Allright. Tired of the angst and weak-knees spirituality. I want to get tough with myself; recent personal failures have brought me to question exacly what disciplines I need in order to grow in my relationship with God. So here goes - time for some specifics about the PoMonasticism idea to toss around.

One reminder I had today is that sin is rebellion against God. I have always seen refusing to follow and submit to Christ as rebellion against God, but it didn’t really hit home with me until today that continuing to sin is an act of rebellion against God. It’s not a small thing that can be swept under the rug woven by Jesus’ sacrifice. It is a major obstacle to being with God.

I have also noticed that my strength in remaining steady during busy and tough times depends on my consistency with the spiritual basics - prayer and scripture-reading. Maybe there are other basics, but these are what I have always seen as the essentials to living life in the way of Jesus (a phrase I’m really getting into from Doug Pagitt’s book).

I have noticed that I really miss good Christian music. I’ve listened to a lot of lousy Christian music, or Christian music that is targeted to kids, and found myself growing dissatisfied with it. I’m listening to SonicFlood (the self-titled album) right now, a favorite from back in 2001. (For some reason, their follow-up album Resonate seems more dated and juvenile when I listen to it now). It has always been difficult to keep good music in fresh supply, for several reasons. First, a lot of worship music out there is repetitive, mindless “Jesus is my boyfriend” junk. Second, the whole modern worship scene was not a part of my upbrining, so some of the Passion and Deliriou5? stuff isn’t first nature for me. Third, none of my friends are really into Christian music at all, so I don’t have that musical-hermeneutical community that would help in this area.

But I find music immensely encouraging. I would almost go so far as to say that music is a necessary way for us to incarnate our faith. Without music, the language of our hearts (I know, I’m getting cheezy), my soul starts to dry out.

So here’s the bulleted list of what I need from a PoMonastic order:

• Specified amounts of time spent/text covered in scripture
• Specified amounts of time or specified activities for prayer
• A routine of normal work (like doing the dishes, grading papers, whatever I need to do on a regular basis) that I make a habit of accompanying with helpful music
• Weekly time spent engaging in (not just thinking about) ministry to others
• Twice-weekly examen, probably in written form, including confession of sins
• Thrice-weekly time planning my time with the good old FranklinCovey software
• Regular (normative, not rare) conversation on spiritual topics and prayer with my wife
• A reasonable and appropriate amount of time spent in creative activity for the sake of the world, e.g. planning flash-mob church events or writing for non-Christian audiences