This week I’ve gotten back on my bike to make my daily commute to and from the TEAR Fund office. It comes a month after being off it due to wanting to give my eye time to recover from surgery without subjecting it to the winter weather. Even before that though, my riding this year hasn’t been as consistent as it needs to be. In that inconsistency I’ve noticed how a number of the rhythms in my life need each other to give my life balance and true health. I’ve also noticed that it’s a constant discipline against my own persistent lazy streak that’s needed to maintain those rhythms.

Photo: Francis Ritchie

There are some pillars in my life practice that feed off each other and work in harmony together to create balance in my life. These are my fundamental spiritual disciplines. It’s probably different for you, but here are the things that interlink for me:

• Contemplative worship – an hour on weekday mornings that includes prayer, silence and reflections on the Psalms. This is the start to my day and the space where nothing else that I do in life matters. It’s where I place the seat of my identity. It’s the space where I say and hear that the things I do, the things I have and the things others think of me and say about me are not who I am. I am simply loved by God and want to love him back – that’s it. My weekend rhythm has its own morning ritual that is quite different… it involves poached eggs and coffee.
• Morning service to my family – The contemplative time is followed by doing the dishes and preparing what my wife and daughter want for breakfast. My wife would prefer I did the dishes in the evening but there’s something in coming out of that devotional time and into one of the chores of life – an act of service that is wholly and completely ordinary and then an act of service for my family – helping to start their day. It reminds me that my family is one of my highest priorities – before any blog posts, radio interviews, public talks or anything that I do that carries status in the eyes of my culture.
• Bicycle commuting – the best way for me to get to and from work to maintain health and weave exercise into my life is by riding a bike. It’s a 24km round trip to and from the TEAR Fund office with varied terrain that provides a good chance to get the heart pumping and the body working. It’s also good for getting my mind alert and for being more present in the city that I live, with the good and bad one experiences when riding a bike. This makes exercise a part of my life rather than another thing I’ll never get to – gym memberships just don’t work for me.
• Disciplined food consumption – my natural bent when it comes to food is gluttony… I might as well be honest. I have a very real tendency to over-eat. It’s not to compensate for anything or to fill some sort of emotional void, it’s simply because it’s there. I could go into trying to explain it by connecting to some things in my childhood but I’m not interested in excusing the choices that I make. My bike riding is easier when I have this under control and it’s less of an issue when I’m riding the bike regularly. They need each other.
• Spending – the weakest area of my spending is… you guessed it…. food. My discipline in this area is also linked to my bike riding and discipline in eating. When I’m disciplined towards being healthy, I spend less on snacks, drink and junk foods.
• Sleep – I’m not a great sleeper at the best of times so to have any hope of good sleep I need to be rising early, exercising and eating well and all of those things somewhat depend on decent sleep as well. It’s circular and they all feed off each other.
• Holy Communion – I put this after the others because it has a slightly different place in that it is both deeply personal and communal for me. It’s the space where I participate in the presence of Christ in union with his universal Church. My life needs it. It weaves in with the other things, but not in the same way that they rely on each other. It’s impossible to explain.

There are plenty of other things I could add like dedicated time with my daughter each evening, cultivating thankfulness and the list could go on – but many of those things stem from the things above being in place.

My life is dedicated to playing a part in God’s story of justice in His world; His story of redeeming and reconciling everything back to Himself. I’ll play whatever part I can. Doing so doesn’t define who I am but it’s what I’m called to. My ability to participate moves and shifts with how I’m doing with those things listed above and to be honest, there are times that I’m really crap at each of them and when the wheels fall off one, others tend to follow.

The reality is that, for me, these are disciplines – they take effort and sometimes I just can’t be bothered putting the effort in. During those times I suffer because of it, a victim of my own hedonism. During those times my health (mostly my weight) takes a dive (the weight goes up), I stress more easily and I get more selfish and more inward focused – everything begins to feel like a burden.

I mentioned hedonism before and interestingly, a certain amount of discipline was where the early hedonist philosophers ended up as the key to a true life of pleasure. We could have a very interesting conversation about the idea of ‘pleasure.’

These are the basic disciplines I must continue in order to maintain a healthy rhythm and balance in life – they’re the fundamental practices to keep things in perspective and to truly enable me to have something to offer to the world; they give room for God to shape me to love Him and love others more authentically.

I’d love to hear what your necessary rhythms are. I’m convinced we all have them and need them but I know they look different for each of us though some of the broad themes may be the same.