The Art of Manliness - Practicing Spiritual Disciplines as an Act of Resistance

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.160 To train the body, strengthening its muscles, increasing its cardiovascular health, and

00:00:15.420 improving its agility, you need to do exercises like stretching, running, and lifting weights.

00:00:20.720 To train the soul, expanding its capacity, you likewise need to perform exercises, in

00:00:25.720 this case, what are called spiritual disciplines, practices like fasting, silence, self-examination,

00:00:32.520 study, and simplicity.

00:00:34.320 As a pastor, John Mark Comer approaches the spiritual disciplines from a Christian perspective,

00:00:38.880 as the habits and practices from the way of Jesus that allow individuals to make deeper

00:00:42.660 layers of themselves available to grace, and access the transforming power that's necessary

00:00:46.480 to become what John Mark calls a person of love.

00:00:49.260 But the practices that are considered spiritual disciplines can be found across different

00:00:52.260 religions and even philosophies like Stoicism, and can be utilized by people from varied

00:00:56.400 backgrounds to deepen their inner life and strength, center themselves in chaos, find

00:01:00.500 greater purpose, and subdue baser desires to reach for higher ideals.

00:01:04.720 Today on the show, John Mark offers an introduction to the spiritual disciplines, and the way that

00:01:08.600 can be an act of resistance, a way for us to form our own values and rhythms in life, instead

00:01:13.100 of allowing our lives to be formed by the defaults and external forces of our age.

00:01:17.140 After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash spiritualdisciplines.

00:01:22.260 All right, John Mark Comer, welcome to the show.

00:01:36.940 Very happy to be on.

00:01:38.100 Thanks for the invite.

00:01:39.000 So something that you've written about in your books, the ruthless elimination of hurry

00:01:42.400 and practicing the way, is the idea of spiritual disciplines, which are habits and practices

00:01:48.940 that help us train our souls and access the more transcendent parts of life.

00:01:55.240 So let's start off with this.

00:01:56.860 Why do we even need this stuff?

00:01:58.560 Like, to become spiritual, can't you decide, well, I'm going to be spiritual?

00:02:02.620 You know, people say, I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious.

00:02:05.120 They don't have any set practices around their spirituality.

00:02:08.320 So what's the case for practicing the spiritual disciplines?

00:02:12.400 Like, what is it about them that actually makes a difference?

00:02:15.860 Well, I mean, first off, there's a whole rabbit's trail there of, you know, spiritual is one of

00:02:21.440 those words.

00:02:21.960 In our kind of modern, pluralistic, you know, post-secular age, spiritual is a word that

00:02:27.020 everybody uses, but people mean wildly different things by spiritual.

00:02:31.560 So what spiritual means in the Christian tradition is in relationship with a spirit, whether that

00:02:40.160 be the spirit that we understand to be the spirit of God himself, the maker of all things, or

00:02:46.760 another spirit that in, you know, kind of crass language, we would call an angel or a demon

00:02:52.380 or a, you know, dark energy in LA language where I live now or whatever, whatever it may

00:02:57.440 be.

00:02:58.500 And if you think about relationships, I know you're a, you're a family man, all relationships

00:03:04.280 require disciplined intentions to make connection.

00:03:09.460 And so my wife and I have a weekly date night, which means, you know, about every other week

00:03:14.160 in the reality of life.

00:03:15.600 And that's a discipline.

00:03:17.060 There are times when I feel it, times when I am busy, times when I really want to go,

00:03:22.000 times when I'd rather, you know, do something else, watch TV or catch up on work.

00:03:25.700 But we discipline ourselves to go out and share a meal and look each other in the eyes and

00:03:32.220 offer appreciation to each other and talk over hard stuff and have shoulder to shoulder

00:03:36.960 time to, to build our connection in order to have a relationship.

00:03:41.640 And so the reason we need spiritual disciplines is I can say all I want, I'm a romantic, I'm

00:03:47.000 a lover of my wife T, but if I never spend any time with her, if I never put down my phone,

00:03:51.940 if I never, we never go, we, we don't have this, you know, small repertoire of disciplines,

00:03:58.040 which for us is a daily emotional touch point.

00:04:00.480 It's a weekly date night.

00:04:01.520 It's a quarterly getaway.

00:04:02.880 It's an annual vacation.

00:04:04.420 If we don't have these touch points for connection that are at some level scheduled into our lives

00:04:11.320 or at least built into our kind of just natural responses to the stimuli of life or both, then

00:04:16.640 I can say whatever I want, but you know, you gotta, you gotta put your money where your mouth

00:04:21.380 is or where your time is.

00:04:23.140 And so in a sense, we need spiritual disciplines because the world that we are in is adamantly

00:04:29.400 opposed to spirituality.

00:04:31.280 It wants us on our phones.

00:04:33.380 It wants, because spirituality tends to not make money.

00:04:36.960 In fact, people that become deeply spiritual seem to find great happiness.

00:04:42.160 And this is true, not just in the Christian faith, but particular Buddhism and other traditions

00:04:46.300 seem to find great happiness, living lives that are increasingly free of consumption and

00:04:53.760 materialism and even busyness and hurry.

00:04:56.380 And that's not great for business.

00:04:58.260 And so there are powerful forces at work to constantly distract us.

00:05:03.100 And we collude in our own self-sabotage because we use these forces to attempt to numb the pain

00:05:08.920 of life.

00:05:10.160 And spiritual disciplines often put us more in touch with the pain of life.

00:05:14.200 And over time, they can shape us into people of great happiness and joy, but often short

00:05:19.240 term, they actually place us before our pain.

00:05:22.520 And so powerful forces outside of us and inside of us resist a spiritual life.

00:05:28.840 And so we need spiritual disciplines to form an intelligent, thoughtful, intentional, you

00:05:36.640 know, counteraction, counter-formational work to the kind of powerful currents of our day.

00:05:42.480 So you're coming at spiritual disciplines from a Christian perspective.

00:05:47.060 But as you mentioned, if you look at other faiths or even philosophies, they have their

00:05:50.880 own ideas of spiritual disciplines.

00:05:52.540 Like in Buddhism, there's meditation.

00:05:54.520 In Islam, there's fasting and prayer.

00:05:57.640 And then like, you know, Stoicism has had its own sort of set of spiritual disciplines.

00:06:01.660 They have these practices where you would, you know, maybe sleep on the floor and wear

00:06:05.600 this raggedy toga, maybe, you know, sleep out in the cold.

00:06:10.180 Right. 0.63

00:06:10.800 Imagine your death, you know.

00:06:12.340 Yeah. 0.99

00:06:12.560 Imagine your death.

00:06:13.500 That's, yeah, that was a spiritual practice.

00:06:15.160 And it was all about formation.

00:06:16.800 And I think it's interesting, kind of the intersection between Christianity and Stoicism.

00:06:20.420 You can kind of see that in Paul's writing a bit where, you know, the Stoics thought

00:06:24.680 about you had to train the soul, kind of liken themselves to wrestlers or Olympic athletes.

00:06:31.540 All right.

00:06:32.180 And so you had to do these exercises to, you know, shape your soul.

00:06:36.060 Well, you see that in Paul.

00:06:37.380 Like Paul was educated as a Roman. 0.98

00:06:39.260 And so he probably knew, he probably, he knew about the Stoics.

00:06:41.960 And you see that in the New Testament writing, like you want to, you know, finish the race, 0.92

00:06:45.680 be a wrestler, et cetera.

00:06:47.900 Yeah, absolutely.

