There is a PDF version of this Discussion Guide here.
Read:
Chapter 9 – Slowing.
Review, Reflect and Discuss
Feel free to comment and raise any questions that occur to you as you read. Don’t be limited to the questions listed after each summary, but they might help to prime your thinking.
Chapter 9 – It is important to align our schedules with our deepest values, which hopefully centre around living with Jesus and growing more like him. This schedule effectively becomes what previous generations have called a rule of life. Increasingly, it is being recognised that if we can approach the disciplines and routines of life ‘gamefully’ – looking for ways to make them creative, imaginative and fun, it becomes a little easier. JMC shares some of the ways he has tried to do this with his ‘disciplines’ – the practices he uses to govern his rule of life and so avoid what has been called ‘hyperliving – skimming the surface of life.’ He uses them to develop what some are now calling the discipline of ‘slowing’, that is cultivating patience by choosing practices that require us to wait. It involves slowing down our minds and our bodies so as to slow down our souls. JMC goes through the 20 practices that he uses, from how he drives, to how he uses his phone, to handling emails, to single-tasking, to solitude and silence, to cooking food for the family, and so on.
- Do you have a ‘rule of life’? How do you feel about the idea of having one?
- Does it make it easier to approach the idea of spiritual discipline and a rule of life, if we approach it ‘gamefully’?
- Which of JMC’s practices most resonated for you and you could see yourself trying?
- Which did you find most surprising and you would find difficult to practice?
- What others can you think of or do you presently practice?
Next
The next guide will be the last one in which we will read the Epilogue and I will introduce the Workbook based on this book, which will help us put into practice what we have learned.