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Evelyn Underhill: Make a Simple Rule and Stick to It

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Brief posts that trace spiritual formation in the Christian tradition with a focus on the inner transformation that happens along the Threefold Way. Sent Fridays.
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Letters from Saints

Evelyn Underhill: Make a Simple Rule and Stick to It

It looks impossible till you do it, and then you find it is possible.

Jonathan R. Bailey
Nov 29, 2022
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Evelyn Underhill: Make a Simple Rule and Stick to It

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In this letter, Evelyn Underhill

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, advises a more structured life, including everyday practices like going to bed earlier and limiting letter-writing at night.

May 5, 1935

You should take Fr. X's directions about sleeping, and a more ordered life, very seriously indeed.

Of course, he expects you to carry out what he said!!

And, though I fully understand it is quite against your whole temperament, if you would make a simple rule and stick to it regardless, you would find it bracing and quieting, and would get all that really needs doing done!

If as I expect you don't have breakfast till 8:30 or 9 am, three-quarters of an hour for prayer and reading could surely come before that if you go to bed in reasonable time?

You once mentioned letter-writing as one of the things which kept you up late – it is also one of the things that should be disciplined, both as to length and frequency!

No letter-writing after 10:15 pm, as an act of obedience to God, would probably bring a quite new sense of leisure, and no one would be a penny the worse.

It looks impossible till you do it, and then you find it is possible.

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Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941) was a British author and spiritual teacher who wrote extensively on the topics of mysticism and meditation. Her best known book, Mysticism, published in 1911, remains a profound and classic text. Underhill championed the contemplative life, believing that only by stilling and quietening the soul can one come to true knowledge and understanding. She once wrote: “Mysticism is the art of union with Reality.”

2

Underhill, Evelyn. The Letters of Evelyn Underhill. United Kingdom: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1991.

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Evelyn Underhill: Make a Simple Rule and Stick to It

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