00:06:48.720 That one of the most fascinating things to do with the New Testament, because I've spent

00:06:52.640 so many years as a pastor and teaching the Bible, you know, the Bible was written thousands

00:06:57.600 of years ago in a very different world.

00:06:59.800 And so, you know, you end up immersing yourself in the world of the Greco-Roman Mediterranean 0.88

00:07:05.220 and ancient Near East.

00:07:06.840 And one of the most fascinating things to do with the Bible is to see where, what the

00:07:11.720 writers like Paul are saying is similar and where they are radically different.

00:07:16.960 I mean, I think Paul and the biblical writers, they celebrate truth wherever they find it.

00:07:21.660 And I attempt to follow that example, whether it be in meditation from the Buddhist tradition

00:07:26.260 and some of the wisdom they have about detachment or imagining your death from the Stoic tradition

00:07:31.780 or, you know, there's so much wisdom now to be had in the cumulative effect of human history.

00:07:38.060 And I think what Paul and the other writers do for us is they show us to just celebrate

00:07:42.540 that wisdom wherever we find it and subvert the aspects or the ideas that live in every

00:07:48.080 age that seem to actually be deeply untrue.

00:07:50.760 So one insight I've gotten from your writing that I was particularly useful in thinking

00:07:56.180 about Christianity, I think a lot of people in America, particularly when they think of

00:08:00.420 Christianity, they just think of it as just doctrines.

00:08:02.500 You have to believe, right?

00:08:03.520 These ideas.

00:08:04.320 I mean, it is like there are, you know, that there's been wars fought about what we're supposed

00:08:08.320 to believe in, but you talk about how, you know, if you look closer, there's, there's

00:08:13.080 actually a way presented in the New Testament.

00:08:14.960 There's like a way of life and this idea of the yoke, right?

00:08:19.360 I'm sure everyone's heard that Bible verse, you know, where Jesus says, take upon you my

00:08:23.360 yoke, my yoke is easy.

00:08:24.820 And people read that, what does that mean?

00:08:26.660 This is really interesting.

00:08:27.420 She did some historical background, like what that, the idea of a yoke means.

00:08:30.840 Can you walk us through that and how it's connected to spiritual disciplines or spiritual

00:08:34.120 practices?

00:08:35.900 Yeah, absolutely.

00:08:37.340 Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

00:08:40.280 And, you know, one way to think about Christian spirituality is through that three-part lens

00:08:46.460 of way or kind of a way of life, a lifestyle.

00:08:50.780 That's kind of a goofy word that's been, you know, capitalized, but a way of life, a way

00:08:56.080 of being in the world.

00:08:57.140 It's a truth.

00:08:57.840 It is a philosophy, a metaphysic.

00:09:01.220 It is a worldview.

00:09:02.640 It is a meta-narrative about what is good and beautiful and true, about where we come from,

00:09:08.100 where we're going, what's wrong with the world, and how to fix it, and what the real

00:09:12.500 true meaning and purpose of life actually is, and where true happiness is to be found.

00:09:17.300 And it's also a life.

00:09:18.340 It is a living, breathing, relational experience with the relationship that we believe to be

00:09:25.320 at the center of the universe that Christians call Trinity or Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

00:09:30.400 And so this idea of yoke and the teachings of Jesus, which sounds a little esoteric or like

00:09:35.200 kind of an odd word picture to us today, but if you can imagine a yoke, it's an agrarian

00:09:39.180 world behind two oxen or something and a farmer plowing a field with a plowshare.

00:09:45.160 A yoke was actually a common metaphor that the rabbis used in the first century for kind

00:09:50.000 of their set of teachings, their summary of what they would have called the Torah or

00:09:54.180 the part of the Bible that was written and central in their day.

00:09:57.360 And their kind of way, it was more than just their way of reading the Bible.

00:10:03.540 It was their kind of way of naming, this is how you shoulder the weight of life.

00:10:09.080 And we learn Jesus' yoke partially through his teachings that come to us through these

00:10:14.320 four biographies in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and through the kind of

00:10:18.940 corpus of writings that make up the New Testament of his earliest followers that were working out

00:10:23.560 his teachings and ideas in different parts of the Greco-Roman world and the empire, but

00:10:29.080 also through just looking at and watching his life, paying close attention to how he spent

00:10:33.700 his time, how he organized his relational world, what he did, what he did not do, how he used

00:10:39.660 money, how he interacted with the political powers of the time, how he, you know, all of

00:10:44.600 those things.

00:10:45.700 And so, yes, a yoke is just a way of reading what life is all about, what Christian spirituality

00:10:52.500 in this case is all about, and how to shoulder the weight of life with peace and with grace.

00:10:58.380 There is a weight to life.

00:10:59.560 There's just no way, there's no version of life that is easy.

00:11:02.200 Anybody that tells you that is, I think, selling you something or naive.

00:11:05.560 But there is a way to shoulder the weight of life.

00:11:08.940 There's not an easy life, but there is an easy yoke, as I like to say it.

00:11:12.780 There's a way to shoulder the weight of life with peace and with a relational strength that

00:11:18.340 comes from living deeply in connection to God and to other people.

00:11:23.740 This idea of spiritual disciplines is also connected to this idea from monks, from monasteries.

00:11:29.160 The rule of life.

00:11:30.200 Tell us about the rule of life.

00:11:32.260 Yes.

00:11:33.440 Yeah.

00:11:33.960 So, okay.

00:11:34.760 So, the first followers of Jesus, the ones that were the most serious, which eventually

00:11:39.780 kind of began what we would now call the monastic tradition, which, you know, kind of grew up

00:11:45.040 over many hundreds of years and took different shapes at different moments in church history

00:11:49.520 and still all around the world today.

00:11:51.820 But the most serious, the earliest serious followers of Jesus all said, all right, Jesus

00:11:58.860 has some, if you read the Sermon on the Mount, some extraordinary ideas.

00:12:02.880 But how do we actually do this?

00:12:04.520 Because good information in your brain and willpower is simply not enough.

00:12:07.840 And that's, you know, the Achilles heel of Western culture.

00:12:11.040 We think that insight and willpower are enough to change, whether it's through therapy or

00:12:17.800 reading a great book or listening to a killer podcast.

00:12:20.100 If I can just get the right insight, match it to some, you know, good heart intentions,

00:12:25.640 I'll just go out and do it.

00:12:27.360 And then we tend to, that only works on very, very, very small changes in our life and character.

00:12:33.200 It simply is powerless against the deeper stuff.

00:12:36.880 If you become a husband or a father or you mature much in life or you end up in a leadership

00:12:40.880 position or you have any kind of public scrutiny on you, the weak foundation of your life will

00:12:46.060 be quickly exposed and you will realize that what you need most to become the person you

00:12:51.160 were destined to be is beyond the power of insight and willpower.

00:12:55.960 And so much of this goes to how do we actually create a workable plan to become the kinds of

00:13:03.680 people that Jesus invites us to become, the kind of people who naturally live his ideas

00:13:09.140 on the Sermon on the Mount, which is loving your enemy and living with that anxiety and

00:13:12.900 being free of the worship of money and people of our word where what we say, when we say

00:13:18.180 yes, we mean it.

00:13:19.040 When we say no, we mean it.

00:13:20.240 We don't use verbal manipulation.

00:13:22.000 People that do not use what some call condemnation engineering, where we try to manipulate people

00:13:27.200 through our judgment and our contempt and our criticism, which the world has just reached

00:13:31.680 a fever pitch with.

