The Daily Disciplines
Everything we do is practice for the next time. When we cease to practice, we lose our fluency, and memory becomes imperfect. Some things are practiced by default- when did you last consciously practice eating? Other things require conscious effort. My handwriting is slow, laborious and has lost its fluency. I type without thinking.
When we took our young children back out to the desert where we had lived, they were profoundly uncomfortable with the open spaces. We noticed our son was happier and less fractious whenever we went walking in the enclosed space of mountain gorges. We become used to, and are affected by our environment. Years before, leaving the desert, my wife and I were depressed, dislocated and disoriented by urban life. A day out walking in the hills begins to resurrect memories and instincts which have been lost to our consciousness.
As urban westerners we live in a profoundly artificial environment. It is possible, even easy, to avoid the outside world for days at a time! Enter the garage by an inside door from the house, drive out using the automatic door opener, drive to the underground car park, and take the internal lift up to work. Leave before it is properly light, and return home after dark. We live in a world which we Australians especially, think we control. In truth, we are irradiated with uncontrolled advertising and other stimulation, rarely alone enough to be in silence, and uncomfortable if we are. We live in a noisy, crowded and driven world, which is the anathema of all that our spiritual ancestors learned is necessary for health. We have stepped out of reality into an artificial place.
The spiritual disciplines are designed to bring us back into the real world from our artificial place. They create time, silence and space for us to re-engage with the depths of life. They patrol the corridors of the mind, as someone has said, re-minding us of what is really important. Religion without practice becomes merely an idea, caught in the currents of the ideas round about, without the anchor of reality.
Fencing with Doctrine
I don’t know if the highways department customised this sign, or whether the “5” has been removed by a local, but it was a wise move. Around the bend is the sharpest ‘devil’s elbow’ I’ve ever seen!
The road is like life. There is a deadly drop if you should come to calamity on this corner. But there is also a green thicket over the edge of the railing. I could hear creatures bouncing around as I pedalled slowly up the hill this morning.
Doctrine is like the safety rail. Go slow! Be careful! New territory- may be dangerous!
We often think of doctrine as an immovable fence, hemming in the church. On the contrary, it is easy to climb over, if not always wise. To be fully faithful as a church, there are times when we must investigate the green thicket; that new, fertile growth which is teeming with life.
(The picture is from Corkscrew Road, which connects Montacute and the Gorge Roads in the Adelaide Hills.)
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