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© Jonobie Ford
27 June 2004
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
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PRAYER
Heaven is not reached in a single bound,
But we build the ladder by which we rise
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies,
And we mount to its summit round by round.
I count this thing to be grandly true:
That a noble deed is a step toward God –
Lifting the soul from the common clod
To a purer air and a broader view.
SERMON: Daily Practice Makes Perfect
Jack Kornfield’s book, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, tells of a young man returning to the West. For the past twelve years, the man has been living a devoted religious life in India and Tibet. He’s in for a bit of culture shock in this re-integration; instead of strict schedules of meditation, intense daily focus on religion, and a community of similar believers, he finds himself lost and adrift in his old, chaotic world. Old patterns of living come back suprisingly quickly. He becomes irritable, confused, and angry. He starts worrying about money. And he begins to wonder whether he’s lost all that he’s learned in these past twelve years. And suddenly, in a flash of inspiration, he realizes:
“I can’t live in some enlightened memory. Spiritual practice is only what I’m doing, right now. Anything else is a fantasy.”
“Anything else is fantasy” — what a strong statement! But I think he’s got it right: Our religion is what we do, each and every day. And one way to focus on what we want to do, to make our daily decisions while keeping in mind these ultimate concerns in life, is to spend time with our religion each day.
I say “daily”, although perhaps “frequent” is a better term. Not all of us can or want to make time for daily practice. But daily practice need not be something that’s eternal. Like many things, some seasons of our lives may call for more focus on religion than others. Daily practice has many benefits, and trying it for a couple of weeks, or months, or even years, can produce some suprising results.
I had a somewhat impromptu daily practice a couple of months ago while writing my affirmations of faith. Each evening for several weeks prior to the service, I sat down at my computer, lit a small candle that I frequently use for rituals, and tried to compose understandable descriptions of what I believed.
The act of dedicating time to religion each evening made me go through the next day thinking about ways I could implement my religious beliefs. It sounds so simple, but I really think that doing a daily practice helps me be a nicer person. I start thinking about how others fit into the breath of life, and how we’re all in this together, and I’m more likely to see people as, well, people, and not just roles.
While I was writing my first affirmation of faith, I was also at a very busy point in my project at work. There was a coworker who had been frustrating me for the past couple of months. One day, after he had just complained to my boss’ boss about a decision I’d made, I was venting about this to my office mate. I actually stopped mid-word in my rant as my brain bubbled “Wow, you’re a hypocrite!” to the surface of my thoughts. Here I was, each evening, writing up lofty ideas about people being part of the breath of life, and how we’re all in this together, and yet, during the day, I hadn’t noticed that this guy was just like me. I’d just been seeing him as this thing that was in my way — not as a person who was just trying to do his job the best he could, just as I was. I might have thought of that without my daily practice, but I’m not so sure. I certainly hadn’t thought of it up until that point — this was not my first rant. And after this mid-rant revelation, I began to interact with him differently, and to actually listen to him, rather than to have my first reaction be annoyance. We ended up being allies, if not exactly friends, by the end of the project.
Daily practice looks different for different people. One couple I know prays a rosary together daily. Another person, a chronic insomniac, meditates each night when she wakes up and can no longer sleep. Yet another person speaks of studying Hebrew and religious scripture each day. My husband and I take turns saying grace at dinner. We all do our practice differently, but the sentiment is the same: Alone, or with others, we spend some time each day reminding ourselves about the ideas we hold most dear.
Regardless of exactly what the practice looks like, it’s clear a lot of people use a daily religious practice, or at least think it’s a good idea. I did a Google search on the phrase “daily spiritual practice” and came up with over 800,000 hits. That’s a lot of talk about daily practice!
Here, in a UU organization, we don’t seem to talk about daily religious practice much. I’m not sure why that is; it may be because we shy away from the notion of doing things that are overtly religious, or it may be because many of us don’t see any value in it. After all, much of the world talks about daily religious practice in terms that don’t work for some of us, by talking of making offerings to Gods, praying, and so forth. It may also just be because we’re busy people and don’t feel we have the time.
But daily religious practice holds a lot of value, even for followers of a liberal religion. There are a whole host of benefits that come from spending part of each day focusing on whatever it is that brings you here, to this church. Is there something you used to do that you don’t anymore, such as journaling, writing, poetry, praying, or taking a morning walk? Maybe it’s time to think about picking it back up again. Summer, with its more relaxed pace, is a great time to return to a daily practice.
While I was preparing for this service, Davidson shared with me an old preacher’s story. In it, two people are talking after church.
One says: “That sermon didn’t have much in it. In fact, most sermons don’t have much in them. I don’t know why I keep coming.”
And the other person replies, “Yes, I’ve found that meals are that way, too. Each one, taken by itself, doesn’t have too much. But if I skipped them all, I don’t think I’d do well. So I’ve decided that the effect of worship services, like the effect of meals, isn’t to seek feasts, but to get in the habit of nourishing myself regularly.”
