are connected with each other through a shared concern for Sabbath keeping, a healthy lifestyle and a culture of purity and self-control. We don’t pretend our way of life is the only way to be authentically Christian. But we unabashedly claim this way of life as a treasured heritage and an authentic form of Christian practice. We find this way of life precious and welcome others to experience it with us.