Redundancy

The key to any successful householder spiritual practice is redundancy.

Judaism is excellent at this. There’s two hours of ritual stuff to do EVERY MORNING if you want to, and the guidance is that it’s “best” to do it all if you CAN (and there’s extra bonus goodies if you want a stretch goal), but the essentials are doable for anyone in a short time.

This has an awesome effect inter-generationally. Elders who have been doing this their whole lives and have all the words and choreography as reflexes are also motivated to do the extra legwork to coordinate daily minyan because they’re psyched to FINALLY have the capacity.

Meanwhile, working parents of my stature — as we are encouraged by all cultural channels to be — can stumble in late and stumble out early and still discharge our ritual obligations.

Allowing such practice crumple-zones may be the top ritual skill I learned.

Previous
Previous

Chosenness

Next
Next

Morality Arises From Mortality