Column on spiritual practices

In the last generation, we have seen astounding growth in physical fitness. At the same time, we have had increased interest and involvement in spiritual practices. For most Protestants spiritual practices were: prayer, Bible reading, and charitable giving. In a desire to feel closer to God, some have captured spiritual practices and disciplines as a sort of spiritual exercise regime. They could be ancient ones, such as fasting or practicing hospitality, or emphasizing the practice of Christian virtues of forgiveness, not judging others, or being kind

Every week in Lent, churches gather in different locales in Alton and Godfrey, but we seem uncomfortable with the very idea of a season of spiritual reflection and practice.

As soon as Protestants of a certain stripe hear a phrase such as spiritual practices, they shut down. “Isn’t that trying to work your way into heaven?” they will ask. Perhaps we could put it this way. If the way of heaven is in our midst, then should we not act like it? In part, it is taking a cue from Celtic spiritual life, where prayer accompanies almost every act of the day: from waking, to turning on a light, to preparing for bed. (I need to do some reflection on why I so consistently mistype spiritual).

I am drawn to experimenting with different modes of spiritual practices both to improve comfortable practices but to become more open to parts of my spiritual life that have lain fallow for too long. I am not by nature a mystical person, but I so admire the insights and images folks are able to bring to bear on learning closeness with God. Many contemporary religious practices emphasize emotion, “positive” emotion above all. I get the desire. Life is difficult, and we crave motivation and surcease from troubles. Yet, we can engage life in different modes. Some people crave activity. Their impulse is to do in order to be, so that could be working in a soup kitchen, or helping out a neighbor, or visiting the sick to run errands. The church does well to call people to different modes of religious life, but we fail if we insist on one size fits all approaches.

We are then presented with different personalities seeking different religious expression. The church can be helpful here in opening up both matches to personalities and avenues that may well feel as if they are pushing the envelope too much. Working with different spiritual practices is an attempt to balance freshness, even novelty, with depth of reflection. To paraphrase a famous quote, the unexamined spiritual life is not worth the time and effort. Spiritual experience or practice needs reflection to place it within the tradition of the ages, to ally it with wisdom. If we labor under an assumption that proper prayer looks like only this method, then it can become an obstacle, even a detriment to a richer prayer life. Practices can open us to less structured, even playful approach to intimacy with God. At their best, they help to link theory and action, thought and feeling through a disciplined work toward spiritual exercises.

Spiritual life is too vital to try to place in a compartment labeled holy. Jesus Christ did not represent some disembodied, airy, abstract sense of enlightenment, but a full throated, full bodied way of living with God and each other in this life. At the same time, we have coddled those who thoughtlessly claim the banner of spiritual but not religious to flesh out the slogan god gives us permission to seek the divine in different ways. Few things come naturally to human beings. Even the most talented often require practice. So does the utter gift of life with God, and each other.