24. Sabbath

“Keep the seventh day holy.  On that day, you shall do no labor.” –Ten Commandments

One of the earliest spiritual disciplines is to stop working.  We are never told, in those early texts, what we are to do, only that we must stop the toil of everyday life.  That toil is essential, it is the warp and woof of the molecular structure of who we are.  But it must never become all of our being. 

As human beings, we must create.  And our everyday work, even when we work for another, allows us to do that.  Even if our labor is security through the hours nothing dramatic happens, in our pay we create a living space, the means to purchase food, the bulk of our lives.  We must make something beyond ourselves, for this is the Creation impulse of the Spirit in us.

The Spirit, who created our form, recognizes that we must rest, even as he himself does.  He created us to be complex beings, both physical and spiritual omnivores.  Our souls are made to swallow and ingest all that we come across.  If our spiritual and mental diet consists of only one kind of action, then our souls become congested, sick, unable to create.  If our lives are centered around toil, then our spiritual diet is unbalanced, and it breaks our souls.

We must cease our labor, for a time, on a regular basis.  Traditionally, this is measured as six periods of labor, one period of ceasing toil.  This is not supposed to be a strict necessity, this time frame.  But it is a fair measure of health.  We work to create with our labor for six days and then we rest to create balance and ingenuity with a day. 

23. Silence

“Come to the quiet. Come and fill your soul like a child at rest on her mother’s breast.”

We live in a world of terrible noise.  I drove down a highway today, and along the sides of the road were thousands of signs all screaming to me, “Pay attention to me!”  This is to such a degree that I find it difficult to find the signs I should really pay attention to, warning me to be careful, or to stop for others. Eventually, I arrived at my destination—a Trappist monastery.  And as I entered the building, there is a single sign which says, “Silence is deep as eternity.”

To seek the Spirit is to seek silence. The world shouts at us, clamors for our attentions, demands and cajoles and shakes us.  The Divine, however, is quiet, whispers in our ear, lulls us.  It is through the quiet that the Divine changes the world. While it might not seem like much of a strategy, we need to remember that the Spirit understands our souls better than we.  Our souls prefer to find (rather than to be given), and then they adopt what they have discovered.  Our souls wish to reveal secrets that most have not heard.  Our souls find no nourishment in the push-and-pull of merchandising, but in the silence that feeds.

The Spirit waits in the place of silence, waits for our silence so that we might meet him.  The Spirit does not want us distracted by the Many Things, but focused on the One.  Of course, our lives are full of the Many: the children, the internet, the busy street.  This is the place in which we live.  But the Spirit calls us, constantly, to silence so that we might find the One.  And the One is that which directs us through the Many so we can accomplish what is most significant. Until we spend regular time in silence, we will not find the important. 

Drink in silence as one might drink a huge mug of a hearty mead.  Become drunk on the joys of her pleasure.

22. Exercises: Private and Public

I am dividing the exercises we discuss into two categories: private and public.  According to Jesus, there are two commands, reflections of each other, we should follow to have a spiritual life.  The first is to love the Divine.  The second is to love those around us.  These loves are not the same, but to enact one love has an immediate effect on the other love.

The love of the Divine is primarily private.  Jesus spoke of praying in a closet, of giving to the poor in secret.  This is not because there is any value in secrecy, except that we are not doing these actions for anyone else but the Divine.  We are not trying to impress anyone, we are not trying to get people to tell us how spiritual we are.  Even so, there are some actions that are best done without anyone else observing.

In a sense, the core of our spiritual life is private.  We may rest in the Spirit and be completely open and relaxed, knowing that the Spirit loves us and has complete mercy on us. It is in that place that the Spirit builds up our core, and makes us a transformed, renewed person.

However, if we do not spend time with others, then we cannot love them and so we are not fulfilled spiritually.  The life in the Spirit is taking time to spend meditation in him, in solitude, and taking time to allow others to lead us to the Spirit through their graces and irritations, through their glories and their horrors.   We must take care to choose some exercises which gets us alone with the Divine and to choose others which cause us to be among others, seeking opportunities to love. 

21. Choosing Exercises

Below, (beginning with number 23) I will begin listing exercises of a wide variety.  Our task, at this point, is to find a beginning path to the Spirit.  This path will consistent of a set of exercises that we practice regularly.  As mentioned above, the path you choose may not be the same as another seeking the Spirit.  It probably won’t.  The Spirit knows you intimately, and you and the Spirit will choose a set of exercises, and the level of practice between the two of you.

If you like, look over the list below and pick two or three exercises that resonate with you.  Then use the tips in each section, making an attempt to practice them.  There may be an exercise that immediately doesn’t feel right to you.  That is fine, set it aside and next time choose another.  There may be some exercises that you gain some benefit from, but over time you realize that it is not for you.  Again, that is fine, just set it aside and pursue another one.

Then there may be an exercise that you reject.  It is too difficult, too outside the scope of your experience.  That’s fine.  But don’t be surprised if the Spirit later leads you back to the unthinkable practice.  Again, the Spirit knows us better than we know ourselves.  What may not work for us now might be the very thing we need later in our lives.

