Hallowing the days

Today was my fifth work-out at the gym since I began last week.

Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 8 am.  Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday barring illness or emergency.

The work-out feels good physically.  And just as good for my spirit is the simple regularity of the practice, and my grateful commitment to it.

I've long known about, admired and sometimes experienced the formative and healing effects of living in a way akin to monastic hours -- regular, daily practice of a wholistic cycle of activity, rest, study and prayer.  The most healing summer vacation I ever experienced, for instance (and my frazzled, fragmented spirit at that time really really needed it to be healing) was two weeks of rising at 6:30 or 7 am, having breakfast with Japhia and driving her to work, coming home for 2-3 hours of physical labour on some project around the house or yard, stopping for lunch (that I would take time to prepare and enjoy), then spending 2-3 hours in the afternoon on the back deck reading, reflecting and journaling, until Japhia returned home and we had supper and the evening together.

I realize that having one's day and even one's whole week structured and routinized is not unique.  So I wonder what makes some structures and routines formative and healing -- like living within a sacred rhythm of monastic hours; and what makes other structures and routines deadening and exhausting -- like living on a hamster wheel or in an endless, mindless, repeating maze.

Whatever the difference is, I am glad to be feeling like I'm living the first of the two right now.  Such a welcome change from how I have lived at other times.

And as the new year continues to unfold, and you have your own opportunities to shape and re-shape the regularities of your life that in turn shape you, may you find your way into whatever monastic-houred kind of life is good for you.