The other day a group of us from the FreeWay were sitting around talking, and the topic of “books that were part of my spiritual formation” came up. No one used that phrase, exactly; we were just sharing the most influential Christian books we’ve read. C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters was high on most people’s lists, along with Mere Christianity. J. I. Packer’s Knowing God got a nod, as did Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ. My own list included both How Should We Then Live, and He is There and He is Not Silent by Francis Schaeffer. It struck me, as we talked, that almost everyone one had a book or two (or in my case, many) that God used at just the right time, in just the right way in our lives, to shape our thinking, our feeling, our being in Christ.
Over the last month or so I have been going through some of the “more obscure but still spiritual vital” disciplines of the Christian life here at terra incognita. We’ve looked at silence, solitude, breathing, fasting, journaling each in turn. However, after that evening swapping book titles with some brothers and sisters in the Lord, it occurred to me that, though it’s not often thought of as a spiritual discipline, reading good Christian literature—and by good I mean both well-written and spiritually edifying—is and has long been a formative practice of the faith.
Anyone who has ever stumbled their way into a Christian classic like The Confessions, for instance, or a contemporary classic like The Screwtape Letters, or more weighty stuff like The Cost of Discipleship, or even more pop-y fair like The Sacred Romance, and closed the book changed, will know that it’s not just because I’m a former English Teacher that I’ve listed Christian reading as a spiritual discipline. It’s because there is something profoundly formative about opening both your heart and mind together, to receive the musings or the insights or the teachings or the story of another Christian who is perhaps further along the road than you, or travelling a slightly different path, but still walking with the same Lord. All sorts of studies have been conducted to demonstrate the positive psychological effects of reading generally; Christian reading has all these benefits with the added benefit of a beautiful, focused, extended conversation about God, and the things of God that can move at whatever pace we choose and can be shared with others and yet is still deeply personal and intimate.
Like I say, Christians have long known that spiritual reading is a practice to be encouraged in the life of a disciple. In 1750, for instance, John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, published a thirty-volume set of Christian classics called A Christian Library, which he encouraged all good Methodists to read, and expected all his preachers to know. The Christian Library was a wide-ranging collection of Christian literature that Wesley had gathered together from all corners of the Christian world. It included works by the ancient fathers, all the way up to his contemporaries like Jonathan Edwards. Wesley, it seems, recognized that a steady fare of good Christian literature is vital for a thriving Christian soul, that if a Christian really wants to expand their spiritual horizons, conversations with spiritual friends who have gone before, conversations outside and beyond our immediate circle of spiritual experience, conversations that can only happen between the pages of a book, were necessary.
Spiritual Reading is an especially difficult discipline top maintain amid the frenzy of the modern age. On the one hand, the time for reading, and especially time for reading the slowly-digested stuff that is really going to nourish the soul, is hard to come by. To work through Wesley’s Christian Library today seems an onerous task, even for a voracious reader like myself. But on the other hand, good—in every sense of that word: well-written, soul-nourishing, spiritually deep and theologically rich—good literature is harder and harder to come by. If I wanted to be a humbug, I might raise against popular Christian publishing some of the same critiques you hear raised against contemporary Christian music: that it’s repetitive and superficial and lacks substance and creativity.
But I don’t want to be a humbug; and that’s not really a true statement anyways. The fact is, there is good work still being produced and published, maybe more and better than ever. It’s just not getting the same shelf space as the pop, the fluff or the trivia at the local bookstore.
The other fact is, even if another word never gets put to pen, still we have a lifetime’s worth of Christian classics already to choose from. If you’re wondering where to start, might I suggest these, from my own list of books that left a spiritual impression on my Christian formation (in no specific order):
1. Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis
2. Jesus and the Victory of God, N. T. Wright
3. The Sacred Romance, John Eldridge and Brent Curtis
4. Loving God, Chuck Colson
5. Worship, Community and the Trinue God of Grace, James Torrance
6. The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis
7. Paradise Lost, John Milton
8. He is There and He is Not Silent, Francis Schaeffer
9. Life Together, Dietrich Bonheoffer
10. The Cross of Christ, John Stott
11. Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton
12. Naming the Powers/Unmasking the Powers, Walter Wink
13. The Practice of the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence
14. How Should We Then Live, Francis Schaeffer
15. The Confessions, Augustine
16. Knowing God, J. I. Packer
17. The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonheoffer
18. The Everlasting Man, G. K. Chesterton
19. The Resurrection of the Son of God, N. T. Wright
20. Walking on Water, Madeline L’Engle
An Ancient Path for a Modern World (VI): Spiritual Reading
An Ancient Path for a Modern World (V): Spiritual Journaling
On April 25, 1725 John Wesley, the great leader of the 18th Century Methodist Movement, penned the first entry in his spiritual diary. He was 21 years old at the time, studying theology at Oxford, and the diary in question was an old red notebook in which he detailed the vicissitudes of his spiritual life as a student. This habit of spiritual journaling, stayed with John Wesley his entire life—over the next 65 years he would fill the equivalent of a book-shelf’s worth of old red notebooks, in which he would record the trials, the victories, the struggles and the developments both mundane and profound in his work as a minister of the Gospel. On July 16, 1790, he penned his last journal entry. On March 2, 1791, he died.