00:13:32.560 All these beautiful ideas in the Sermon on the Mount.

00:13:35.140 How do we actually live them?

00:13:36.160 So the answer that the first followers of Jesus came up with is a beautiful one.

00:13:39.660 They called it a rule of life.

00:13:41.240 And that is a bit tricky to get it into English today because this word rule is really hard

00:13:46.760 to translate.

00:13:47.320 It's regula in Latin.

00:13:48.820 It's very important to say it's rule of life, singular, not rules for life, plural.

00:13:53.660 So a rule of life is not a list of rules, though you may have some rules in your rule of life.

00:13:58.740 This word regula was a Latin word.

00:14:01.340 It literally means straight piece of wood.

00:14:02.920 And a lot of scholars who's debate over this, but believe it was the word used in the ancient

00:14:07.940 Mediterranean for the trellis underneath a vineyard or a winery.

00:14:13.320 And in one of Jesus' most famous teachings, he has this beautiful line, you know, it's a

00:14:18.060 word picture of a vineyard.

00:14:19.780 And he says, you know, abide in me and you will bear much fruit.

00:14:24.380 Meaning if you live in deep relational connection to God through Jesus, then it will produce

00:14:32.020 in the same way that a vine grows fruit.

00:14:34.400 It will bring goodness out of your life, which is later codified in the New Testament as this

00:14:39.720 list of love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and gentleness and so on.

00:14:45.700 And so early followers of Jesus took this word picture of a vineyard to its logical conclusion

00:14:50.180 and said, listen, a vine doesn't just grow wild on the ground and you don't just like

00:14:55.100 wait for the rain to come and hope for the best.

00:14:57.560 A vine is cultivated.

00:14:59.040 A vine has this trellis, this straight piece of wood underneath it that is a support structure

00:15:03.980 designed to lift it up off the ground, to guard it from predators, disease, you know,

00:15:10.700 trampling by humans, and to index its growth in the right direction, to move it toward maximum

00:15:15.300 sun exposure, to make sure it's well hydrated so it can bear the maximum amount of fruit.

00:15:20.180 And in the same way, if we want to follow Jesus' teaching, to abide in him and bear much fruit,

00:15:26.180 and again, this is very first century Jesus rabbinic language for those of you not familiar

00:15:30.860 with the Bible or the writings of the New Testament.

00:15:34.100 If we want to become these kind of people that naturally bear the byproduct of goodness in

00:15:40.260 our life, then we have to, in the same way, organize our life.

00:15:44.780 We need some kind of a support structure, some kind of a regula, a rule, a straight piece

00:15:49.380 of wood to kind of lift our lives up from, to guard our lives from all that would sabotage

00:15:56.400 our deepest desires of our heart, and to guide our lives into becoming, we would say, people

00:16:02.700 of love, but whatever your telos is.

00:16:05.460 And so, you know, imagine similar work being done by James Clear and others around kind of

00:16:11.380 organizing your life.

00:16:13.000 I mean, there's so much that will, if you don't organize your life, somebody else will

00:16:18.640 organize it for you.

00:16:19.480 What's the Greg McHugh in line?

00:16:20.620 You know, if you don't, if you don't set the agenda for your life, somebody else will.

00:16:24.500 And so a rule of life is a way to set the agenda for your life.

00:16:27.900 I think Stephen Covey once said something to the effect of we achieve inner peace when our

00:16:31.840 schedule is aligned with our values.

00:16:33.500 So very simply, and forgive my over-speaking here, I define a rule of life as a schedule

00:16:38.920 and a set of practices and relational rhythms that organize our life around God and allow

00:16:46.720 us to live in alignment with the deepest desires of our heart.

00:16:51.240 And that's it.

00:16:53.280 Well, it sounds like you could have a rule of life even if you weren't intentional about

00:16:58.680 it.

00:16:58.920 Because you kind of default to something like you, we all default to some sort of rhythm

00:17:02.960 of life or practices that we do throughout our day, how we relate to other people.

00:17:08.240 And we just don't think about it.

00:17:09.320 We just kind of take on a rule of life.

00:17:12.480 Yes, that is exactly the point I make in my last book that even if you've never heard of

00:17:17.740 the language of rule of life until five minutes ago, even if you hate this idea, even if you're

00:17:22.340 an Antonobian kind of, I hate rules, I'm a free spirit, I'm a spontaneous, I like to go with

00:17:26.900 the flow kind of person. You already have a rule of life. You just don't call it. We all

00:17:31.360 have. We likely have a way that we begin our day. We likely either choose to sleep with

00:17:36.260 our phone as our alarm plugged in next to our bed or something else. We have a morning

00:17:41.600 routine. We maybe have an exercise routine or not. We have a work day. We have activities

00:17:46.580 that make up our time. We have apps on our phone. We have relationships. We have a way of

00:17:52.080 life, a way that we have organized, even if it's incredibly chaotic and reactionary, that

00:17:58.400 in itself is a way of living. All of us have this rule. We all have this way of life. And

00:18:04.700 so the question isn't, do you have a rule of life? The question is, do you know what your

00:18:09.700 rule of life is? And is it working for you or is it actually working against you? Is the

00:18:17.000 way that you're living, is it actually enabling you to live the life that you want? Is it giving

00:18:21.560 you the life that you most deeply desire? Or is it actually sabotaging your best intentions?

00:18:27.440 And many of us, we actually have good heart desires. We have good intentions. And we even

00:18:32.160 know what we want out of life. But yet the way we have structured our life, organized our

00:18:38.280 life, the way we have allowed ourselves to be manipulated by our phones and all that stands

00:18:45.040 behind them, the way we have been manipulated by social media, by the way modern news organizations

00:18:50.960 work, by modern politics, the way we've let them hijack our autotomic nervous system and

00:18:56.660 lead us into anxiety groupthink and so many other things, it often is sabotaging the deepest

00:19:02.120 desires of our heart. And so I'm a firm believer that the only way we can live a flourishing life

00:19:07.360 in the modern era, whether you're a Christian or absolutely agnostic about such things or more,

00:19:12.660 I think is a very intentional, disciplined form of resistance that you do that, you know, somewhere

00:19:20.640 there exists a piece of paper or a document that names the schedules, the practices, the relationships

00:19:26.860 by which you will form resistance. And this has to be done in community, we simply all resistance

00:19:31.900 cells to all empires down through history, we're never individuals alone, they were always small kind

00:19:37.500 of guerrilla bands trying to fight from the margins for what they believe to be good. And I think

00:19:43.580 that's the only way that we will survive this kind of a moment. Yeah, so the takeaway there, you're

00:19:48.340 being formed by something, the spiritual practices can help you, like, I'm going to take control of

00:19:52.700 this. There's that Flannery O'Connor quote, you got to push back against the age. Yes, I love that quote.

00:19:58.200 Yeah, push back against the age as hard as it pushes against you. Yeah, and so that's the key idea of my

00:20:03.260 last book is you are being spiritually formed. And what I'm that's going to be weird language to people

00:20:08.300 that aren't Christians. What I mean by spiritually formed is your your spirit, your inner woman or 0.99

00:20:13.420 man, your inner person, the web and the nature of who you are, call it character in your older old

00:20:19.260 school language, that it is being formed where human beings are dynamic, we're not static, like none of us

00:20:25.080 are the same person we were 20 years ago, none of us are the same person we were 20 minutes ago,

00:20:29.680 it's just so incremental, we don't see it. And over time, we see these broad stroking changes,

00:20:35.880 we are being formed into a particular kind of person, you may becoming more joyful and happy and

00:20:42.580 relaxed and kind and patient, or you may becoming more selfish and agitated and angry and freaked out

00:20:49.200 about the world. The point is, you're becoming a type of person, who are you becoming? Is it the kind of

00:20:55.540 person you want to become? And is your rule of life, your way of life? Is it helping you become

00:21:01.220 that person? Or is it hindering you from becoming that person?

