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BRIAN'S
TAKE...
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 Dear friends,
Today I'd like to look at a new theme that has been raising questions in my mind from different sources in recent days. What triggered the idea to do a commentary on the subject of religious or spiritual discipline was watching the ABC's Compass program last night which explored the extraordinary discipline that Mahatma Gandhi endeavoured to inject into his life in the matter of sexual celibacy. In the past week or so I've also begun reading John L. Allen's book "Opus Dei — Secrets and Power inside the Catholic Church". The founder of Opus Dei, St Josemaria Escriva, placed a particular importance on discipline and there are aspects of what he advocates that I like and others which I fear do end up taking us away from the ultimate objective of why we might engage in personal discipline.
Discipline is a subject that seems to have a close association with all religions in one form or another. Yesterday afternoon Rachel Kohn conducted an interesting interview on The Spirit of Things on Radio National with Rabbi Uri Regev who heads the World Union for Progressive Judaism — a strand of Judaism that basically differs to Orthodox Judaism on attitudes to religious discipline. These days we increasingly see images on our television sets of hundred, even thousands of Islamic believers praying in an almost militaristic unison in their Mosques around the world. Except perhaps for authentic anarchists, I suspect that most people believe that we need some level of discipline in our lives. At the most basic level we need to exercise discipline in ensuring that we eat regularly and, at a slightly higher level, we tend to exercise discipline in what we eat. If we are to put food on the table we have to exercise a certain level of discipline in our work — remembering to turn up on time if we are employees or remembering to promote our businesses or send out the invoices on time for those who who run their own businesses. Athletes need to exercise high levels of discipline and if you happened to catch the beautiful film on gymastics and dancing on the ABC last night after the Compass program one would not but be aware of the critical importance that discipline plays in the life of these artists. While we might all agree that discipline is important to our survival and success in life there seems enormous disparity in the world as to what we mean when we say we need to exert discipline in our lives. I suspect from the conversations I have with people who share a similar spiritual outlook to myself, and who, in recent decades have moved away from more orthodox understandings of their faith to explore it in what they would see as more mature ways, a large element in the changed outlook comes down to this issue of what might be described as "spiritual discipline".
Today I literally do find almost every waking hour of my life is in some way connected to my faith and spirituality. At times I even wake and remember some dream and that also was in some way connected to my work and had a spiritual dimension to it. This commitment then would seem to extend beyond simply my waking hours and extends into the whole of my life. At the same time it is light years removed from what I would have perceived as being "holy", "faithful" or "religious" two or three decades ago. There is a large measure of discipline required in what I do today but it is an entirely different sort of "discipline" to what I am sure the Christian Brothers, the Jesuits or my father would have meant when they urged us to be "disciplined men" back in the 1960s. I am left wondering if what is going on amongst vast groupings of people, like the Europeans that Benedict is complaining about this morning, has to do with changing perceptions at a very deep level in society to do with this question of discipline? In many ways I do find ordinary people in Western society today far more just and tolerant than was the case even just a few years ago. I am not talking of the instances of the "undisciplined rabble" that grace our television screens from less privileged suburbs from time to time but when one tries to take some objective look over the broad sweep of people in a large metropolis like Sydney where I now live. People might be a heck of a lot less "religious" in contemporary society but I do truly find a noticeably higher concern for those basic values that ultimately do derive from Scriptural and Divine sources. We do, in general, care much more about our neighbour than was the case in the past. I am no longer attracted, for example, to reciting the Rosary. At a number of levels I genuinely find today some deeply painful memories associated with that particular spiritual discipline. At the same time somewhere deep down inside I do hanker for some fresher prayer forms and disciplines that truly do help better link the present with the future — my present stumbling, uncertain questing with the hope represented by the end objective of what I aspire to be, and to achieve, with my life. It would be very interesting to gain the sort of valuable overview from members of this community on the general subject of spiritual or religious discipline that is presently shaping up in our forum on our attitudes to the religious who played a significant part in forming our attitudes. That string on the Christian Brothers and other teaching orders is becoming more and more interesting as each day goes by.  Blessings, Brian PHOTO CREDITS:
We welcome your thoughts in response to this commentary in our forum. Brian Coyne can be contacted at: ©2007 Brian Coyne |
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In
my study of the Opus Dei ethos I find myself deeply attracted to this
whole notion fostered by Escriva of "sanctifying our work" and
the everyday business and discipline of our lives. Quite frankly though
I have moved a long way away from believing some of the spiritual disciplines
I was brought up on, and which still form a critical part of the Opus
Dei ethos actually make us better people. It seems the way so often with
disciplines that are put in place in furtherance of some higher or noble
objective that before too long the discipline itself becomes the end within
itself — or the object of our adoration and worship.