The Published Journal of John Wesley, a carefully edited digest of his journal that he prepared for publication, covers the years from 1735 – 1790. For the glimpse it offers into 18th Century English life, the portrayal gives of the challenges faced by the Methodist movement during its early years, and the spiritual portrait it paints of its author, it is fascinating reading.
Over the last month or so at terra incognita, we have been exploring some of the more modest, or lesser known disciplines of the Christian life, things like silence, solitude, breathing, fasting. The goal has been to explore how these spiritual practices can actually deepen and strengthen our habits in the more essential means of grace, such as Scripture reading, prayer, care for the marginalized, and so on. If John Wesley is any example, one spiritual discipline that can be found profoundly helpful in our development as fully devoted followers of Christ, is the habit of journaling.
Though we don’t always think of it in this way, a spiritual journal can be a powerful tool for our growth in the way of Jesus.
My personal experience with journaling has been varied. Though my bookshelf has any number of abandoned journals on it with only the first three pages filled, still I can think of at least three seasons of my life when journaling played a crucial role.
When I was a young man nearing the end of my university studies, I kept a journal for about 8 months, in which I processed many of my struggles to discern next steps for my life after school.
The third season of my life when journaling played a significant role was during a time of pastoral burn out, back in 2013-14. This journal contains a number of very raw entries, some of which I completed under the direction of a Christian counselor, where I uncovered and exposed some of the inner stuff that had led to my burn-out.
So there have been seasons when this spiritual discipline played a crucial role in my discipleship. And that is, actually, one of the points I’d like to make about journaling: it is best understood, I think, as a "for-a-season" discipline. When God is doing some fresh work, taking us to new heights or depths in our discipleship, or we’re going through a major life transition, these are times when it is an especially useful tool, for documenting and processing what God is up to.
As I look back over these seasons of my life, however, I am aware of two journaling alternatives that have also played a significant role for me. This blog, for instance, though it is hardly an old red notebook, still has been one of the most important repositories of my spiritual musings, reflections and insights I’ve ever kept. I began blogging back in 2009, and here, some 6 and a half years later, I can (and sometimes do) look back on old posts and discover all sorts of spiritual memories of things God was doing for me and in me and to me at certain points in my pastoral ministry. In many ways, this blog has become for me a digital journal (though not in every way: what I publish here is highly edited and polished, in ways that most spiritual journaling probably shouldn’t be).
The other “journaling alternative” in my life has been my habit of song-writing. I began writing songs back when I was 17 and my guitar teacher told me that if I really wanted to grow as a guitarist, I should start writing my own material. I took him at his word, and 25 years later I have a notebook filled with about 120 songs that I’ve written over the years. My guitar teacher was right. It did help me grow as a guitarist, but what is interesting to me, as I look back, is how I’ve grown as a Christian, too, trying to put my responses to God’s grace into verse and set it to music.
I share this only to encourage creativity when it comes to journaling. It may not be an old red notebook for you. This is a new age and perhaps there are new wineskins for this old wine (although there is still something to be said for the slow, reflective pace of a pen scrolling over paper). But whatever it looks like, perhaps you are in a season in your walk with God, today, where this very old Christian practice may open up fresh avenues for meeting with and responding to the Lord Jesus.
An Ancient Path for a Modern World (IV): Solitude
The stylite tradition is one of the little known but most fascinating stories from the ancient Orthodox Church. According to Wikipedia, a “stylite” (from the Greek, stylites, meaning “pillar-dweller”) was a type of Christian ascetic who lived out their Christian witness on top of a pillar, preaching, fasting and praying, sometimes for decades on end.
As odd as it may sound to us in 21 Century Canada, these “pillar-saints” were relatively common in the Byzantine Empire in the 5th and 6th Century. They believed that the extreme discipline and self-mortification it took to while away your days isolated from society alone, on the top of a pole, had a purifying effect on the soul.
According to tradition, the first stylite to get the idea was a fellow known as Simeon Stylites the Elder, who first took his perch atop a tall pillar back in AD 423, and stayed there until his death in AD 470 (yes, that’s a grand total of 37 years sitting in one spot on top of a pillar). It wasn’t long before his example had spawned a number of imitators: a guy named Daniel the Stylite, Simeon the Younger, St Alypius (who, according to legend, lasted 53 years atop his pillar, until they finally coaxed him down).
From what I understand, the sites of famous stylites became pilgrimage destinations in the ancient world, and folks would come from far and wide to witness these ascetic hermits sitting there on their poles. Daniel the Stylite was so famous that even Emperor Leo came once for a visit.
Now: I am not suggesting anyone build a column in their back yard anytime soon; and to be sure there are all sorts of theological issues with the idea of earning one’s salvation through forms of extreme asceticism like pole-sitting. Let me be clear. But I was thinking about the stylites of the ancient Orthodox Church the other day because, whatever theological problems we might have with their methods, still, there is something commendable in their goal—what they were looking for, there atop those poles—that we would do well to reflect on as we continue our journey through the forgotten practices of Christian spirituality.