00:21:05.520 Well, let's talk about some of these spiritual disciplines that you advocate for. And one is

00:21:09.160 solitude and silence. And you talk about the idea of Eremos in the Bible. Is that I pronounced that

00:21:15.980 right?

00:21:17.240 Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to correct your Greek pronunciation, bro. It's I think it's Eremos.

00:21:21.540 At the end of the day, we're just doing our best here.

00:21:26.560 Yeah, tell us about the Eremos. That was really interesting and how it's connected to solitude

00:21:29.780 and silence.

00:21:31.180 Yeah, so it's interesting. So again, I'm just obsessed with the life and the person of Jesus.

00:21:37.160 And when you look at his life, there are so many remarkable things about him. So many things that

00:21:42.760 just cut straight across the bow of kind of our intuitions and certainly how we've organized the

00:21:48.520 world today and how you would imagine a celebrity today. But one of the things that Jesus did a lot

00:21:53.680 is he was deeply engaged with the world, deeply engaged with people. He spent many years in

00:21:57.940 obscurity. But then once he kind of began to engage as a rabbi, I mean, it was extraordinary,

00:22:02.640 the things he did and the crowds he was a part of, the deep relational life that he lived with his

00:22:07.360 disciples. But he would regularly disappear into this place that the Greek word is Eremos.

00:22:13.820 And it can be translated all sorts of and is translated. If you have an English translation

00:22:19.440 of the Bible, that Greek word, same word is translated all sorts of different ways as the

00:22:24.820 desert or the wilderness or the solitary place or the quiet place or the lonely place. These are all

00:22:31.960 legitimate translations of this Greek idea. And it's a very different world. It was much less

00:22:36.980 populated. But Jesus basically would just disappear out into the middle of nowhere, into nature, up a

00:22:41.800 mountain or out into the desert. It's not quite the right translation because much of it was up in

00:22:46.580 the Galilee and such. But he would just go out and he would be alone with himself and with God.

00:22:52.600 And you'd see him living in this rhythm of what I call retreat and return, where you would kind of,

00:22:58.380 he wasn't a monk. Jesus was not a monk. He did not disappear from the world. He did not hole up in a

00:23:03.500 hermitage. He lived a deeply active life. But neither was he a modern day politician with 18 hour days and

00:23:10.180 surrounded by a staff constantly and people. He would live this fascinating rhythm where he would

00:23:15.600 deeply engage with the world. But then he would retreat and he would disappear. They would literally

00:23:21.180 send out search parties for him. When he got too popular, he would attempt to hide up in the hills.

00:23:27.700 And it was just a fascinating experience where he would get up early. Mark chapter one, one of the

00:23:33.960 first stories to read about Jesus in Mark's biography is very early while it was still dark.

00:23:38.400 Jesus got up, went out to, and it's translated, a solitary place. It's a ramos in Greek,

00:23:44.660 and prayed. And so he would carve out these long uninterrupted times for maybe what we today would

00:23:53.320 call meditation or prayer for deeply being himself with God and others. And this is one of the things

00:24:00.760 that enabled him to live with such extraordinary equilibrium, poise, courage, fortitude, wisdom,

00:24:08.760 to know just the right thing to say and do at just the right time. And so the spiritual discipline,

00:24:15.480 this is in the Christian tradition, this has come to be called the spiritual discipline of silence,

00:24:19.700 solitude, and stillness, which is where we follow Jesus' example. And we basically withdraw,

00:24:26.920 we kind of retreat from the noise and the stimulation of all external inputs, whether that be a phone

00:24:34.460 or a crowd of people, or even our close friends and the busyness of the city. And we find a quiet place,

00:24:41.640 and that may be a hermitage on top of a mountain, or it may be our living room as the sun rises before

00:24:49.340 our family is up with our phone in another room. And we find these quiet places and quiet moments to

00:24:55.320 retreat, to center ourselves in God, to become aware of our own heart and our own life, and to begin to

00:25:02.860 get thoughtful about how we live our life, to not just live, but to work on our living, and to begin

00:25:10.760 to then re-enter the world, our families, our jobs, our work, running a podcast, whatever it is we're doing,

00:25:16.820 with greater wisdom, fortitude, and peace.

00:25:20.440 I love that. So you can do this on a daily basis, like you described. Maybe you have a time in the

00:25:25.360 morning when you wake up a little bit earlier, you don't check your phone, you just cut off all

00:25:29.540 inputs, and it could be meditation, it could be prayer. You're just going to be there by yourself

00:25:34.420 to work things out.

00:25:37.240 Absolutely. Yeah. So my personal rule of life, this for me is essential. So I think it's one of the most

00:25:44.160 important of all the spiritual disciplines. So yes, I have a daily kind of hour, first thing every

00:25:49.020 morning. Then I have a weekly, we practice Sabbath, so I have a whole 24 hour, we turn our phones off

00:25:54.980 for a full 24 hours every weekend. And I have a longer period every Saturday. And then monthly,

00:26:00.960 I'll take a full day every month to just retreat. And I will tend to bring nothing but my journal

00:26:07.700 and my heart. I don't bring books, I don't bring a phone, you can't get a hold of me, I'm not with

00:26:13.480 other people. It's just me, my soul and God. And I cannot even put into words. And then annually,

00:26:20.760 I will try to do a couple of days, a couple of nights in full retreat. And for that, I'll often

00:26:27.460 go to a monastery or somewhere that offers a place to live quietly. I'll just go solo camping a lot by

00:26:34.280 myself up in, you know, off grid country or something and just be alone. Yeah, I've been to

00:26:40.460 a monastery for a weekend. One of the things I found was incredible about it. I just slept so much. I

00:26:46.740 didn't think I was tired. But for some reason, getting out of my schedule, my body just like

00:26:52.740 responded. It's like, you're tired, you need to just sleep. And I, I was surprised how much I slept

00:26:57.880 during that time. Yeah, I think that's healthy and right. You know, one of the gifts of solitude,

00:27:02.660 there's so many gifts. But one of the gifts is we just learn so much about ourselves when we

00:27:08.000 finally are just with ourselves and God. And we often begin to realize how much we've been

00:27:16.320 running away from and our pain, which is why I think so many people avoid solitude,

00:27:21.100 even though it's actually quite joyful once it becomes a part of your life. But at first,

00:27:25.820 often the painful feelings we've been running away from through our busyness and our devices and

00:27:31.400 binge watching TV, you know, come up. But one of the first things that comes up for most people

00:27:35.900 is just exhaustion, the busyness, the hurry, the overcommitment, the multitasking, the digital stress

00:27:43.580 on our nervous systems, the political climate we're in. It is utterly exhausting. And so I think

00:27:49.700 one of the great gifts of solitude in our age is just a chance to take a nap, to sleep, to let our

00:27:56.200 nervous systems, like begin to calm down. You know, who's the author? I'm forgetting his name

00:28:01.320 of The Comfort Crisis.

00:28:03.160 Oh, Michael Easter.

00:28:03.980 Love that book.

00:28:04.880 Yes. Have you had him on the show before?

