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.
Cultural blindness
How much does culture count?
A couple of years ago I went to a day long conference. It was raining. It was the first rain for maybe eight months. This was not a case of showers, but clouded in, constant, gentle, all day rain. We Adelaide natives felt like we were walking on air! After continual drought, it seemed life was beginning again.
Our guest speaker was a native of Scotland. She spends a fair amount of her life on an island off the coast. She had noticed the buzz. It was inescapable. We were all talking, wondering if this was the end of the drought.
After lunch she said, "Remember those verses where it says God causes the rain to fall on both the righteous and sinners alike?" I've just realized that I've always thought that was talking about rain as a bad thing; God causes ill to come upon the righteous and sinners alike. We get so sick of it in Scotland. I never realized just how good and welcome the rain could be!
Andrew Prior
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