Recently, we introduced our faith family to The Basic Rule. A “rule” in the life of faith gives structure to our schedules, “taking the small patterns of life and organizing them towards the big goal of life: to love God and neighbor” (Earley). Like the trellis on which a vine grows, the Basic Rule has been used for millennia by those desiring to follow Jesus to give shape to their ordinary daily and weekly participation in God’s kingdom come and will being done on earth as it is in heaven. Because we want to become a people who Do What Jesus Did in-step with the Spirit and as mature children of our Father, we have to start—and continue to come back to—“the basic rule.”
In a nutshell, the Basic Rule consists of a commitment to three habits, Common Worship Weekly, Praying the Psalms Daily, and Recollected Prayers Throughout the Day. It is these moments of prayer in sprinkled in our day that we turn to now.
Simply put, recollected prayer is the habit of calling to mind God’s presence to us, and our presence in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17, Eph. 2:10, Col. 1:27, Rom. 8:1). Fundamentally, what we believe as Jesus followers, is that every aspect of our daily living takes place in the ever creating, sustaining, and saving company of God our Father—whether we acknowledge His prevailing attendance or not. The problem is, most of the time, we often don’t acknowledge the presence that is shaping our personal history. And so, our faith family for millennia has practiced recollected prayer throughout the day randomly and in scheduled moments, willed and spontaneously, calling to mind that what we are saying and/or doing in that very moment is in response to God with us, Christ in us.
Martin Thornton, an Anglican priest and spiritual director, offers this explanation of how the habit of recollected prayer connects to our maturing love of God and neighbor,
“’ the religious experience is but the ordinary experience of religious [persons]’…To the Saint the whole experiential continuum of his or her life is ‘religious experience,”; and the degree with which specifically religious feelings such as contrition [repentance], praise, dependence, thanksgiving and so on, attach themselves to our everyday experiences is the degree of sanctity which we have attained. As the beloved is constantly in the heart of the lover, so is God in the heart of his Saints, whether they are reciting [Scripture], peeling potatoes, plowing, eating, or washing-up. And this is achieved by disciplined recollection. Recollection of self and recollection of God at thrice-daily or more frequent intervals is simply the quest for religious experience or the quest for God in ordinary experience. Such recollection practiced within the framework of the Basic Rule, tends in time both to connect Common Worship, Praying the Psalms, and private prayer, and also to expand into continuous recollection: God becomes firstly ‘in the back of our minds’ and in our hearts, all through each day.”
Traditionally, recollected prayers take place three times a day, and consists of a few moments of repeating a short scripted prayer or verse and letting your mind rest on the words. For those of us to whom this habit is new or still developing, we suggest that you start by setting three alarms on your phone. For example, our Jewish tradition contains a similar habit of prayer at 9 am, Noon, and 3 pm. When your alarm goes off, recite one of the verses above about being in Christ, at least twice, and briefly acknowledge that whatever you are doing at that moment is with and in Jesus. That’s it! Just remember, as Thornton points out, it will be the consistency of this habit that will give way to an entirely spontaneous life of worship.
“To the church of God that is in Dallas, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours.”
(I Corinthians 1:2)