00:28:06.320 We have, yeah.

00:28:07.200 I loved his insights. And I went and did a bunch of research after reading that book. And man,

00:28:11.080 was he spot on, but about noise pollution. And, you know, his insight that basically,

00:28:15.700 if you're out in nature, if you're backpacking in the Sierra Nevadas, if you hear something really

00:28:20.400 loud over a certain decibel level, the likelihood is that it's bad. It's a grizzly bear or a wolf or

00:28:27.100 an avalanche or an earthquake. There's very few things in nature that are very loud that are not

00:28:33.980 dangerous. And so our bodies have evolved to, you know, sound over a certain decibel level puts our

00:28:41.060 bodies into fight or flight. And that decibel level is basically just living in a city, just normal life

00:28:47.800 where, you know, living in LA or whatever. And so I think one of the gifts of solitude is we can

00:28:54.760 really begin to participate in the healing of our nervous system. I think when we're running

00:28:59.800 at fight or flight, I mean, one way to interpret the just absolute cluster cuss disaster that is 1.00

00:29:05.780 politics in America is this is what a bunch of underslept, exhausted people in fight or flight from

00:29:12.960 too much noise and stimulation, following their phones around through anxiety and anger driven

00:29:17.700 group think. This is what it looks like. And it is not pretty. And so if we want to be people that

00:29:23.520 spread peace, goodness, wisdom, and courage in this age and era, then I think it is essential that we

00:29:30.500 come away for periods of time from the mess, from the chaos, to center ourselves, calm our bodies,

00:29:39.580 and to return with a renewed sense of mission and purpose.

00:29:44.400 We're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors.

00:29:46.660 And now back to the show. Another spiritual discipline is Sabbath. You mentioned that as

00:29:57.540 part of your solitude and silence practice. I'm sure people are familiar with the Sabbath. This

00:30:02.640 idea comes from Judaism where you take a day off where you don't do anything. Why do you think that

00:30:08.800 idea went away? What happened there? Because that's such a great idea. Like you get a seventh of your life

00:30:13.360 for you just to chill out. But we were like, no, I don't want to chill out. Yes. And yeah, you know,

00:30:19.200 I was chatting to my dad the other day. My dad is 73, grew up in what's now called Silicon Valley. At

00:30:25.920 the time, it was just Santa Clara. And he tells stories about, you know, how everything on Sunday

00:30:33.820 would close down. And almost everyone went to some house of worship. They were either a Catholic or

00:30:40.440 Protestant or Jewish synagogue. And then most people would have family dinner together afterwards.

00:30:46.280 And everything was closed on Sunday. It was actually illegal to run anything. And he talks

00:30:51.400 about, you know, the year that 7-Eleven came to town and how revolutionary it was to like go out

00:30:58.440 and buy a Slurpee or whatever on a Sunday. And I looked it up and I, this off the top of my head,

00:31:03.900 I have to Google it again to make sure. But I believe that the year that 7-Eleven came to Silicon

00:31:07.640 Valley was 1969. And it's just bizarre. That was not very long ago, half a century where the whole

00:31:15.440 world, whether you were a Christian or not, would essentially pause and breathe. And, you know,

00:31:21.060 in Christian theology or Judeo-Christian theology, the Sabbath isn't just like a good idea or habit

00:31:25.940 or a practice. In Genesis chapter 1, the way that the kind of mythology of Genesis is written,

00:31:32.700 it's actually woven into the fabric of creation itself. That creation is like built, the environment,

00:31:39.760 the natural world is built with this rhythm into creation of six and seven. And on the seventh day,

00:31:47.480 you breathe, you pause, you rest, you worship. And whether you buy that or not, I certainly do

00:31:53.600 actually. And there's some intriguing scientific stuff that would argue that, at least for the human

00:31:57.900 body. But whether you buy that or not, I think there is this, we're creatures of rhythm. We're

00:32:03.020 not machines. There's summer and there's winter. There's day and there's night. There's work week

00:32:07.720 and there's Sabbath. There's morning and there's evening. And we're built to live in this rhythm.

00:32:13.860 And so it's just bizarre how the whole world has almost just abandoned this practice without even

00:32:22.520 almost any group-wide public conversation about it. And I think the various reasons, you could go

00:32:28.700 around blaming, I don't know, marketing or capitalism gone awry or whatever, secularism. You could find

00:32:35.140 somebody to blame. But the reality is that we have lost this essential practice. And the Christian

00:32:43.640 practice of Sabbath is very unique in that it's not just a day off or a day to be quiet. It's a day to

00:32:48.800 deeply rest, but also to attach more deeply to God and offer more of yourself joyfully to God and to

00:32:55.520 really anchor your life in your community of other Christians. But, you know, you have Pico Ayer and

00:33:01.880 other secular thinkers that are arguing for a secular Sabbath. You have doctors now arguing for a digital

00:33:07.220 Sabbath, which we practice, by the way, as well. And it's wonderful. And so I just think wisdom is

00:33:12.280 wisdom is wisdom. Whether you're a Christian or not, the wisdom of living by rhythm, of living with

00:33:19.680 more than just, you know, accomplishment and accumulation or constant stimulation as our end

00:33:25.920 is just, it's never been more important, arguably, now than it ever has before.

00:33:31.620 So yeah, the Sabbath is a way to push back against the world's rhythm.

00:33:35.020 Um, oh yeah, it's, it's, it's like subversive. I mean, it's so the level of resistance because we

00:33:40.400 don't buy, we don't sell on the Sabbath. We turn our devices. I mean, it's just, it is full on

00:33:45.680 resistance to the, to the powers of digital empire. We, yeah, we actually had a guest on the podcast a

00:33:51.400 while back ago about having a digital Sabbath. We'll link to it in the show notes. I thought it was

00:33:55.340 really interesting. So what could a Sabbath practice look like? I know you say there aren't any hard rules

00:34:00.400 to follow, but what does it look like for you? Cause as a pastor, you're really busy on Sundays

00:34:05.360 and you do a Sabbath on Saturday and actually start on Friday night.

00:34:10.180 For our family. Yes. We begin the night before or the night of, you know, in Hebrew theology,

00:34:16.100 the day begins at sundown, not at midnight or at sunrise, like we think of in the Western world.

00:34:21.860 And there's a whole theology behind that of the day begins with rest, with sleep. So yes,

00:34:26.900 we start the night before we throw a big kind of Sabbath dinner party. We have some of our closest

00:34:31.720 family and friends who come every Friday night. We do homemade sourdough bread and a really good

00:34:37.420 bottle of wine. And we laugh and we do gratitudes and highlight of the week. And we do fire pit and

00:34:42.820 watch the sunset and play games. We put all of our devices away, literally in a box for 24 hours,

00:34:48.900 including my teenage kids. There's no phones, there's no laptops, there's no TV, everything,

00:34:54.280 the clicker, it all goes into a box that we put away. And we just spend, you know, we spend the

00:35:00.360 evenings kind of a party. So it kind of starts with a relaxed party celebration. And then we sleep for

00:35:07.040 a long, long time and we're pretty chill. Our family's pretty chill. So, you know, Saturdays then

00:35:13.120 for us is, I'm in this great stage where I have teenagers, so they sleep in really late. So I

00:35:18.660 basically get a half day retreat every Saturday morning, which is nice to read and pray and journal

00:35:24.900 and go on walks with the dog. And then it's family time. So it's a real mix of trying to

00:35:30.080 connect with our own souls, connect with each other and deepest, closest friendships and family

00:35:35.000 and connect with God. And so we have a lot of kind of relaxed kind of micro practices woven

00:35:40.340 throughout the day that just kind of return us to a grateful posture before God. And we spend the day

00:35:46.220 just resting. And honestly, it is mostly that usually it's the highlight of our week and it's

00:35:51.380 become an anchor practice really for our, even our family's spirituality. You know, I have my own

00:35:57.160 kind of individualistic, this is how I do life with God or receive life from God. But for our family,

00:36:03.820 Sabbath has really become like the anchor. And for most Christians, the Sabbath would also include

00:36:09.000 going to church and worshiping and being with other, other people of God.

