The Practice of Holy Leisure

Dolce far niente—“the sweetness of doing nothing.”

One of the most powerful soul-training exercises I have ever done is a practice called holy leisure. In simple terms, holy leisure is “doing nothing, for God’s sake.” It is important to get the emphasis on the right clause: we do nothing, but we do it for God. Richard Foster writes about this in his classic book, Celebration of Discipline:

The church…