The Common Rule, Part 2

Justin Whitmel Earley is no Olympic athlete (that I know of). He’s an attorney, a husband, a dad, an author and most importantly, a Christian. His winsome tone and similarly smelling feet of clay (like ours) makes his book The Common Rule a helpful and hopeful resource on the formation of lasting habits. He really hasn’t invented anything new, but what he has done is dust off some ancient practices and principles and put some contemporary clothes on them. This makes his suggestions within reach. The core of the book focuses on four daily habits to cultivate as well as four weekly ones. Read the introductory post on The Common Rule here.
Here, we'll reflect on developing four daily habits.

"The world is made of words. Even small, repeated words have power. Regular, carefully placed prayer is one of the keystone habits of spiritual formation and is the beginning of building the trellis of habit. By framing our day in the words of prayer, we frame the day in love."

This is what Earley calls a "keystone" habit. Like the first domino in a line.
And it starts with your thoughts. Do you want to frame your day in love or legalism (p. 33)? So, the author suggests that we trick our minds and bodies in three steps:

• Set your phone automatically on Do Not Disturb (or throw it across the room; not angrily, of course).
• Kneel. The point here is to engage as much of your body as possible. It is to humble yourself. Sometimes, I've fallen asleep or my mind has wandered in this position. Yet, the spirit of the suggestion to kneel is to bow heart and mind before God. 
• Now, you pray. And he says it is often quite short. In doing so, "we recover two uses of prayer, naming true realities and creating true realities." These could be prayers that you write. Or prayers that are launched from your Bible reading. It could come from a book of prayers like the Anglican Book of Common Prayer or the Valley of Vision. Many hymnals, even, will have suggested prayers sprinkled throughout. 
  • Midday prayer is about "reframing work in love.... my short prayers for midday often have to do with a confession that I've made my work about me. Then, hoping to rewire that impulse, I pray for a client or a coworker" (p. 41).
  • Evening prayer is about "framing the evening in love.... We haven't spent the day so much as the day has spent us.... [and] No one can sleep while believing that she needs to keep the world spinning.... Say your prayers until your prayers say you" (p. 43). 

"We were made to eat, so the table must be our center of gravity. The habit of making time for one communal meal each day forces us to reorient our schedules and our space around food and each other. The more the table becomes our center of gravity, the more it draws our neighbors into gospel community."
Earley promotes the counter-cultural nature of eating with others. This, by the way, is why the TV show Blue Bloods has been one of my favorites for a long time. It's not the drama on the streets of New York but more so the banter (and drama) around the Reagan family dinner. There's never been an episode without the dinner table.
Being the communal beings that we are, some of the things that you are forced to consider in molding yourself into this habit are:

• The need to eat reveals our dependence on God.
• The need to eat reveals our dependence on each other. 
• The need to eat reveals our dependence on creation. "Every single bite" reminds us that "something died to give you life" (p. 50).
• The table is the center of gravity for loving neighbor. "In a secular age, eating may be our best chance for evangelism" (p. 58). 

Consider these ideas to get started. A) Do something to your table that sets the tone or mood. That could be simply cleaning it, laying out certain placemats or even a candle. B) Have a question or two that involves everyone at the table. C) Make a routine that gets people to your table or you in front of your neighbors. Porches and front lawns are good for this. A predictable menu on the same day of the week that's simple enough to invite strangers to. 

"We were made for presence, but so often our phones are the cause of our absence. To be two places at a time is to be no place at all. Turning off our phones for an hour a day is a way to turn our gaze up to each other, whether that be children, co-workers, friends, or neighbors. Our habits of attention are habits of love. To resist absence is to love neighbor."

Similar practices are getting plenty of attention these days. Just consider how often you have deleted a social media app. But instead of deleting the apps, why not just sideline the whole device? Set an hour each day when you will deliberately walk away from your phone. Andy Crouch and his family, I think, lock up their devices during the dinner hour. Don't be the family that has the TV running in the background all the time or ignores each other because of something more interesting on your phone. Blaise Pascal once said: "All of man's problems stem from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone." Maybe overstated, but the effect is legit. Maybe what you need is a good old-fashioned alarm clock. Or landline. Or some other hack that allows you more time to really think and to enjoy others.

"Refusing to check the phone until after reading a passage of Scripture is a way of replacing the question 'What do I need to do today?' with a better one, 'Who am I and who am I becoming?' We have no stable identity outside of Jesus. Daily immersion in the Scriptures resists the anxiety of emails, the anger of news, and the envy of social media. Instead, it forms us daily in our true identity as children of the king, dearly loved."

Here you are trying to deny the impulse of reaching for your device before time in the Word. Earley says: "A restless thumb often correlates to the restless heart."  And although there's nothing wrong with reading the Bible on an electronic device, reading the Bible with an actual physical Bible with your phone out of reach will help discipline you.

Here are some pointers that though uncomfortable at first, Earley says will help clear the field for you to more successfully read the Bible with less distractions.

• Treat social media like the rhythms of going to and coming home from work.
• Avoid unplanned scrolling. Boy, am I guilty of this with my new WaPo news app.
• Turn off notifications. Hearing and/or responding to a notification will only increase anxiety and fragment your attention.
• Don't use social media in bed. 

A lot of the author's concern is about social media. However, he says, "daily immersion in the Scriptures resists the anxiety of emails, the anger of news, and the envy of social media" (p. 92).

Those are the four daily habits. Next, we will take up his four weekly habits. Stay tuned!