00:36:13.840 Another spiritual discipline is fasting. A lot of people are fasting these days for health reasons.

00:36:19.320 What's the spiritual reason for fasting?

00:36:22.680 Yeah, there's more than one. I mean, like all of this stuff, there are layers to it, you know?

00:36:27.060 So we believe, and I think there's good, good evidence for this, that it has a deeply

00:36:32.840 reforming effect on purging what we would understand. I'm trying to think of language here

00:36:39.760 that would make sense to non-Christians. All of us have these primal animal bodily desires

00:36:46.280 that are basically oriented around self-preservation and self-satisfaction. And that could be lust,

00:36:53.440 it could be greed, it could be gluttony, it could be anger, it could be selfishness. And overcoming

00:36:59.360 these powerful undercurrents of bent desires that all of us carry in our bodies is very difficult.

00:37:06.580 It's much more difficult than most people are honest about. And fasting has this profound effect

00:37:12.720 upon the body where we would understand it to be, this is language used by the writer Paul in the

00:37:18.280 New Testament of the flesh and the spirit. And this is very kind of Christian or religious sounding

00:37:22.560 language, but the flesh you could understand is this kind of primal, carnal, bodily survival part of

00:37:30.020 this, the animal part of our nature. And the spirit, you could understand, I don't think of

00:37:35.220 of non-Christian language as like the enlightened part of us moving toward people that live over 0.99

00:37:41.760 those animal desires and wisdom and love and peace and kindness and fortitude. And so, you know,

00:37:49.100 fasting is a way to starve your flesh and feed your spirit. So there's something that happens when you

00:37:55.560 do not, you know, many of the early Christian thinkers said that Christian spirituality begins in the

00:38:00.860 stomach. And that if you can't overcome your gluttonous desires, your stomach, your bodily desires, you're

00:38:06.760 never going to have victory in other areas of your life, whether that be channeling your sexuality toward a 0.64

00:38:12.520 healthy direction or money or your mouth and how you speak to other people, or your decisions you make with

00:38:19.140 your life, impulse control. And so there's a powerful thing. I mean, Christian spirituality is holistic in that it

00:38:25.120 believes the body is not just a thing that we're in. It's actually a part of who we are and an essential

00:38:31.080 part of who we are. It's deeply, deeply embodied spirituality. And so fasting is a way to turn your

00:38:37.260 body from an enemy into an ally in the fight to become a person of love.

00:38:43.680 So how do you incorporate this into a spiritual practice? Is it something you do once a week,

00:38:47.060 once a month? Is it 24 hours? Is it, you know, no water, no food? How do you, how do you...

00:38:52.460 It's, yeah. I mean, well, traditionally fasting is just not eating, but drinking water. There are some rare

00:38:57.520 examples of not drinking water either, but you can't do that very long. So yeah, and again, there's not a right

00:39:03.060 way. There's no command from Jesus and the New Testament writers. There's a long running Christian tradition

00:39:08.640 of fasting once or twice a week until sundown, typically on Wednesdays and Fridays. So I will do that on Wednesdays

00:39:15.700 and Fridays. I will just wake up and not eat until kind of a simple dinner at sundown. And sometimes

00:39:22.360 in some seasons of my life, I'll just do it one day a week. Others will do it two days a week.

00:39:27.120 And then there will be longer periods of fasting that I will do for several days up to maybe a week.

00:39:34.840 For me, it tends to be the upper limit for me, but those tend to be responsive. Like I'm going to do

00:39:40.360 a couple of day fast next week in response to something that happened to me in this last month.

00:39:45.640 It will be when I really think there'll be certain occasions that call for it. So one could be

00:39:50.640 when I'm in the process of really trying to discern a major decision. And it's an incredibly helpful

00:39:57.780 practice to really what I would understand to be hear the voice of God speaking in my inner man

00:40:04.560 and discern what the next step is. I will often practice a longer fast when I'm facing some kind

00:40:12.440 of a crisis and I just need the help of God. I will often practice a longer fast when, again,

00:40:18.540 this is going to be very Christian language, when I have sinned, when I have done something

00:40:22.560 egregious, something wrong, when I have, you know, maybe really hurt the feelings of my wife or my

00:40:28.540 children through selfish behavior, whatever it is, I will often fast to repent and attempt to

00:40:34.480 not to self-mascicate, not to, you know, self-flagellate myself, not out of shame, but out of an attempt to

00:40:40.320 really purge myself. I will often fast in response to grief. Thankfully, I don't have that happen very

00:40:46.200 often, but fasting in most traditions is very common after the death of a loved one. You would

00:40:50.720 fast for up to a week at a time as a way of like, again, grieving. You could think of fasting as

00:40:57.060 praying with your body. You know, in prayer, we all run out of words. We all get to the spot where we

00:41:02.440 don't know what to say or do. And it's a way to just pray with your body, even beyond words and even

00:41:07.440 when you don't know what to say. Another spiritual discipline you talk about is community. And I don't

00:41:12.220 think a lot of people would think of community as a spiritual discipline. So how is community a

00:41:16.880 spiritual discipline? Yeah. And that may not be a helpful way to frame it for people, but certainly

00:41:21.880 in our radically individualistic age, Brett, I mean, it's just, as you know, I mean, people just live

00:41:28.340 shockingly lonely lives for all of the connection that we have through our devices and modern features

00:41:35.320 of the world. People have few close friends. Families tend to be fragmented and torn apart, if not by

00:41:41.880 relational breaches, then at least by distance and busyness. And so again, if we're going to live

00:41:48.080 against that flow of kind of atomized culture, as some would call it, or this radical individualism,

00:41:53.480 as the sociologist Robert Bella called it, we have to live very intentionally and subversively. And so

00:42:00.200 that's simple for us. It would be things like once a week, we share a meal with about, you know,

00:42:07.000 eight other people that we love and we deeply know and have chosen to kind of do life with. And we're

00:42:11.700 all followers of Jesus, so we're helping each other toward a specific kind of life telos or life

00:42:16.800 goal. It would be, I have one close friend that after my wife kind of knows everything there is to

00:42:23.400 know about me for the most part. And so it would be us attempting to get together once a week and

00:42:28.460 bear a soul. Sometimes we just laugh and catch up. Sometimes we encourage each other. Sometimes we talk

00:42:34.060 about mistakes we made and we are deeply, you know, honest and vulnerable, but it's letting somebody else

00:42:39.700 into the inside and being deeply vulnerable. Sometimes it looks like regularly practicing

00:42:44.720 service where we find people that aren't in our income bracket or are kind of preferred. These

00:42:50.880 are the people we like to hang out with and we find ways to serve them. And the gift that is not just

00:42:56.580 to them, but to us is insurmountable. Okay. So that one, you can practice it by just getting together

00:43:02.140 with people, having dinner with them once a week. And this is, I think, you know, going back to this idea

00:43:06.900 that spiritual disciplines are a way for you to resist and push back against whatever's forming

00:43:12.320 us out there in the world. Like this is, this requires like getting together with people

00:43:17.340 is hard. Like, I mean, if anyone's tried to plan a dinner with friends, everyone knows they've got

00:43:23.600 so much going on in their lives. I got kids going to this thing and I got this meeting to go to and I

00:43:28.440 got, and so you have to like, you know, set things a month in advance. Whenever that happens, like I

00:43:33.860 shouldn't live like this, this is not normal. This is this, I don't feel good. So actually making

00:43:39.280 relationships, an integral part of your life is a way to push back against that.

