Disciplining Daily Deeds

We can learn a thing or two about discipleship and the discipline required of a disciple from our fourth-century monastic brothers and sisters. Like them, we do basic, ordinary activities every day. We get dressed, we buy things and take them home, we think, we eat, we hang out with friends, we talk (a lot), we work (a lot), and we rest. But what we don’t realize is that we tend to do these activities in selfish and vicious ways.

We do these things in ways that hurt our neighbor (and are unhealthy for us). And we are completely unaware of it because we have been doing things this way since childhood. And to top it all off, this way of doing things is unassumingly reinforced by culture and society—this is what everyone does and how everyone does it! But what the lives of these monks reveal to us is that we have to relearn how to be a human being and how God intended for us to act and live on a very basic human level.

We have to relearn how to use our minds—not the mental faculties but the thoughts. We have to relearn how to eat—not the use of utensils but how much to consume. We have to relearn how to socialize—not to network for future jobs but to give people space.

We have to discipline our daily deeds. As John Cassian rightly saw them, what we nowadays call spiritual disciplines are practices for a community to reform its way of life together—the thoughts, attitudes, habits, practices, and behavior of individuals, and the general lifestyle or way of living of the community. These practices are for a community as it interacts in healthy and harmonious ways in shared spaces.