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on Sundays.

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It’s a Sunday, and Sundays don’t count as part of Easter’s 40 days, so I’m under no obligation to record a thing. Yet here we are!

**Day four-and-a-half: Sunday**

I never used to know the difference between a diary and a journal. I mean, the two words can be interchangeable, but as a child I used to get a diary meant for writing appointments, but used it to journal my life, such as it was. I filled the pages with my opinions and frustrations, and that was easy because those pocket-sized books had very small pages, frustratingly easy to fill. In some, Saturday and Sunday get half a page each, not being business days.

In about 1996 my family got some diary software for our computer, which I was briefly excited by, since there was no real limit on how much you wrote. I went off it soon enough, since you couldn’t leaf through it in a satisfying way, and since a diary on a shared computer lacks privacy. But one feature I did like was that you could set up recurring entries. This was probably useful for regular meetings, but I used it to automate my entry for Sundays. Each week it’d automatically add, ‘Went to church in the morning. Today was boring as usual.’

That didn’t mean those were causally linked. I’d have felt uncomfortable writing church off as inherently boring, but in my mind Sunday was a day on which nothing could happen. A very bleak view of one seventh of a human life! My worst prophecy.

Sunday is a feast, a day of rest. One to eat a big lunch and refrain from most-everything. The commandment, to rest every Sabbath day, is the most ignored in Christianity. We ignore the rest bit, and mainly keep the ‘go to church on Sunday’, which isn’t actually part of the commandment. I think it’s a very good thing to go to church, to share community and listen to the word and wisdom, but every day is holy, and it’s the rest which is commanded. Yet I don’t do it! I work on Sundays, and have Monday and Friday as my likely days off. Which one do I rest? Well I’m lazy on any day, but projects spill into all of them. Taking the Sabbath seriously is something I need to work on, I think. Or to not work on.

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from Ben​-​Them: a Tale of the Christ (2023), released February 22, 2023

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Ben Swithen Sheffield, UK

Ben Swithen is a person.

Here you can find their music - solo work, and a Doctor-Who- and-Cheese double-concept concept-album by The Potential Bees (who are a two- or three- person band), which forces both concepts into every song).

You can also find Ben Swithen on Youtube, but why would you even? ... more

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