00:43:45.700 Yeah, absolutely. And this is again, in the Christian tradition, why you can't be a Christian 0.95

00:43:51.320 by yourself. Not you shouldn't, not it's not a great, like you literally can't. To be a Christian

00:43:56.260 is not just to follow Jesus. It is to be a member of Jesus community. And the wisdom there is that,

00:44:03.620 listen, if you want to live a particular kind of life, in particular, if it swims upstream,

00:44:08.980 strain against the cultural currents of your day, then you have got to be a part of a community

00:44:15.460 that forms, you know, almost like an alternative society or this little microcosm, this little

00:44:21.320 cell group type of thing. And that's what the church is in Christian theology. And often in America,

00:44:27.260 we think of the church as these big kind of weekend experiences with thousands of people. And

00:44:31.440 there's a place for that. But that's not the primary expression of church, certainly not in the New

00:44:35.740 Testament and down through church history. It's much smaller. It's much simpler. And it's a group

00:44:40.360 of people doing life together. And the wisdom there is you can't do this by yourself. You need

00:44:45.280 other people. And for other people to join you, you have to have some kind of a group way truth in

00:44:51.920 life. You have to have some kind of a group shared value system that you're working for and holding

00:44:57.740 yourself to some kind of a group shared rule of life in our language or kind of rhythms that you

00:45:03.120 live by. And that could be as simple as, you know, we're a group of five different families.

00:45:09.300 We all have kids in the same era. And we're trying to, you know, we get together every Sunday

00:45:13.400 afternoon because we want to be healthy families. And it could be really, really simple. It doesn't

00:45:17.860 have to be deeply metaphysical. But you have to have a group of people, a community that you do this

00:45:23.340 with. You have to have some kind of articulated shared value system. And then you have to have

00:45:29.560 some simple habits, rhythms, disciplines, practices, relational touch points that turn

00:45:36.140 this value system from an aspirational idea into an embodied reality.

00:45:40.960 In your book, The Ruthless Elimination of Her, you talk about simplicity as a spiritual discipline.

00:45:47.820 How can practicing simplicity help you order your desires?

00:45:50.860 Yeah. I mean, again, if you're trying to think of this as an outsider to the Christian faith,

00:45:55.580 you know, minimalism is kind of like the secularized version of the very ancient Christian 0.84

00:46:03.000 discipline of simplicity. You know, you could hear a lot of the things that we're talking about,

00:46:06.980 Brett, somebody who's listening to your show and could think that I'm asking them or encouraging

00:46:12.120 them to go add like 95 things to their already over busy, stressed out, maxed out life. And that is

00:46:18.920 nothing could be further from the truth. I think for most people in the world today,

00:46:24.400 any serious spiritual life or just any intentional, meaningful life organizational system begins with

00:46:33.300 subtraction, not addition, with doing less, not with doing more, with pursuing simplicity,

00:46:40.700 not with increasing complexity. So I am certainly not saying, hey, you're busy, you're stressed out,

00:46:47.600 you're maxed out. Okay. Now you need to do an hour of meditation every morning and a digital Sabbath and

00:46:51.940 schedule this relational touch point every week. I'm saying you need to actually not just replace

00:46:58.220 other practices and habits with these more meaningful ones, but actually cut down, you know,

00:47:03.980 depending on how busy you are probably at least 20%, if not way more of your commitments, even

00:47:10.780 relational obligations, activities, practices, consumeristic kind of behaviors, media based

00:47:16.580 entertainment behaviors, simplify your life. Let it be slower. Let it be simpler. Let it be more

00:47:22.820 meaningful. Let it be more about what is deeply good, not just the fleeting pleasures of our age.

00:47:29.380 And so ultimately simplicity is about organizing your life around what matters most. And again,

00:47:36.880 many of us have this inner sense of tension, disequilibrium, angst, because the chaos of our

00:47:44.340 daily lives does not match, it does not align with, and it certainly does not further what our actual

00:47:51.420 aspirational ideal of life is. And so the more, some of that tension is just what it means to be human

00:47:57.340 and live in a world and have a job and life. But the more we can integrate our daily lives with our

00:48:05.160 spiritual values, our highest values, our deepest desires, the more we can align and integrate and

00:48:11.740 bring those two things together, the more peace and joy we will experience this side of, of eternity.

00:48:19.460 So what are some concrete things that people can do to practice the spiritual discipline of simplicity?

00:48:23.700 Well, I think this is where the minimalism world and all that literature and good thinkers on that

00:48:29.380 subject are really helpful. You don't have to start esoterically. Start by just like decluttering

00:48:34.320 your bedroom and your house. Start literally, it's shocking how just getting rid of stuff,

00:48:40.920 crap you don't need out of your house, how amazing that will actually open up breathing room in your

00:48:47.380 soul. It's just, it's, it's, it sounds weird to us in the West, but we're such embodied creatures. 1.00

00:48:52.460 Then, you know, the more that you can begin to change your consumerism habits. I mean,

00:48:57.640 everybody's different, but most people I know, most of us, myself included, buy far more than we need.

00:49:03.800 So if you can begin to limit your consumption and begin to deeply savor things that are either simple,

00:49:13.220 like a morning cup of coffee or free, like watching the sunset or walking in a park near your house.

00:49:18.480 And then from there, if you can begin to simplify your schedule by cutting just obligations out that

00:49:26.680 enable you to begin to live with margin so you can actually have breath in your life, which again,

00:49:33.200 does not mean not living a productive or meaningful life. I have quite a bit of margin in my life and I,

00:49:39.500 I like to believe that I'm still living a meaningful and productive life.

00:49:43.340 Those things are not mutually exclusive in the least bit. Often by pruning, we bear more fruit,

00:49:49.540 not less. So, but I think one of the simplest places to start is just by actually beginning

00:49:55.200 to simplify your possessions, your living situation and your habits of materialism.

00:50:00.820 Another habit you talk about or discipline you talk about is slowing down,

00:50:05.000 like literally doing things more slowly. So how can slowing down be a spiritual discipline?

00:50:10.280 Well, I mean, again, this only makes sense at some, I'm a lot, you can make sense of it through a

00:50:17.080 wellbeing level. I think about it through the lens of, you know, Christian spirituality, which is to

00:50:22.640 become a person of love. But even if that's not your ultimate goal in life, if you just want to feel

00:50:27.100 better, most of us, when we're hurried and stressed out and maxed and, you know, I just got home from the

00:50:32.920 airport LAX late last night, just thinking of like trying to travel through LAX. It's just that feeling.

00:50:38.460 It's just a terrible feeling of being late and stressed and hurried and maxed out. And many of

00:50:43.660 us live that way chronically. And so I think that the world has sped up to an unhuman and unhealthy

00:50:52.240 place and an inhumane pace of life. And I think literally, again, holistic spirituality, embodied

00:51:00.260 spirituality, learning to breathe, to breathe slower through our bellies, to walk slower,

00:51:08.340 to multitask less, which is a myth we all know anyway, to have more margin in our life.

