ROUTINE

"And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.
And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.
But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him," (Luke 10:30-33)

Routine; that is habitually doing things the same way over and over and over in an orderly fashion. "Just like clockwork," some would say. There are people who absolutely despise the idea of having daily, weekly, and monthly routines; and there are people who thrive on such routines. I thrive on routine. There are certain people who suffer from autism, NOT ALL but CERTAIN people with autism that must live by routine. Remember Dustin Hoffman as the rain man who had to watch Jeopardy and The People's Court each weekday? If "Raymond" had his routine disrupted, he could become "unglued".

I don't think I have ever told anybody this, but I have an affinity for that Raymond character. I very much identify with him and his love of routine. Honestly, when someone disrupts my routine, I want to yell and lose control and continually yell something like "Wapner! Wapner! Wapner!" or "Vern; V-E-R-N; V-E-R-N!" I really do! Of course, I'm not autistic and I've learned to restrain my gut level impulses most of the time. I've learned to (as that old song says) "Don't cry out loud, just keep it inside, and learn how to hide your feelings." I actually asked the mother of an autistic boy one time if she thought it was possible for someone to be "just a little bit" autistic. She told me she thought it was and that she and one of her siblings actually had what might be considered some very mild autistic traits. I wonder sometimes if I'm maybe one percent autistic, if that's possible!

Now, back to the subject at hand: routine. I'm fixated on routine today because for the past couple of days my routine has been totally disrupted. I was away at school in the midwest during the Blizzard of '78 and its aftermath, and I wonder how the people coped with it back then. You see, as bad as the Blizzard of 2013 has been, it's really mild in comparison. In February of 1978, most of them did not expect that a blizzard was coming. It happened on a Monday and not a Friday. It snowed about a foot more snow, but the storm lasted twice as long. The driving ban was not twenty-four hours, no it was several days! The National Guard was actually dropping off food supplies in various places and people were going to them, in some cases loading up their children's little red wagons and bringing the bread and milk home! I've had my routine totally disrupted for what is now the third day and I feel, well, totally discombobulated! I am very thankful for my daughter Rachel and my son Jon. Jon just kind of "goes with the flow" but Rachel, like me, is very orderly and scheduled. She's really into cleanliness and "not being gross"- frankly more than I am. I know having me here in their small apartment with my bad habits (I'm noisy and fidgety and by Rachel's standards careless with how I use the stove, etc.) has got to have been hard on her routine, too.

There was a study a number of years ago that found that people who are "religious" actually inherit that trait. Now, of course a number of evangelicals and charismatics pretty much "hit the roof" when that study came out and they disagreed with it. This may shock my readers, but I agree with the conclusions of that study. It didn't say that "spirituality" was inherited, nor that a love of God was inherited, nor that a desire to know God and do His will were inherited. No! It said that the tendency toward "religious" behavior was inherited. There is a difference. I hate to admit this, but I tend to follow routines in the living out of my Christian faith. It's frequently taught in Christian circles that this tendency is a good thing. I've read many a book on Christian discipleship which taught that following such routines is good. I even showed a video teaching series one time when I was pastoring in which the teacher told viewers they "had" to do their prayer and Bible reading time "early in the morning" because that is when all the great men of God of the past did their prayer and Bible reading. As much as I'm a person of routine, when that DVD presentation ended, I got up before the class and disagreed with it. I said that I fully believed we should pray and read the Bible each day, but that to insist that this had to be done early in the morning was legalistic and wrong. What I did not tell that class is that while I did not agree with that teacher, I could understand how he came to that conclusion and that I have plenty of rules and regulations I insist on living my life by that are probably, well, not really Scriptural nor what God really asks of me. I had a deeply religious paternal grandmother and a deeply religious maternal grandfather. I mean deeply religious. My mother's father, Joseph Philip Richard, worked for the Post Office for decades. His one vice was that he smoked a pipe. But he maintained a room in his home which was "his" room with all sorts of pictures about "the sacred heart of Jesus" and all sorts of religious artifacts. He kept little record books about his mass attendance. He went to mass every day and usually twice on Sunday- sometimes he went three times on Sunday. He died in 1960, but my grandmother kept his room exactly as it was when he died, until 1967. As a kid, I had leafed through the record books of his mass attendance and marveled. I know we evangelicals and charismatics have a lot of problems with the excesses of extreme Roman Catholicism, but before you start judging Joseph Philip Richard, I will add that he had miracle answers to his prayers! Was he "saved" as we born-again Christians would put it? I don't know, but I'm certainly not ruling that out. But the bottom line was, he obviouisly got great comfort and purpose from following those religious routines. My father's mother, Marie H. (LeFebvre) Baril was also one who practiced a very regimented Roman Catholicism- maybe not quite as regimented as that of Joseph Philip Richard, but it was close. She obsessed about what she believed to be the falsehood and error of Protestantism, to the point that she demanded that no Protestants ever be buried in the family grave! Ironically, at least two of her kids and several of her grandchildren, including me, have left the Catholic faith,and there are some Protestants buried at the family grave! For her, like my Mom's Dad, there had to have been great comfort in the regimented, disciplined practice of the (Pre-Vatican 2) Roman Catholic faith.

