Video: |
Meditation:“Prayer that is regular confounds both self-importance and the wiles of the world. It is so easy for good people to confuse their own work with the work of creation. It is so easy to come to believe that what we do is so much more important than what we are. It is so easy to simply get too busy to grow. It is so easy to commit ourselves to this century’s demand for product and action until the product consumes us and the actions exhaust us and we can no longer even remember why we set out to do them in the first place.” |
Transcript:
So growing up, I only had a few spiritual tools that I was taught. First - pray. Which I was taught was just talking to God. Thanking Him for my food. Asking Him to take care of the people I love. Maybe help me get an A on my French final. The second tool was reading the Bible. Spending “quiet time” with the Bible and God. There’s nothing wrong with that. It just didn’t really sound very fun to a teenager, and I always thought if I did try doing it - I was doing it wrong. It kinda felt pollyanna-ish. I resisted. Big Time.
Jump forward 30 years and now here I am trying to find as many tools as I can to help grow my spiritual life. And who knew there were so many! I hope that over the course of this time - you’ve learned some new tools that might help you. If you find there’s some you feel resistant to. Great. Don’t do it. There’s so many that some of them are bound to connect with you.
Today I want to introduce you to the concept of Ora et Labora. I wanna start by giving you a wee bit of history. (and by "wee bit" I mean I'm skipping a lot) After Jesus’ death, the early Christians were persecuted. Martyred. Christianity was illegal until 313 AD when at the Edict of Milan, Constantine gave it the ok. Ten years later it became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Now with Christianity not only legalized but welcomed, Christians had both the opportunity to create community without fear and also the burden of now dealing with a faith that was literally adopted by Empire. Enter monastic communities. When Christianity was punishable by death, that was a pretty strong indicator of heart felt devotion. Ummm.. are you willing to die. Yes. Great. Now, how was one to tell whether you were living a life of faith. What was the test? There were all kinds of teachings and rules and ascetic living practices that allowed for one to “live as Christ lived.” I’m not criticizing, but I do think there’s some interesting group psychology and trauma perhaps around some early Christian monasticism. OK - moving on. One of the early monastics and perhaps the most influential is St. Benedict. The founder of the Benedictine order and the creator of The Rule of St. Benedict. The Rule was a document that set out for the monastics how to live a Christ centered life and how to run a monastic community. The under lying concept of the Rule was Ora et Labora. Prayer and Work. A monk was to spend 8 hours a day in prayer, 8 hours sleeping and 8 hours working.
The tenet of this teaching has not been lost. In fact, I think it is something we can still learn a lot from and you don’t have to be a monk. It is about living a balanced life in Christ. The balance is found in spending time each day, praying alone and praying in community and working alone and working in community. I’m not suggesting the time commitment allocated to the monastics, but to keep one’s life in balance - have I spent time in prayer today? Have I found time to pray with others? Have I done my own work today (physical or mental or emotional work)? And have I participated in working with others?
The thing I love about the concept is that everything becomes sacred. Doing the dishes with your partner becomes a sacred act of shared work. Taking time to listen to a colleague share about her struggles, becomes an act of praying in community. Washing my dog is sacred work. Taking a walk is prayer. Certainly joining a protest is an act of sacred prayer in community. Listening to a podcast on anti-racism is individual sacred work.
But, can we also look to our lives and see that perhaps our lives are not living in balance. Perhaps we’ve isolated ourselves too much and need community. Perhaps we’re spending too much time in work and not enough in prayer. I’m still trying to wrap my head around what constitutes prayer and what constitutes work. Sometimes they seem to conflate. Maybe it is that some of these things for you give you energy and some demand energy. Maybe the work demands energy and the prayer gives energy. Maybe for another person, anything in community demands energy and anything alone gives energy. Different for all of us. But when everything is balanced we can live fruitfully.
So your action item this week is to reflect on your day to day by noticing your balance between being alone and being in community and your balance between prayer and work. God shows up in the action of our lives.
The reflection piece of this week is to answer these two questions:
So growing up, I only had a few spiritual tools that I was taught. First - pray. Which I was taught was just talking to God. Thanking Him for my food. Asking Him to take care of the people I love. Maybe help me get an A on my French final. The second tool was reading the Bible. Spending “quiet time” with the Bible and God. There’s nothing wrong with that. It just didn’t really sound very fun to a teenager, and I always thought if I did try doing it - I was doing it wrong. It kinda felt pollyanna-ish. I resisted. Big Time.
Jump forward 30 years and now here I am trying to find as many tools as I can to help grow my spiritual life. And who knew there were so many! I hope that over the course of this time - you’ve learned some new tools that might help you. If you find there’s some you feel resistant to. Great. Don’t do it. There’s so many that some of them are bound to connect with you.
Today I want to introduce you to the concept of Ora et Labora. I wanna start by giving you a wee bit of history. (and by "wee bit" I mean I'm skipping a lot) After Jesus’ death, the early Christians were persecuted. Martyred. Christianity was illegal until 313 AD when at the Edict of Milan, Constantine gave it the ok. Ten years later it became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Now with Christianity not only legalized but welcomed, Christians had both the opportunity to create community without fear and also the burden of now dealing with a faith that was literally adopted by Empire. Enter monastic communities. When Christianity was punishable by death, that was a pretty strong indicator of heart felt devotion. Ummm.. are you willing to die. Yes. Great. Now, how was one to tell whether you were living a life of faith. What was the test? There were all kinds of teachings and rules and ascetic living practices that allowed for one to “live as Christ lived.” I’m not criticizing, but I do think there’s some interesting group psychology and trauma perhaps around some early Christian monasticism. OK - moving on. One of the early monastics and perhaps the most influential is St. Benedict. The founder of the Benedictine order and the creator of The Rule of St. Benedict. The Rule was a document that set out for the monastics how to live a Christ centered life and how to run a monastic community. The under lying concept of the Rule was Ora et Labora. Prayer and Work. A monk was to spend 8 hours a day in prayer, 8 hours sleeping and 8 hours working.
The tenet of this teaching has not been lost. In fact, I think it is something we can still learn a lot from and you don’t have to be a monk. It is about living a balanced life in Christ. The balance is found in spending time each day, praying alone and praying in community and working alone and working in community. I’m not suggesting the time commitment allocated to the monastics, but to keep one’s life in balance - have I spent time in prayer today? Have I found time to pray with others? Have I done my own work today (physical or mental or emotional work)? And have I participated in working with others?
The thing I love about the concept is that everything becomes sacred. Doing the dishes with your partner becomes a sacred act of shared work. Taking time to listen to a colleague share about her struggles, becomes an act of praying in community. Washing my dog is sacred work. Taking a walk is prayer. Certainly joining a protest is an act of sacred prayer in community. Listening to a podcast on anti-racism is individual sacred work.
But, can we also look to our lives and see that perhaps our lives are not living in balance. Perhaps we’ve isolated ourselves too much and need community. Perhaps we’re spending too much time in work and not enough in prayer. I’m still trying to wrap my head around what constitutes prayer and what constitutes work. Sometimes they seem to conflate. Maybe it is that some of these things for you give you energy and some demand energy. Maybe the work demands energy and the prayer gives energy. Maybe for another person, anything in community demands energy and anything alone gives energy. Different for all of us. But when everything is balanced we can live fruitfully.
So your action item this week is to reflect on your day to day by noticing your balance between being alone and being in community and your balance between prayer and work. God shows up in the action of our lives.
The reflection piece of this week is to answer these two questions:
- Where is the action of your life right now? What’s got most of your attention?
- What might God be teaching you or inviting you to through the action of your life?
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