Moving to Parma

For this is what the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, has said: “In repentance and rest you will be saved, in quietness and trust is your strength.”  But you were not willing, and you said, “No, for we will flee on horses!”  Therefore you shall flee!  “And we will ride on swift horses!”  Therefore those who pursue you shall be swift.  Isaiah 30:15-16  NASB

Rest/ quietness – Perhaps the question we are asked most often by Italians is this: “Why did you move to Parma?”  Most Italians can’t imagine such a thing—leaving Florida, with its beaches and nightlife and theme parks—to come to sleepy, boring Parma.  At least that’s how they view it.  Florida is paradise.  Parma is plain.  But Mark Buchanan made a point in his books that speaks about something other than the hustle and bustle of America:

In a culture where busyness is a fetish and stillness is laziness, rest is sloth.  But without rest, we miss the rest of God: the rest he invites us to enter more fully so that we might know him more deeply.  “Be still, and know that I am God.”  Some knowing is never pursued, only received.  And for that, you need to be still.  Sabbath is both a day and an attitude to nurture such stillness.[1]

For me, Parma is like Shabbat topography.  We walk leisurely to our favorite café, order a cappuccino, sit and watch the people stroll by.  We notice a delivery van driver who stops in the middle of the road to converse with a friend driving in the opposite direction.  The traffic waits.  We see a little boy on a scooter pushing himself along the busiest street in town, parents further down the street, watchful but unconcerned.  Bicycles weave in and out of pedestrians and traffic, not really in a hurry.  Everywhere people stop to talk to friends they accidently encounter.  And lunch is from 12:30 to 4.  No one hurries back to work.  Why should they?  Life is more important than that.  I grew up miles away from any community.  Now, decades later, I am experiencing the sheer pleasure of a place where people are more important than tasks.  It feels like home.  Shabbat every day.

Rest.  Hebrew naḥat, from the same root as the name nōaḥ.  Quietness.  hăšqēṭ (from šāqaṭ), “to be tranquil, quiet, at peace.”  “ . . . the absence of strife, war, or trouble on the one hand, and worry or anxiety on the other.”^[2]

But šāqaṭ is not only used when the threatening or disturbing element has been actually removed; God repeatedly challenges his people to rest in him,^[3]

Rest.  “ . . . not only absence of movement but being settled in a particular place (whether concrete or abstract) with overtones of finality, or (when speaking abstractly) of victory, salvation, etc. For synonyms cf. šābat, connoting the absence of activity (or, of a particular activity), šāqaṭ which connotes the absence of disturbance from external causes, šālam, connoting wholeness, i.e. the state of well being.”^[4]

People ask us all the time, “Why did you move to Parma?”  Maybe my answer is “to find Shabbat.”  I’m not sure the Western world would understand, but that’s okay with me.

Topical Index: rest, quietness, naḥat, hăšqēṭ, šāqaṭ, Shabbat, Parma, Isaiah 30:15-16

[1] Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath (2006), p. 3

^[2] Austel, H. J. (1999). 2453 שָׁקַט. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 953). Moody Press.

^[3] Ibid.

^[4] Coppes, L. J. (1999). 1323 נוַּח. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 562). Moody Press.