Now, I've written enough book reviews and book reports to easily turn this post into one, but I don't particularly feel like doing that. What I do feel like doing is attempt to convince you to read this book too.
And how will I go about that, you might ask? Good question.
 |
| Kneeling in prayer as a group. 🙏🏼 |
On Wednesday night as we read through the final chapter and the epilogue of the book, someone mentioned that they found the epilogue to be almost more impacting than the rest of the book had been. Something that the author, Justin Whitmel Earley, writes in the epilogue - and emphasizes throughout the whole book is that,
"The kind of habits worth cultivating [are] little habits of love, not carried out for success, not carried out to prove who you are, but cultivated because of a longing to love God and neighbour." (p 167)The habits in The Common Rule are broken down into two sections: daily habits and weekly habits. The daily habits are: kneeling prayer, one meal with others, one hour with phone off, and Scripture before phone. The weekly habits are: one hour of conversation with a friend, curate media to four hours*, fast from something for twenty-four hours, and Sabbath. (*it turns out the four in "four hours" is arbitrary, much to all of our relief.)
It was tough working through all of these habits this semester. I'll admit that I didn't succeed at all of them, but I did at least attempt each one. It was helpful, however, knowing that I was struggling through these challenges along with other people.
You also might be curious to know which of the habits I struggled with the most. When it came to the daily habits, I struggled the most with turning off my phone for an hour every day; with the weekly habits, I would say that I (surprisingly) struggled with one hour of conversation with a friend, and potentially Sabbath - I don't know yet because that's the habit we're practicing this week, and I have done that one before (read about it here).
In terms of turning my phone off for an hour every day, it was more of a mental struggle as opposed to a physical one. Legitimately powering my phone off was easy; it was the thought of "What will I miss while my phone isn't on for a whole sixty minutes?" that got to me. It's kind of ridiculous how attached we all are to our phones, our social media, our notifications, and it was even more ridiculous how worried I felt about potentially missing those notifications. It was almost as though I lowkey felt like the world was going to fall out of orbit, or a close friend or family member would die during that hour and I wouldn't be able to hear about it immediately because my phone was off. For sixty minutes.
It was bad.
When it came to having on hour of conversation with a friend once a week, I think we all know that I don't really struggle when it comes to talking 🤪, but the whole point of the habit was to have an intentional conversation with someone once a week, which I'm not sure I do in general, not just the week when we practiced that habit. I know I talk with people a lot, but I can't often recall how many of my conversations are intentional and go deeper than surface level.
Like I said before, I definitely did not succeed at all the habits as we studied through the book as a group. And when reading the epilogue the other night, the author shared about a day wherein he was failing at practicing the habits in his own book! And that day he was supposed to send out an email to some people he was leading in a study through The Common Rule. Since he was having a hard time that morning, he shares,
"I did write my email that morning. I wrote it one-handed, on my phone, on the porch while holding [my son]. It began with this: "I woke this morning feeling like a failure and a fraud."" (p 162)How did that go over with the group he was leading? He continues,
"No other email I've sent has brought in so many grateful responses. Apparently nothing else I ever said about the Common Rule habits was as helpful as talking about failure - because failure is where we live." (p 162)That last phrase jumped right out at me as we read aloud through the epilogue as a group on Wednesday night. We do live in failure. All the time. Every day. But we try to act as though we don't. Or at least I do. I've joked with people recently about how I've mastered the art of putting on a façade. I always want people to think I'm thriving and doing well and have everything together. And honestly, I'm sure I'm not the only one who wants to live that way day by day. We always want to be living our best life, right? And putting our best foot forward.
That's why I was so impacted by Earley stating that failure is where we live.
As a result of the Fall back in Genesis 3, we are living a life of constant striving - striving to be better, to be less sinful, to be more like Jesus, to be this or that. There's always room to improve, areas where we think we can or should be better.
For me, hearing out loud that "failure is where we live" was extremely comforting to me. It doesn't make me want to stop improving or trying my best, but it does make me feel like some of the pressure has been removed in terms of my need to put my best foot forward and put up a façade of constantly living my best life.
While there's always room for improvement, there is also grace to embrace where we are now and accept that we will inevitably fail at times. But we can always get back up and keep going.
Post a Comment