"Traditionally, the spiritual ideal has been to live a consistent, fully integrated life of piety, such that one's practice of spirituality becomes indistinguishable from the rest of one's life. The Benedictine David Steindl-Rast expresses this view when he writes, 'We must avoid putting too much emphasis on practices, which are a means to an end. The end is practice, our whole lives as practice.' The shift that has taken place in U.S. culture over the past half century, however, means that attention again needs to be given to specific spiritual practices by those who desire to live their whole lives as practice. This heightened level of attention has been necessitated by the fact that fewer people live within spiritual enclaves that they can take for granted and because more options are available from which to piece together a spiritual life. Nevertheless, the point of spiritual practice is not to elevate an isolated set of activities over the rest of life but to electrify the spiritual impulse that animates all of life."