There’s actually some good, solid evidence that frequent spiritual nourishment is good for us. Although the highly hyped studies describing the value of remote prayer (where other people pray for you) are scientifically suspect, there is evidence that frequent personal practice is healthy. For instance, one study of 1,000 seriously ill men in Veterans Administration hospitals found that “religious coping” — a method that includes frequent personal prayer — decreased depression. In another study, overseen by Duke University researchers, subjects who both attended worship services and prayed had lower blood pressure than a control group. Participants who prayed or studied the Bible daily were 40% less likely to have high blood pressure. Some people might claim that this study somehow proves Christianity’s correctness; given that I found similar studies for meditation and chanting, I’m inclined to say it’s the practice of focusing on religion each day, regardless of exactly what that practice is. Well, almost. An interesting tidbit from that same study: “Those who frequently watched religious TV or [listened] to religious radio actually had higher blood pressures.” I’m not surprised; Jerry Falwell makes my blood pressure rise, too.
At-home religious practice is also helpful for those of us still deciding what religious ideas to make our own. It gives us a safe place to try out and test different ideas. For me, my daily practice has helped refine my theology. For example, I’d always been dubious about praying for other people. After all, I believe that my Gods rarely, if ever, interact with the world in material ways.
When I first began following a daily practice, I found it easiest to use a book of daily devotions.[1] All the devotions in the book include a section for prayers for other people — for example, one directs the reader to pray for people who pollute the earth, while another one suggests praying for those who are refugees or without a home. When I began, I almost skipped doing them. I decided to temporarily leave the prayers in, figuring I shouldn’t remove them on the basis of previous prejudices.
I later realized I didn’t want to remove them. I still didn’t really think praying caused any sort of supernatural action in the lives of the people I was praying for, but prayer had become a way of focusing my attention. In fact, after praying for people, I felt more compassion for those I had prayed for. I wanted to interact with, support, honor, or help them in real ways, not just by thinking about them in the solace of my home. I tried to reduce my pollution by cultivating a worm bin in my apartment, and it now turns most of my previously-discarded kitchen scraps into compost. I also became more involved here at the church, both personally and financially. And I realized that any practice that takes my faith from inside my head into action in the world is a practice that’s powerful and worth retaining, regardless of my discomfort with the word “prayer”.
Daily practice is also just practice at being religious. Just as practicing a piano piece can ingrain the memory of it into your fingers, practicing being religious helps set it into you more firmly. When I first began a daily practice, I was at a really tumultuous time in my life. I was beginning my first job, and I had no idea if I was doing what I wanted to do. I don’t know if it’s this way for everyone, but my first job was when it really hit me — I suddenly knew what “the daily grind” meant. Dilbert, once somewhat incomprehensible, suddenly became hilarious. It sounds hopelessly naive now, but I really think I had the idea that a person went comfortably from out of school into a dream job, and would automatically become a highly respected member of the workforce. Instead, I was hurtling into a whole new world, I was off the tidy little life-plan I had devised for myself, and I was terrified.
Looking back, I can see that if religion is “what I’m doing now”, in the words of the Buddhist Lama, I didn’t have much of a religion at all those days. And even then, I realized that I needed a way to center myself, and to focus on who I was and what was important to me, every day. It felt like I was in danger of losing that, otherwise. My daily practice became part of the “ladder that took me to a broader view”, that reminded me that there was more to life than driving to work, working a long day, and driving back home, exhausted.
In the beginning, daily practice was relatively easy, particularly because it started shortly after I began seriously exploring religion. There was so much new information to read, absorb, and try, that my practice naturally was frequent and enthusiastic. But once my religion and my job become more comfortable, it was harder. While there was still much to learn and absorb, the freshness and enthusiasm began to fade. But I also realized that, in the words of the Lama returning to the west, religion isn’t some memory of past enlightenment — or memory of freshness and enthusiasm, it’s what I’m doing now, each and every day.
I’m told that our hunter-gatherer ancestors would often go without food for days, and then gorge themselves when they had a successful hunt. Like the people in Davidson’s story, it’s easy to slip into thinking about religion in this way, as though we’re waiting for one really good sermon to feed us for a month. But our ancestors realized that it was better to get in the habit of eating small daily meals, just as we still do, and it keeps us nourished all the time. Maybe part of being always nourished is to bring our religion out of the realm of what Kornfield’s Lama calls “fantasy” and down to the earth in our daily lives.
I haven’t tried to feed you a huge feast today, and I’m not sure I’d know how. Nor have I wanted to offer you “fast food”. I wanted to bring you some spiritual appetizers — a little nourishment for your souls on this hot summer day. Maybe it’s a little like Chinese food, and you’ll be hungry again in a few hours. I hope so. Because if we all keep coming back for Sunday snacks, we might grow into the habit of eating spiritual food between meals. And in the long run, you know, that’s a lot like living at a feast.
[1] Celtic Devotional: Daily Prayers & Blessings, by Caitlin Matthews
