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[ Back to index of January articles ] BEARINGS: Just like millions of workers who sit at a computer all day, I've had to make 'working out' part of my routine. I was sure I would hate it. In the days when I used to get plenty of exercise outdoors maintaining grounds, I used to smile with condescension when I glanced through the windows of the local gym at people throwing themselves around in the aerobics class or doggedly working on the machines. But you never know until you try and you often don't try until you have to. And one side effect of experiencing aerobics and Pilates classes, and working with a trainer, has been a fresh appreciation of the parallels between physical and spiritual exercise. Historically, they have shared a common vocabulary. The word asceticism derives from the Greek word for physical training, and spirituality uses basic expressions like 'spiritual exercises' 'spiritual disciplines' 'spiritual practice.' Paul uses gymnastic metaphors when he talks about the process of spiritual maturation. This common vocabulary is no accident. Athletics and spirituality are both experiential, and their practices derive from age-old experience, (now corroborated by scientific advances in physiology and our knowledge of the brain). Spiritual tradition and the athletic arts both teach the importance of sheer repetition if we are to develop - and the importance of varied patterns of repetition to achieve balance rather than lop-sided development. We need routines. It would be useless for an individual to wander into a gym and do a few movements here, and one or two on this machine and that as impulse dictates. The results from such randomness would be negligible. And if we think we can grow spiritually by just praying whatever comes into our heads in the inspiration of the moment we are heading for disappointment. Our brains and muscles, and our imaginations and souls, require practice to develop different patterns that are effective only by repetition - routines. I have been thinking about this because in the last few months I have started praying Morning Prayer from the Prayer Book before setting off for work. Now in talking about the Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer I have to admit my experience is pretty extensive. I was educated as a teenager in the shadow of an English cathedral where the services were sung gloriously day in and day out. I attended these services at my Oxford college. I prayed them at seminary, in my parishes where they were part of the daily routine - and of course, in a monastery for 28 years. That's about as experienced as you can get. But when I embarked on this recent experiment of earning my living in a secular setting for a while, and learning the ordinary rhythms of life as most people experience them, I didn't want to pray the Prayer Book offices at home by myself. Perhaps I just needed to discover whether I missed them or not. Eventually, I did. I am drawn back to the wisdom of the Prayer Book as a basic resource. Praying Morning Prayer or Evening Prayer by oneself requires some getting used to, a bit like working out alone rather than in a class. The beauty and effectiveness of the Daily Offices is that they give us a work-out routine for our relationship with God. They help us repeat basics of prayer, relieving us of the need to make stuff up as we go along. The readings from scripture are found for us, the psalms allotted, the canticles prescribed, the prayers suggested, the collects that connect us with our Sunday worship set out. Repetition causes all these spiritual influences to sink in over time subliminally, we don't have to worry about analyzing everything or trying to make every single line 'meaningful.' It is a spiritual routine - a word which from the world of physical training has the right to sound very positive. A routine that builds our health is not 'mere' routine. Spiritual routines don't require us to have perfect attention; our minds wander but we know where to pick up again. Like physical work outs, they don't demand that we be 'in the right mood' - they are something we can do even if we got out of the wrong side of bed. The genius of Anglicanism is to have provided in the Prayer Book for everyone, not just clergy, a compendium of worship that can work for individual use as well as corporate, and for use at home and on the road. We become a portable church when we take our BCP with us. I will be packing my Prayer Book and Bible in carry-on luggage soon. Evening Prayer will be over the Grand Canyon. Compline at the gate at LAX. Morning Prayer over Fiji. Then the next Evening Prayer watching the sunset on a pile of driftwood on Paraparaumu beach… Martin L. Smith is a well-known spiritual writer and priest. He is on the staff of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. [ Back to index of January articles ]
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