SATURDAY SPENDING {Saturday, 3-2-24}

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter--SATURDAY SPENDING {Saturday, 3-2-24}

 

Dory Previn’s “Come Saturday Morning” was published in 1969. It was a hit song for The Sandpipers. I have always loved the opening and repeating lines:

            Come Saturday morning, I’m goin’ away with my friend

            We’ll Saturday-spend to the end of the day

            Just I and my friend…

It’s clearly the anticipation of a young person who is spending the week working or studying but thinking about what it will be like, “Come Saturday morning.”

Maybe something particular on the agenda, but that is not necessary. No sex or competition or schedule involved in “Saturday-spending.” Just friendship.

 There is something special about Saturday morning, even when you’re retired. It has a different feel, an anticipation and remembrance of “Saturday-spending.”

Just to spend schedule-free time with a friend, what a blessing. True if that friend is your long-time spouse. True if you are single or single again. For anyone, single or not, at any age, just to be able to Saturday-spend with a friend, what a blessing.

“Come Saturday morning,” God said, “I can’t go away with a friend unless I create one.” So, on the 6^th day, the first Saturday, God created humans… to have a friend for Saturday spending.

Just in case, that Saturday creating included dogs and cats and horses and skunks… in case people didn’t work out as friends. [Genesis 1:24-26] I suspect God is very pleased about making sure there were other friend possibilities.

The ecclesial calendar makers don’t say anything about “Saturday spending” as a Lenten discipline, but I suspect it will do more good than any amount of personal introspection.

Maybe that’s why we anticipate a heavenly afterlife, because it will be the ultimate in Saturday spending…

John Robert McFarland