After a brief hiatus to chart a course, I’m continuing my COVID supplement to The Book of Waking Up. If you’d like to support this project, signup for my Substack. Special thanks today to Susanjen who signed up as a yearly $65 subscriber!

12. A Pandemic Rule of Life

I found the words were late coming yesterday, and not because I was suffering from writer’s block. By 7:00, I was on Zoom call with my publisher. Off by 8:00, I was on breakfast duty. By 8:30, I’d started the bread (we made our way through the backup loaf yesterday), and by 8:45, it was time to chop the legal wood. (Like you, I’m doing my best to scratch out a living in these uncertain times.)

This is how a day starts in the Great Quarantine, hard-charging by the 7:00 hour. It’s a new way of living, and it’s disrupted the rhythm I’d honed over so many years. Last week, I noticed how that rhythmic disruption threw me off-kilter. And so, I turned back. To what? We’ll get to that in a day or two. (None of us are in any hurry, see.)

Wednesday, I participated in yet another 7:00 Zoom conference. This one comprised a small group of professing Christians who’d gathered to study the Scriptures, pray, and share how (which is to say if) we’re finding any sort of lockdown balance. One—an intellectual who specializes in ethnography and racial disparity—shared his struggle for balance and attachment to God in everyday life. He’d fought anxiety and the bipolarity of artistic living years ago, and he’d adopted a sort of Benedictine rule of life. (For more on the Benedictine way, see the video below.) It was a rule meant to draw him into rhythmic connection with God—morning prayers, noonday prayers, and evening prayers. And because I knew a little about these modes of praying, I knew each prayer movement included passages from the Psalms and other Scriptures.

This rhythm, he said, gave him a central focal point for each movement of the day. And because he’d practiced this way of being for more than ten years, when the pandemic came calling, he was ready. He was centered. His affections were ordered, and even if he wandered off course, his rule drew him back to the center, to the Divine Love, to Christ. And though he didn’t say it, I suppose this rule has hardened him against those COVID-fueled addictions so many of us mainline like heroin.

We live in a day of communal disruption. We’re unable to join the Waking Community, sing the Waking Songs, and participate in the Waking Meal. Even still, our personal practices can become a sort of lifeline if we’ll reimagine the way we live. Imagine a more Benedictine way with me.

To be continued…

Join me tomorrow (and for the foreseeable future) as I continue my Pandemic Supplement to The Book of Waking Up. And if you haven’t grabbed a copy of The Book of Waking Up: Experiencing the Divine Love that Reorders a Life, grab a copy. And yes, Amazon has slowed down book shipments, so considering purchasing it from Bookish, Fort Smith or grabbing a digital copy for Kindle or Nook.