Intention: Groceries & A Rule of Life
If I had to rank domestic duties from my least favourite to most enjoyable, laundry takes the prize for the most abominable, soul-sucking activity a human can perform, while grocery shopping wins my top honours. I love grocery shopping. I would be perfectly content to grocery shop on a Friday night while regaling friends later with tales of a wild weekend. I consider grocery shopping to be a great joy.
Whether one considers the undertaking enjoyable or not, what can't be denied is that most folks have peculiarities about the way they perform the necessary task. My wife, Kristen, has noticed what she considers an odd habit of mine: when I return from shopping, I don't just put away the groceries; I like to show my family the items I brought home like a grade-schooler excitedly showing off their unicorn stuffy at show-and-tell.
"Look at this fam, bologna! Most people find this disgusting, but fried up with a nice mustard/brown sugar sauce, it is a succulent delicacy! And how about this, kids? This is green curry paste. Did you know I didn't taste curry until I was in my 20s? Consider yourselves lucky! And would you look at this, three squid tubes, already cleaned by the fishmonger, for $12! A deal like that doesn't come around every day!"
Kristen believes I suffer from an evolutionary glitch of the mind, where my brain mistakes grocery shopping for the ancient act of hunting/gathering—as though I were a caveman parading around my latest kill! She believes a lot of wild things. What I am really doing is warming the family up to the coming week's menu.
I have noticed a few things, however, about grocery shopping over the years. In our home, we tend to grocery shop in one of three ways. In the best case scenario, I enter the grocery store with a list chronologically well-organized according to aisle and section. That happens most of the time, but on slightly chaotic weeks at home, I will approach the task with a grocery list that looks something like this: bananas / milk / pasta / floss / asparagus / coffee / lime juice / apples. The list is there, but I am zigzagging all over the store, wasting precious time. Finally, there is the 'Hail Mary' grocery shop. These shops are reserved for when life is in a complete state of disarray. I head to the grocery store with the vague notion that we need food but without a plan or intention. I shop by way of hunches, meal planning along the way.
Now, without question, when I am organized about my intentions while shopping, I can be out and home with groceries in under an hour. I spend less and less food is wasted. The Hail Mary approach at least doubles my time in the grocery store, often increases how much I spend, more food is wasted, and many evenings feature meals that have no discernible culinary logic. "Dad, is bacon with a side of boiled beets even a meal?" I tell them, "Anything with bacon is a meal, kids!"
The grocery store lesson for me is about the importance of intention, thinking and planning ahead. Sure, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, as they say. Even still, without intention in life, or the grocery store, we often get sidetracked and distracted. We accumulate things we don't need or want (like that jar of pickled oysters in the back of my fridge I bought on one of my Hail Mary shopping trips).
This brings us to our fourth theme of the summer at Nexus: intention. We spent the majority of July focusing on how to slow down. We reflected on what it would mean to find refreshment and connection in our lives over this summer. We paused to consider how we might savour moments, and people, and experiences. I hope we can continue to pursue all those things for the remainder of this summer season. And yet, summer is now half over. Don't kill the messenger, folks. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it is true. July is ending, and September is a mere month away.
Might it be time to turn some of our attention to the fall, the real New Year for many of us? I don't want to think about it either, but here is the thing. The worst time to think about intentions for the fall is on the last day of the September long weekend. That is like showing up at the grocery store and scribbling out a shopping list in the parking lot. If we want to be intentional about what we do with this coming new year, the time to do it is now.
Knowing that I have been thinking about crafting another "rule of life" to help guide me into the fall and the new year it represents. I did this years ago with a group of friends and found the exercise incredibly helpful and enlightening. If you are not familiar with a "rule of life", let me quote Jenn Kemper to quickly explain what it is and how it works.
"The first example of a Christian rule of life came from the Desert Fathers, a monastic community of mystics living in Egypt around the third century AD. The most well-known rule is the rule of St. Benedict, written fifteen hundred years ago, which was created to help his community of monks translate their faith into the habits and rhythms of their shared daily life… our English word 'rule' is derived from the Latin 'regula', meaning 'a straight piece of wood,' 'a ruler,' and, by extension, 'a pattern, model, or example'…A rule of life, then, serves as a gentle guide that keeps you trained toward God…It is comprised of several simple statements that guide the posture of your life and the living of your days. It is not lived perfectly but can be lived faithfully while fostering within you an integrated and embodied life of faith."
