“So, what do you do?” Introductions quickly move from the pleasant exchange of first names to business as usual. Defined by our work, our identity, personal worth, and social currency are determined by our 9 to 5, making it difficult to clock out.
In a capitalist society, we order our lives around a work schedule. We set alarms and create morning and bedtime routines to cater to this third of the day.
We set educational goals and justify resultant student loan debt based on how we will spend eight hours, five days a week—if we are lucky. Unfortunately, the dignity of labor remains a goal, evidenced by the continued exploitation of workers and wage theft. This matters because what we do for a living defines how and where we live.
Eugene McCarraher argues in his book “The Enchantments of Mammon” that American capitalism, rather than being a purely economic system, functions as a kind of secular religion, with money or “Mammon” (a biblical term for the worship of wealth) operating as its central deity. He explores how capitalism, particularly in the United States, has become deeply intertwined with cultural and spiritual values, shaping our desires and beliefs in ways that resemble devotion.
For McCarraher, capitalism is a powerful force that exerts an almost mystical influence on individuals and society, shaping our understanding of the world and our place in it. “Under capitalism, money occupies the ontological throne from which God has been evicted,” he wrote.
Capitalism also informs our understanding of human flourishing. It is not a state of being but a dollar amount. Full-time or part-time, security and success are decided by morning and evening shifts, by the number of hours spent laboring.
“All I do is work” is a common refrain. It is a lament shared by those whose time has been reduced to an hourly rate. Working to keep the lights on, clocking out can seem like an impossible task.
Yet, I lead a small group of women, who call themselves “the little church,” and this summer is one of slumber. We are giving ourselves the break we can’t catch, the break our ancestors couldn’t ask for. Once a week, we gather on Zoom to take a load off and be delivered from the “muledom” as named by Zora Neale Hurston.
We are painting and sipping, knitting and yapping, eating well and power napping. We are “getting a little shut eye,” resting our eyes or closing them tight before entering the dream space.
We are powering down because we are not computers or automatons. We are resting as resistance to capitalism, patriarchy, and racism, nodding off in agreement with the Nap Bishop, Tricia Hersey.
Instead of “working ourselves to death” and resting when we’re dead, we are reclaiming our time. This small band of women is also rediscovering what deeply satisfies us and reconnecting to the work we would do if money weren’t an issue. With nothing to prove, we have collectively decided to hit the snooze button and choose to sleep in more days than not.
This has changed the pace of my living, slowed my speech even. I don’t have much to say and strive to have even less to do.
Tricia Hersey’s most recent book, “We Will Rest: The Art of Escape,” pays homage to escape artists like Harriet Tubman and Henry Box Brown, shapeshifters they were. To be sure, this is not a book club reading but a lifestyle change. Each page will reorder your days.
Hersey asks in the book’s opening, “How do you find rest in a capitalist, white supremacist, patriarchal, ableist system?” The answer?
“You tap into your trickster energy. You become an escape artist.” These words explained and settled so much for me.
This past week, I read a passage to the group and then we mused over a statement from her “Rest Deck”: “I am not a machine. I am a divine human being.” No answers needed, we simply sat with the truth of it.
This year, I found my off button. I also found myself disinterested in social media’s pushy algorithm. I was tired of publishing “content,” giving parts of my life to an insatiable timeline that wasn’t mine.
“You were enough before capitalism lied. You were enough before white supremacy lied,” Hersey wrote last week on Instagram.
A fitting benediction for those who were told “there is no rest for the weary.” It is a lie.
We will rest as resistance.
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Director of The Raceless Gospel Initiative, an associate editor, host of the Good Faith Media podcast, “The Raceless Gospel” and author of Take Me to the Water: The Raceless Gospel as Baptismal Pedagogy for a Desegregated Church.
