"…religion is an ‘art of memory,’ a way of sustaining mindfulness about the religion that is inherent in everything we do." – Thomas Moore

   Some of us attend religious services as a way of nurturing and sustaining spiritual practices in everyday life. Others go as a matter of habit. For this second group, Saturday or Sunday services are attended as a matter of duty rather than meaning. And this group may fall into a dangerous bifurcation, dividing off religion as limited to a particular time of the week – something not to be lived in the rest of life.
   We’ve all seen this behavior. It’s the church member who acts out religious behavior in the confines of the church and abandons it by the time they’ve reached the parking lot…

   I’ve also seen it numerous times at meetings in faith-focused
hospitals. Someone presents a devotional about the central importance
of love and compassion. The rest of the group listens and nods
respectively. Then the "real" meeting begins as group members argue
about the best way to beat the competition and the most efficient way
to lay-off caregivers.

   Spiritual practices are, of course, meant for every moment of every day of the week. It is possible for us to live our lives as sacred beings. To do this requires some level of ritual because, as Moore writes, above, "religion is an ‘art of memory.’ We need rituals as a way to help us recall the sacred nature of life.
   Fortunately, I don’t believe this requires that we walk about as somber people wearing robes. The sacred can be just as apparent in laughter as it can be in prayer.
   What is critical is that each of us, as caregivers, take an honest look at the behaviors in our lives and the thoughts that trigger them. It’s immensely difficult to change a bad life pattern. It requires not only an awareness of the personal issues we may have but an understanding of how to change – a deep determination to live out a new way of being.

  I’ve never been very good at rituals because I’m impatient toward anything that is repetitious. Yet, I admire the behaviors of those of any faith that engage in regular patterns of prayer and meditation. It seems as though these rituals are critical to living the kind of loving existence we are all capable of achieving.
   Rituals are useful if they help us to align our energy with Love. The divine is always present. It is for us to engage in a life of mindfulness that will us to draw nearer to the divine. 
   As regular readers of the Journal know, I do an awful lot of preaching – intentionally and otherwise. But the best preaching, of course, is not done with words but with loving actions. It is in this way that I fail so often.
   Only with careful reflection and new patterns of action can any of us ever hope to keep alive the ‘art of memory’ required to sustain the sacred in our lives.

-Erie Chapman