1) Jesus Prayers – this prayer, “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy, a sinner,” is an ancient practice, especially in the eastern orthodox christian traditions, which has some very good merits to it. The prayer is repeated 100-300 times (with a prayer-rope to help keep count) for an average person (monks do more). The idea is that you impress that concept onto your heart through repetition, so that your day is consumed and put into the context of “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

2) Here I think we have found what is probably the worst mistake within Western Christianity in the last 100 hundred years. By taking the disciplines out of our daily practices of worship to God, we become creatures based on feeling and we really let the ball drop in accordance to daily dedication and sacrifice of time, energy to the Lord. In doing the daily (written) prayers, I have been able to feel just as much in tune with God, than otherwise. The prayers give me a focal point to meditate upon. With the Daily Office, you are also reading different meditations and bible readings ever day as well, so there is some switch-up with it.

The Spiritual Disciplines are something that have to come to us from the Early Church Fathers and the Desert Fathers – we’re talking only hundreds of years after Christ – and they gave us our doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine of the nature of Christ, and untold amounts of wisdom that we hear now, in different forms, in today’s churches.

I’m glad you asked!

2) By having these ‘rules’ or whatever your calling it..doesnt it make you feel more ‘religious’ in the sense that these are things you are making yourself have to do all the time rather than just really wanting to do them? Like prayers for example. Doesnt that start to get so routine and repetitive and not feel very real?

I’m actually really interested in this. I dont think I personally could ever do it cause it would drive me nuts..Im not a fan of the whole routine thing..gets to me after a while. But hey, whatever floats your boat man.

Glad to see you blogging again.

Why don’t we make an afternoon of it soon? I’ll book the labyrinth with the sisters.

I really like the idea of having a “rule of life.” I going to start thinking about something similar for my life. By the way, where’s the prayer labyrinth? I’d like to check that out sometime.