The Importance of Getting In and Staying In Shape: Mixing Things Up

We've been discussing the importance of getting in and staying in shape - physical that is. Along the way, we've connected this to getting and staying in shape spiritually. To top is off, we've presented all this to encourage our preparation for Lent. Read the last three posts for the details.

Combining all the above, we emphasized the need for a plan, for persistence in executing that plan. That's really the core or nub of getting in and staying in shape - a good plan and steady persistence. But there's a bit more to the story. That's what we'll discuss now.

Starting with the physical, there may be times when mixing things up provides some benefit vs. doing the same old same old over and over. A personal example to illustrate:

Going back now a number of decades to the days I began regular physical exercise: First choice was jogging. It was a relatively new and eventually a big thing in the 1970s. We've talked about this before. The habit of daily jogging (typically early AM) persisted for years and years. It certainly provided a benefit to Brother Ass (St. Francis of Assisi's term for his body). The old boy was pretty neglected. Add to this some serious mechanical ailments and you wind up with a kind of crisis: Either do something to improve or look forward to a life of pain and diminished capacity. At the time, jogging seemed the way to go.

It became a kind of obsession, as these things can be. Miss a day? Heaven forbid! There was even a stretch where I jogged twice a day - early and later in the day. 

But after many years - for some reason that likely had to do with vanity - this was combined with weight lifting. That was the first "mix up." Long story short, with my interest in some combination of desiring to improve well-being and vanity (an all-too-human fault), I studied different forms of exercise. And my conclusion was that mixing things up would provide better benefits. 

Between gym machines (a brief fling that didn't really suit me), free weights and eventually serious body-weight exercises, with some jogging (albeit now walking) thrown in as well.  

And so the idea of mixing things up settled in and became part of the regular regimen of exercise.

Pivoting to our spiritual life, specifically our plan for a special Lenten discipline, we may consider mixing up here as well. 

To be clear, we still want to have a basic regimen that includes the Three Pillars of Lent: Prayer, Fasting, Almsgiving. So if we've decided to fast on certain days, we want to stick with that and not slack off for no good reason. 

On the other hand, our carefully considered plan may turn out to be unreasonable once get into Lent. Maybe it's too extreme and we begin to suffer physical symptoms of weakness that degrade our ability to work assiduously each day.

For our special Lenten prayers, maybe we "piled on" even as we thoughtfully committed to some series of prayer in terms either of number of prayers or times we try to say them. This an cause us to constantly feel like we're slipping or failing day after day. Such feelings will work against our ability to pursue our Lenten discipline calmly, peacefully, and with the intention all our prayers should have: to grow closer to God.

In such cases, we ought to consider adjusting our plan. Or perhaps we even change what seemed like a good idea in theory when we wrote it down but has proved to be unwieldy in practice.

(We're assuming here that we're not being lazy or "soft" of course.)

We might remind ourselves that traditional Catholic spirituality encourages something called "liberty of spirit." St. Benedict was a particular advocate. Our spiritual discipline should bring us closer to God. If we find ourselves more focused on "getting through" our prayers or the sheer quantity of our commitment causes us to be emotionally strained, we should reconsider our commitment and either ease up or change what we're doing.

As we've noted over the years, St. Benedict's Rule calls for moderation in all things. Regarding prayer, he writes "Prayer should therefore be short and pure, unless perhaps it is prolonged under the inspiration of divine grace."

So do have a plan. Do stick to it unless it interferes with our desire to grow closer to God, the whole point of all our spiritual practices. And do apply these principles to our commitment to a special Lenten discipline.