00:51:15.600 Hurry is not having a lot to do. Hurry is having too much to do and not enough time to do it.

00:51:23.440 And so the only way we attempt to do it all is we speed our bodies, our central nervous systems,

00:51:30.920 our minds, and our relationships up to a pace that is simply incompatible with being loving,

00:51:40.280 joyful, peaceful people. And we all could tell that example, whether it was me trying to get my

00:51:46.400 family to the airport yesterday, I was not at my most loving best because I was hurried and stressed,

00:51:51.700 stressed. Or me this morning when my wife was having a hard morning, she wanted to have a quick 1.00

00:51:56.340 conversation with me and I was late for a meeting. And so I was cursed and I don't have time for this.

00:52:00.700 And I rushed out the door and it wasn't like, you know, it was fine. It was just normal stress,

00:52:05.180 married stress. But that's because I was hurried. I didn't have the space to be with her in a hard

00:52:11.300 morning because I had a little bit too much to do my first day back to work after vacation.

00:52:15.740 And some of that is inevitable. It is in life. But I think that slowing our lives down,

00:52:21.380 especially for the kind of people that probably listen to a podcast like this that are deeply

00:52:25.280 interested in productivity, living meaningful lives, living healthy lives. Most of us tend to

00:52:32.220 do too much, not to do too little. They're probably, they're probably listening to the podcast at 1.5

00:52:37.200 speed too. Exactly. The amount of people that have listened to the audio book of my book on hurry and

00:52:43.900 said, I listened to it at 1.5 speed. I realized I'm a total hypocrite. You're just normal. Thousands of 0.95

00:52:49.340 people have said that to me practically. You're just normal. That's the speed of our world. And

00:52:54.160 it is a speed that is incompatible with love. And I've just decided that I am much more interested

00:53:00.780 in becoming a person of love and joy and peace in the way of Jesus than I am with living at the

00:53:07.900 frenetic pace of our modern era. And it's another form of resistance because everything's pushing you

00:53:13.740 go faster and faster. So drive the speed limit, walk a little bit slower. Don't answer emails or

00:53:20.780 the slack right away. As soon as you get the ping, like take your time.

00:53:23.880 Or just go on a walk in the first place and leave your phone at home. Just go walk, go walk your dog,

00:53:29.200 go take a walk with your kid or your spouse or your friend or your girlfriend, whatever. Just

00:53:32.820 go out, just be outside, watch the sunset. I mean, this is not rocket science, you know,

00:53:38.040 just drink your coffee and actually just drink your coffee in the morning. Don't do anything.

00:53:41.920 Don't read the news. Don't fall. Just drink your coffee and be present to that. It's this is,

00:53:47.780 this is where joy is so often. Yeah. I mean, I've, I've experienced that

00:53:51.120 just living a life of hurries turned me into that snippy dad. It's like, Oh,

00:53:55.360 don't have time. You know, get going, get out the door. And it's like, man, what am I doing?

00:53:58.980 What am I doing? And then I, I mean, the people I've been around where they're just,

00:54:02.920 when you're around them, they feel so life affirming. Like you just, I just feel really good being

00:54:08.060 around this person. They, they, they're slow. They're not in a hurry to get anywhere. They talk

00:54:13.400 a little bit slower. They're present to you. Yeah. They're just present to you. It's like,

00:54:17.860 man, I want to become that sort of wise joyful. Yeah. Yep. Okay. Yeah. That's it. And again,

00:54:23.540 it's hard. It's hard in the throes of life and responsibility and parenthood and working a job.

00:54:29.800 And we're not aiming for perfection here. We're just aiming for practice, for progress,

00:54:35.820 for slow incremental growth. We've talked about a couple spiritual disciplines. There's several

00:54:41.360 more out there, but how do you decide which one to start with? If you're like, I want to incorporate

00:54:45.780 some more spiritual disciplines in my life. I want to add a rule of life to my life. How do you decide

00:54:50.440 where to start? Well, again, there's no official starting place and this would be totally different

00:54:56.580 if you are a ardent Christian than an atheist or, you know, whatever. But I think for, again,

00:55:03.080 most people in the modern world, especially the type of people that likely listen to this

00:55:06.940 lovely podcast, I think the starting place would be again, subtraction, not addition. So I think that

00:55:13.940 would be one of three places. It would be either the practice of Sabbath, which is, I think, the most

00:55:19.200 important place to start. The challenge with Sabbath is it's, it's technically 24 hours and that's just a

00:55:24.660 high bar of entry. So you might need to start with like four hours on a Saturday morning. I'm going

00:55:30.220 to turn my phone off and take a four hour block or whatever it is, or three hours on a Sunday

00:55:34.880 afternoon. You might need to start smaller and work your way up. But Sabbath, rest is a beginning

00:55:40.960 place. Solitude, a daily kind of whether you want to frame it as prayer or meditation or quiet or just

00:55:49.040 drinking your coffee and doing nothing else for 30 minutes every morning while you watch the sunrise.

00:55:53.380 I think that's a beginning point. And then I think a relational, a regular relational touch point,

00:56:00.140 whether that's a weekly coffee or run with your best friend or a weekly meal around the table with

00:56:06.300 a couple of other families or couples or friends, some kind of intentional, regular, not, hey, let's

00:56:11.620 get something on the schedule. And you end up seeing each other, you know, three times a year,

00:56:15.060 but some kind of a, hey, no, every Saturday morning we go cycling and we get a cup of coffee and we

00:56:20.820 have a connection point or every Thursday night we share a meal together or every Sunday afternoon,

00:56:25.780 we, you know, go to the park or to the lake or whatever it is. I think those are the three places,

00:56:31.660 a regular relational connection, a daily time of quiet and solitude and retreat,

00:56:36.740 and some kind of a weekly time or day of rest. I would start at one of those three places

00:56:42.200 and slowly begin to slow your life down through subtraction, not addition.

00:56:49.320 Well, John Mark, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about your work?

00:56:53.560 Oh, it's pretty easy to find. John Mark Comer. I have a website. You're welcome to go there or I run a

00:56:58.120 nonprofit called Practicing the Way. You can go to practicingtheway.org as well or johnmarkcomer.com.

00:57:03.820 All my work's available. I've written a number of books and anything I, anything I do, if it's

00:57:09.100 helpful, wonderful to hear. Fantastic. Well, John Mark Comer, thanks for your time. It's been a

00:57:13.180 pleasure. Thanks for having me on. My guest here is John Mark Comer. He's the author of a number of

00:57:19.100 books, including his latest Practicing the Way. You'll find more information about his work at his

00:57:22.840 website, johnmarkcomer.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash spiritualdisciplines,

00:57:28.200 where you'll find links to resources and read a little deeper into this topic, including an in-depth

00:57:32.240 AOM series of articles on the spiritual disciplines that were written for folks from any background who

00:57:36.420 want to practice them. Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out

00:57:48.020 our website at artofmanly.com where you'll find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles

00:57:52.240 that have been written over the years about pretty much anything you think of. And if you haven't done

00:57:55.580 so already, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to just read up a podcast or Spotify. It helps out a

00:57:59.160 lot. And if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the

00:58:02.220 show with a friend or family member who would think of something out of it. As always,

00:58:05.580 thank you for the continued support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay. Remind you to

00:58:08.580 not listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - August 12, 2024

Practicing Spiritual Disciplines as an Act of Resistance

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