Living Under a Rule
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009It should be old news to my readers by now that I am reading James Emery White’s book, Serious Times. I have mentioned it in my last two posts, and it is yet again gaining a spotlight.
I, perhaps, do not retain as much information from books as I should. After reading a 30-some page chapter, I generally remember only a few topics of discussion, and only a few details about those topics. I think that the topics that do stick with me are either 1) repeated so many times in a text that it is drilled into my mind or 2) the thought struck me as so odd or new or revolutionary or just plain wrong when I read it that I remembered it.
One of the things that has stuck with me not only in the moments after reading of it, but for days now, is the idea of living under a rule. Now, we all know that there are some words that are death to spelling and vocabulary students alike. These are words spelled the same with different meaning, and words that sound the same with different meanings. Rule it one of these. When you think of the word rule, you probably think of:
1. a principle or regulation governing conduct, action, procedure, arrangement, etc.: the rules of chess.
or maybe this:
4. control, government, or dominion: under the rule of a dictator.
or if you are into math, maybe this:
6. a prescribed mathematical method for performing a calculation or solving a problem.
Yet what White means when he writes of living under a rule is this:
2. the code of regulations observed by a religious order or congregation: the Franciscan rule.
Aha! He writes of being a monk! Wrong. And right.
What are monk famous for? Solitude? Chanting? Scratchy clothes? Funny hairdos? Yes to all of the above. After further thought, one might remember that they: value good deeds, serve the less fortunate, and spend a lifetime seeking spirituality.
Monks submit themselves to a rule – a lifestyle mandated by ‘a code of regulations’. This adherence to the code it what makes them stand out. Life in a monastery, the special hair cut, the simple way they live free from materialism, etc. It is the rule that they subject themselves to that shapes how they live and who they become.
I don’t believe I know anyone who lives under a rule. I know men who have removed themselves from the hold of tobacco, knowing its dangers. I know people who remove themselves from meat, citing political reasons. I know people who live without television, knowing it’s power to seduce and infect the mind. But I don’t know anyone who has submitted his entire life to a rule – a code of living.
There was a passage in White’s chapter entitled Deepening Our Souls that resonated with me. So much that I suppose it is why I remembered it and write of it now.
It goes as follows:
We say to ourselves, Here is what I want in life. I want to work out at the gym, have a quiet time, eat a cooked breakfast, get to work early, come home, sit down with the family for dinner, help my children with homework, read, write a letter to a friend, catch the game on TV and be in bed by ten.
Ok, I’m gonna jump in here for a second. Does this resonate at all with you? It does with me! Here is my list of what ‘I want in life’ – though it’s more what I want my days to look like:
I want to get up at 6 every morning. I want to eat healthy, organic, natural, sugar-free foods. I want to start an impressive reading list and read from it every day. I want to spend a portion of my day in Bible study and prayer. I want to get all of my schoolwork done before 3 p.m. I want to practice harp for 15 hours a week minimum. I want to go to the gym 3 days a week and do yoga or go on a walk or do something physically active the other 4 days. I want to not watch anymore tv (seriously). I want to only spend about 10-30 minutes online every day. I want to see my friends sometime other than church or choir.
Here I end my interruption and return to what the book says:
We do the math and find that it takes a thirty-four hour day. We do more math, a little cutting here and there and find that we can squeeze most of it in by rising at 4 a.m. We fill in the time blocks, set the alarm, and go to bed ready for our new life to begin.
Ok, another pit stop. How many of you have done this? I HAVE!
At 4:20 a.m. after we have hit the snooze button for the second time, we wonder what we were thinking. We skip the gym, settle for a toasted bagel and pray in the car on the way to work. We push on through the day, but it only gets worse. We through in the towel by noon.
Ok, time for some honesty. I have totally done this way more times than I am proud to admit. Don’t you hate that ‘I’m a failure’ feeling after your flight of perfection crashes into reality?
It is simply too much to do at once, so we end up in defeat, going back to life lived as before. But this is not a way to live a disciplined life.
