place. For us, time is an event in which we are participating right now. It is not a promised future. We struggle, for example, when settlers make promises but apparently do very little in the present to make those promises arrive. Promises, in settler thinking, apparently stand in for actually doing something. They are signs of the absence of action, rather than its presence. For us, then, the promise of a Sabbath for the people of God has already been actualised in a place. This place. The earth beneath our feet and the relationship we already have with the country we are part of. It is our home, our sacred mother, and the lore that shows us how to live respectfully and well in this place. I would therefore challenge settlers to stop dreaming of a promised future and, instead, get off your collective backsides and set about restoring the damage you have done. Sabbath, in this nation, means giving exploitation and injustice a rest. It means a renewed attendance to matters of justice and the integrity of creation. For guidance, you can certainly look to the description of Sabbath in the Hebrew Bible. But you can also look to us, the First Peoples of this land. For we carry in our DNA both the knowledge and the experience of Sabbath as it can actually be lived. 88
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