Out of the Habit
How often do you forget to brush your teeth? I hope the answer is never, but I must reluctantly admit that, when the church office is closed for winter weather and I get to spend the day working from home in my sweatpants, my morning routine, including essentials like brushing my teeth, sometimes gets postponed until lunchtime. Funny enough, no matter what time I go to bed, my nighttime routine is much more rigidly fixed. I never forget to brush my teeth before climbing into bed. What is the difference?
What has the power to disrupt our habits? Which of our faithful daily practices are the first to fall apart, and which ones stick with us no matter what? What is required to develop a good and lifegiving pattern that we will maintain even when circumstances change?
All of us have a rule of life. Your rule of life is the general pattern of daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly behaviors that you return to over time. Do you get up early enough for some quiet time before the pressures of the day start? Or do you snooze your alarm until the last possible minute and fly into the day just as its obligations arrive? Do you go to the gym every day after work? Or is exercise something you experiment with when your clothes stop fitting well?
There are exceptions, of course, like when we are on vacation or stay home for a snow day. For most of us, our rule of life is not a rigid structure from which we never deviate but a pattern to which we continually return. If you sprain your ankle, you may have to give up running for a while, but, in time, those of us who have built up exercise as a daily habit are likely to return to the practice as soon as our bodies can handle it. If your children are home from school, you may not be able to write your weekly newsletter article in a quiet house unless you get up especially early, but, by next week, things will settle back down into their routine.
No matter what sort of pattern you have established, your life follows a rule. Those of us who follow Jesus are invited to adopt particular spiritual disciplines as components of that rule. Taking time every day to pray and read scripture is a widespread Christian practice. Participating in corporate worship every week is normative for most Christians. Committing to acts of service on a regular basis is another way that we embody the faith we proclaim.
At St. Paul’s, we go a step further and invite you to model your rule of life around one that we share: worship weekly, pray daily, grow constantly, serve joyfully, and give generously. How you do that—what it means for you to pray every day and seek to grow all the time—will be different from other parishioners, but there is a special sort of togetherness that arises from participating in a Christian community in which everyone accepts a common rule of life. If you want help figuring out how to make St. Paul’s Rule of Life you own, let me or another member of the clergy know, or seek out a spiritual director who can accompany you on your spiritual journey.
Despite having a fairly well-defined rule of life, these last few days have thrown me into a spiritual tizzy. The rhythms of my spiritual life are largely anchored to the rhythms of our church’s life, and, when our congregation stops doing the things that we normally do, my own personal patterns seem to fall apart. Saying Morning Prayer each day usually comes naturally, but, during these last few days, it has been a struggle. I wonder why. I wonder why a practice I normally turn to without thinking about it suddenly feels foreign to me even though I still begin each morning in my house by myself before anyone else wakes up.
It may be that Morning Prayer is for me the beginning of a day that I can largely anticipate. Like a roller coaster being pulled to the top of the first drop before being released to follow a wild but carefully designed track, starting my day with the Daily Office is partly about anticipating what the rest of the day will bring. When all of my appointments have been cancelled and there are no meetings to attend and the entire day stretches ahead of me as one spent with a computer at the dining room table, even getting started is hard. And I think that is okay.
Perhaps these snow days are best spent deviating from normal practice. Do you remember when the pandemic shut the world down and many of us had to work or learn from home? Do you remember how horrible it felt when a snow day was no longer a snow day and we all still had to “go” to work and school virtually? Rules of life are not meant to be kept inviolate but guidelines to which we return over and over.
I am ready for the snow to melt—at least enough for us to get back to church together. I miss the routine, but I trust it will come back again soon. And I also trust that the patterns we establish on ordinary days will come back, too. It may take a little more effort to go for a run or say Morning Prayer after a week off, but our rule of life is waiting for our return, just like God.
Yours faithfully,
Evan D. Garner