Am I saying I inherited their tendencies toward routine and religious duty in my life? I'm saying exactly that. It does have some good aspects. I do followed a disciplined regimen of reading the Bible and praying each day. When that regimen is broken, it really unsettles me. I feel guilty and uncomfortable about it. And, yes, in the past three days that routine has been unsettled and I do feel a little guilty and uncomfortable about it. Today is Sunday. I'm not going to church because it's so far to drive and I have not even started up my car since Friday morning and it's still in the TD Bank parking lot in downtown Framingham. Do I feel guilty about not going to church today? Honestly, a little bit, yes.

Outside of all the "religious stuff" there's a lot of other routine I have in my life. One of the things I least like about the present job I have is that you have a different work schedule every week, and you don't know your schedule for the coming week until Friday afternoon or Saturday morning. I hate that. Like "The Rain Man" I really like to do the same things at the same times each week. I was really disturbed when WGBH-FM moved "my" short stories program from Saturdays at 9 p.m. to Sundays at 6 p.m. a few months ago. Then I was almost as disturbed when they moved it to Sundays at 4 p.m. a few weeks ago. There goes that "Raymond" thing again! My routine was off! Last weekend, CBS did not show 48 Hours Mystery on Saturday night because of a special show about the Super Bowl. Well, that's a show mostly about murders and I felt like murdering those CBS executives! So, here I am, it's Sunday morning and I feel totally displaced, totally disrupted and wondering how I will ever reestablish my routine! I don't like the way this feels, at all. I can't imagine how people cope with their houses being leveled by EF-5 tornadoes! I can't imagine how those Jews in Eastern Europe coped with being herded into railroad cars, and if they were "lucky" having to put on prison garb and do hard labor. (And, we know what happened to the "not so lucky" ones, don't we?!)

Listen, I'm not saying I'm proud of this, but this routine thing is important to me. Now, why did I start this piece quoting from the story of the Good Samaritan? My focus is the priest and the Levite who noticed the injured man and did nothing. I have often heard preachers say that the priest and the Levite were probably on their way to the Temple to fulfill their religious duties and therefore couldn't be bothered to waste their time in helping this guy. They couldn't have their religious routine disrupted. They had to continue on to the Temple. I suspect that's true. There are other studies about people who are fixated on routines which indicate these people are much more inclined to develop dementia in their elderly years. I know of an older woman who was very routine oriented (probably worse than I am) who indeed now has dementia. That concerns me about myself. If you do everything automatically as I very much like to do, there's a lot less thinking involved and over decades it's a lot more likely you'll just sail right into dementia without even being aware that it's happening.

One of my routines, is that I like to post at least one new piece on the blog a week, and usually several. So, in a sense, I used a routine to try to cope with a disrupted routine. And, after all I have written, I honestly can't wait to get back to my, yes, life with all of its usual routines!