It is best to begin with ONE thing and that one thing out only goal. Whether it is to rise at 5 a.m. or have a family meal three times a week, we should drive that single stake into the ground and do all that we can to establish its place in our life. It’s often said that once a behavior is maintained for six weeks, it has become a habit. And once a habit, it no longer demands the emotional, physical and mental energy to sustain its presence in our life. It has simply become a part of who we are. Then we rise NATURALLY at 5 a.m., or we NATURALLY sit down together as a family to eat a meal on Monday, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.
Once a single practice reaches this point, we are ready to add another practice to out life. And then another and another; a spiritual rule is built over time. This also allows us to tweak and discard, add and finesse. My rule is vastly different than it was five years ago, and I look forward to what I hope to build into it over the next half-decade.
When I read this I thought 3 things: 1) Wow, that’s just like me! 2) 6 WEEKS BEFORE I FIX ANYTHING ELSE? 3) FIVE YEARS?!
Let me elaborate.
I am a perfectionist. To quote Adrian Monk my favorite obsessive compulsive fictional detective, “It’s a blessing and a curse.” I have a pretty clear idea of how my life should look. When it doesn’t look that way, I feel bad. I almost laughed when I read the part about ‘after we hit the snooze button for the second time we wonder what we were thinking’. I firmly believe that things sound better before you go to bed than when you wake up. :) Anyway, I identified with the author about the felt need to change, the almost comical failure, and then the humiliation of defeat.
Being a perfectionist, I like everything fixed and everything fixed now. After all, I should be able to. I have the ability to say no, or to say yes, or to wake up, or to do this or that. If I am not meeting my goals, it is because I am doing a bad job. I don’t particularly like the idea of fixing one problem while 20 others are sitting over there. In fact, I hate that idea. It sounds terrible to me. But, something in me knows that I would probably have more success with this method, than mine. Even if I hate it while I’m doing it.
And that brings us to the next point. He maintained his rule for 5 years. Not a steady, rigid rule. But he maintained discipline in his life for 5 years and was expecting to continue for at least another five. I’m proud of myself if I make till supper time, let alone five years.
For me, submitting myself to a rule, would be hard. Not because of the one thing I am devoting myself to, but to the many things I am not devoting myself to in the pursuit of the conquering of the one. This is something that I will have to prayerfully surrender to my God who is, after all, in control of everything anyway.
So, this is my plan. I should rank my goals and start devoting myself the to the one that I perceive to be top priority – again in prayer.
This is where my problem comes. I can’t pick just one.
I take that back. I can. I know that it is to have a daily time of Bible study and prayer. I am ashamed to say that this has not been a regular part of my life in over two years. I have been confronted time and time again with the need to get back into communion and fellowship with Christ through scripture and prayer. But when I begin to say, yes, I do need to change that! WHAM! I am hit with a huge list of other things that need fixing. And since I can’t fix them all, I haven’t fixed any. This is a huge mistake, and I’m sorry for it now.
But here is what I am thinking. If there is something that needs to be stopped so that I can start something, shouldn’t the stopping of the one take place at the same time as the starting of the other? I think so.
I believe that I, like many Americans, am addicted to tv and the internet. I can’t tell you how many times I try to turn off either one and don’t for no good reason. I also turn them on when I don’t want to and sit there mentally decomposing while ‘watching’ a show. I have wasted more time and let more ungodly things into my mind via tv and the internet over the last few years that I would have thought possible when I was 12 or 13. I believe that this is an addiction that has to stop before I can truly devote time to read from God’s Word, pray with Him, and spend time reflecting and implementing what He teaches me into my life.
So, my first one thing is three things:
1) institute a daily time of scripture reading and prayer
2) quit watching tv even in free time – unless it is a family activity (and even then, only on a case to case basis)
3) use of the internet outside of school uses is restricted to 30 minutes before bed. Unfortunately, this includes blogging. :(
So, the purpose of this post is two-fold: to make myself accountable to you all by putting my purposes out here for you all to see, and to encourage you all to take a look at you own lives, and consider placing yourselves under a rule as well.
I ask for your prayers in this endeavor, and thanks for stickin’ around to the end of this very long post!