Whatever path you choose or attempt, don’t fail to do it.  If you aren’t in the mood, practice it anyway. If you get distracted and forget, pick it up and do it at the next possible opportunity.  The important thing is to act it out, regularly, until it becomes second nature.  That will take a long time.  Well, be patient.  The spiritual life isn’t an instant breakfast.  It’s a long term project, just like growing up.

You will fail.  You might even set your spirituality aside for a time.  But always come back.  The Spirit will be there, ready for you when you come. 

20. Examination

It is a fair task to examine ourselves.  The Spirit already knows where and how we are broken.  Perhaps we know some of our brokenness, and perhaps we do not.  For certain, when we begin with the Spirit, we cannot possibly understand how deep our brokenness extends.  Nor does the Spirit want us to know.  To understand how deep of a task we have before us to be healed is overwhelming at best, and a cause for us to give up any future work at repair at worst.

It is good to take time to examine ourselves, to give ourselves an evaluation.  The method I often use to examine myself is to ask two questions of my life and to create lists beneath both.  Below, I give you a list of question pairs that you can use to examine yourself.  Do not use all of them at one time.  For now, just answer one pair, or perhaps two, and you can leave the others for another time.  Some of the pairs of questions may not open up your life at all—that’s fine.  Just skip them and work on a pair of questions that reveals something about who you are.

• What do I need in my life? / What needs of others do I meet?
• Where is the Divine in my life?/ What parts of my life need the Divine?
• What is separating me from God?/ Where does God meet me?
• How do I act like Jesus?/ How should I act like Jesus?
• What habits separate me from the Spirit?/What disciplines might renew me to the Spirit?
• What relationships are breaking me and how?/ Where is God in the people I have broken relationships with?
• What about myself needs forgiveness?/ How do I display forgiveness?
• Who are the people I view negatively?/ What is the good in those people?
• Why am I overwhelmed? / How does God want me to have balance?
• What things in my life harm me?/ What aspects of my life are healing?
• What discipline do I need to add to my life?/ What am I willing to give up to make the discipline happen?
• What things in my life cause uncontrollable anger?/ What things grant me peace in my life?
• What things in my life do I worry about? / What can be changed through love?
• What do I expect from others? / Am I fair in my expectations? 
• How is God great? / What do I wish God to do for me that he hasn’t done yet?

Take the questions you chose and the answers you discovered and give them to the Spirit, allowing him to work with you on these areas. 

19. Brokenness

There are some common words that are used for the work of the Spirit—salvation, deliverance, grace, mercy, forgiveness.  They all have a common basis, that the one receiving the work of the Spirit has a desperate need.  They are in crisis, they are imprisoned, they are beyond their own help, they are desperate, they are separated from their good. 

In our society we are trained to tell people that we are “fine”.  No matter what is going on in our hearts, or relationships, no matter how self-destructive our souls are, no matter what oppression we live with, we are to put on a good face, to display strength.

The Spirit requires three things if we are to receive His work.  One is complete honesty.  The Spirit wants us to be open about our weaknesses, about our failings, about our hurts.  We cannot attempt to hide our true selves from the Divine, because he already knows who we are, to our deepest core, better than we know ourselves.

The Spirit also requires that we take our very selves, our core, and recognize our weakness, our brokenness. We need to look our inadequacies in the face, and admit—if only to ourselves and the Spirit—our brokenness. We are the child who accidentally broke the precious item of the parent.  The child has the choice to hide the broken item, or to admit and bring it to the parent.  It is the admission that leads to the deepening of the relationship.

Finally, the Spirit requires that we come to him with our broken selves and ask for repair.  Just as the child might request, “Can you fix it?” so we come to the Divine and ask for our renewal.  Both the parent and the Spirit looks down on the child and says, “Of course.”  And that is the grace of the Spirit.  He repairs within us what we cannot fix ourselves.

18. Spiritual Exercises

The heart of a spiritual life are the continuous actions we take to connect to the Spirit, also known as exercises.  Intellectual activity (such as prayer, Scripture reading or meditation) by itself, whether belief or analysis does not impress the Divine.  The human race is known to say one thing, but to be committed to another.  The human heart reveals itself in what it commits to through continuous actions.

The thief is not one who associates with thieves, or who talks like a thief, or who talks about doing the actions of a thief.  The saint is not the one who talks like a saint, or who lauds the saints, but is one who does the actions of the Divine on earth.  The Spirit is not interested in the superficial, but in the inner character of a person.  And that can only be revealed through actions.

A single action isn’t enough to declare character, as well (although a single action, like someone dying for another, might dramatically represent a person’s character).  Human are not born evil, but they are born weak and inexperienced.  Activity makes us strong and teaches us life lessons.  Even so, a single action may confirm a life in the spirit world, a connection to the Divine, but it is ongoing action over time that transforms us and conforms us to the nature of the Divine.

For these reasons and more, spiritual exercises are the heart of the spiritual life.  Through repeated action, we receive strength through discipline and become new people, people of the Spirit.