That is the essence of it. Perhaps it sounds a little too pious for your liking, but not every "rule" must be about praying, fasting, or any of that stuff. If a rule of life is about "fostering within you an integrated and embodied life of faith", well, then virtually anything could be on the table. One friend of mine had a rule that went this way: "I will give meat the respect it deserves and cook it with care and concern." Cooking a steak to medium? That is an abomination of desolation! Embodied faith means bringing our full attention and presence to the art of cooking meat. Another friend had a rule that went this way, "I will invite someone over to lunch every Sunday after church." An embodied life of faith, for them, meant prioritizing hospitality.
You get the idea. So, here is my invitation to anyone who has bothered to read this far. Today is Friday, July 28. We have exactly 38 days until the end of the September long weekend. That is plenty of time to reflect on our intentions for the fall while building a "rule of life" that helps guide us throughout the course of our year until next summer. Perhaps it is worth giving it a try?
I have just started to build a new rule of life for myself. I won't solidify any of this, nor commit to any of it, until the September long weekend. So, take the rules below with a grain of salt. They are just examples for the time being. For now, I am just toying with ideas—reflecting on what I truly want to be intentional about over the next year. I am hoping that as I reflect on this over the next month or so, I will be able to land on something by September that is a stretch, but realistic and meaningful. I want this next season of my life to be focused and intentional. So, again, much of this could change within the next month, but here are a few "rules" I am considering.
· I will put my phone on 'airplane' mode every day from 5-7:30 pm so I am attentive and fully present to my family.
· I will not look at my phone whenever there is another person in the same room as me.
· I will focus on whatever person is in front of me and give them my full presence and attention (except door-to-door salespeople peddling products, religions, or charitable causes: I will treat them as though they have Covid.)
· I will observe a Sabbath day every week from Friday at 5 pm until Saturday 5 pm. For these 24 hours, I will not be on social media and will not check email or the news. I will commit to being spectacularly unproductive and generously wasteful with laughter and play.
· Quarterly, I will visit, ideally, the Scandinave Spa (or KW Sauna if Scandinave can't be arranged) and insist it is a 'spiritual retreat.'
· I will not mindlessly scroll through streaming services looking for something to watch. I will only watch Toronto Maple Leaf's games and previously selected (by way of interest or friendship recommendation) TV/movies. "Looking" for something to watch is now anathema to me.
· I will read one book per week.
· I will make love 3-7 times a week (***partner approval pending***)
· I will pray every morning to start my day with intention, purpose, and awareness.
· On a weekly basis, I will verbally tell all three of my children the specific ways they delight me.
· I will pray every evening to end my day reflectively.
· I will only consume alcohol socially. On the odd, special occasion (like the playoffs or Wednesdays), spending time with myself passes the litmus test of "social".
· I will designate 5-6 pm every day to the art of cooking (and cleaning up) meals.
· On top of sermon writing, I will write for at least one hour every day.
· I will not spend more than two evenings/mornings per week on child-focused programming. There is more to life than the family calendar.
· I will practice listening to music actively while giving special attention to what the bass player is doing.
· I will not spend more than two evenings per week on Nexus community activities. There is more to life than the church calendar.
· I will read Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov so I can stop pretending like I am familiar with Dostoevsky's work.
· I will not spend more than two evenings per week strictly watching television. There is more to life than vegging out and filling my face with snacks.
· I will exercise 4 times a week.
· Will pay Kristen a compliment every day that isn't explicitly sexual in nature.
· I will sleep for at least 7 hours every night and nap on Sundays (and by a nap, I mean the fully undressed, under-the-covers-in-bed kind of nap).
· I will only use what is commonly referred to as 'swear' words when the Leafs are losing to their opponents. The Leafs being in the lead is no cause for common cuss words. Hell yeah!
· Will craft my sense of curiosity by committing to asking more and better questions.
As I mentioned, just spitballing ideas at this point. Most of these are half-baked, some made in jest. Nothing is concrete yet. Behind most of them are my three main priorities for this coming year: 1) using time wisely (including knowing how to "waste" it), 2) living life with fewer distractions, addictions, and more intention, 3) Prioritizing what I feel "called to" and organizing my life around those things rather than trying to squeeze them in between distractions and the demands of things I value less.
Maybe some of these ideas might get the creative juices flowing for you as well. Perhaps you might consider joining me in creating a rule of life for the fall? Here are some reflection questions to help prime the pump.
1. What tensions, like time, energy, scheduling, and competing needs (personal vs familial), will I face this Fall?
2. What are the “big rocks”? In order to say yes to something, what might I need to say no to?
3. What do I want my/our rhythms to look like?
4. How can I carve out Sabbath time in my week?