I’m talking here about solitude. The necessary removal of distractions, I mean, of competing interests, and yes, even of companionship for a time, or a season, or a moment in the day, so as to fix the heart unflinchingly on the awe-inspiring wonder of the presence of God.
Jesus, of course, practiced solitude as part of the regular rhythm of his life with God. In Matthew 14:13, as just one of many examples, we read that Jesus “sent his disciples away and went up on a mountain by himself to pray; and when evening came he was there alone.”
Solitude is to our social lives what fasting is to our appetites; a saying “no” to something, for a while, so that we can say “yes” to God more earnestly, sincerely, openly or expectantly. Solitude is the art of getting one’s self totally alone so that we can discover that we are never, actually, ever alone, and that often, God is often most talkative, most at work, most present to us, in the quiet and the stillness of our loneliness. Solitude is a discipline, too, that allows us to be more fully present to and thankful for others in our lives, in the same way that fasting actually sharpens our gratitude for food, once the fast ends.
Solitude is all these things and it is, also, very hard to come by these days. Surrounded as we are by incessantly ringing gadgets, blipping email alerts, whizzing cars, jostling crowds, screens and phones and the busyness of life, it is often profoundly difficult to find an hour alone with God on a metaphorical pillar, let alone 53 years on a real one.
There is, of course, a bitter irony in this. Many analyses of social media technologies have noted that, for all our text messages and face-time chats, our face-book posts and innumerable ways of communicating, people report higher levels of loneliness, disconnectedness, angst and social anxiety than we have ever experienced before. As MIT scholar Sherry Turkle put it, “Technology has become the architect of our intimacies. Online we fall prey to the illusion of companionship, gathering thousands of Twitter and Facebook friends and confusing tweets and wall posts with authentic communication.” We are, as she so vividly puts it, “alone together.”
But this may be precisely the reason that the practice of genuine solitude is needed now more than ever, because choosing to be alone—to shut off the gadgets and unplug the wires and close down the screens for an intentional season, so that we can attune ourselves all over again to the God who is always present to us—may be the path towards regaining control over those gadgets and wires and screens and wires in the first place.
Whether or not that’s the case, I do know that those times I’ve made the effort to carve out intentional spaces in my day, my week, my year for real solitude, away from all other social distractions so that I can focus simply and intently on God, are times where God has done and said and worked remarkable things in my spirit, opening me to deeper and better and more sincere communion with him and with others.
It doesn’t take 53 years on top of a pole in the Byzantine Empire to get this, either. It just takes an awareness of the need, and a commitment to satisfy it in God, alone.
An Ancient Path for a Modern World (III): Breathing
If you look closely at the depiction of the saints as they appear in the ancient icons of the Orthodox Church, you will notice that they all have very long, thin, quite distinct noses. This is true of all the icons, but we see a great example of it in one of the more famous icons of Christ, the “Christ the Pantocrator.”
I once read a very nuanced “reading” of this icon that interpreted every aspect of it in loving detail. The two eyes are actually looking in two different directions, for instance: one looking off to the eternal horizon of Heaven and the other starting directly at you, piercing the soul with its knowing gaze. The visual perspective on the Bible in his arms, as another example, is skewed and distorted. This suggests that the book (and, more importantly, the Gospel message it contains) is from another dimension and yet, at the same time, still inhabits this dimension, for all it’s having crossed the eternal divide to speak to us.
The imagery in icons is never representational, is my point. It is always deeply, subtly and mysteriously symbolic of the heavenly truths the icon is seeking to express. This is true of the position of the fingers in Christ’s hand (spelling out the initials of Jesus Christ, in Greek), the shape of the mouth, and, as I mentioned, the distinctly long, delicate nose.
The meaning behind the nose, I’ve been told, is that it suggests either the presence of the Holy Spirit, or the spirituality of the person, or both (that is, a Spirit-filled person is also a deeply spiritual person). You may wonder what the length of a saint’s nose has to do with his spirituality, but consider: in both the Greek and the Hebrew languages, the words for “breath” and “spirit” were the same. It was pneuma in Greek, and ruach in Hebrew, and, depending on the usage, it could mean either “spirit” or “breath”’; and in places where the biblical writers are feeling especially playful, it means both. With this in mind, it begins to make sense why the ancient iconographers, when they wanted to indicate that a person was deeply filled with the Holy Spirit and, as a consequence of this filling, was deeply spiritual, they would draw them with a long nose. All the better to breathe deeply with, my dear.
As we continue looking at the spiritual disciplines of the Christian Faith—and especially those disciplines, like fasting, silence, and so on, that don’t get much mention next to the basics of reading your Bible and praying every day—I think this ancient connection between the spirit and the breath is worth some careful reflection. It may be because of its suspect use in non-Christian spiritual practices (Zen meditation, Yoga, and so on), or its unfortunate association with New Agey mumbo-jumbo, but for whatever the reason I don’t hear Christians talking that much about the practice of breathing, and breath control, and the way intentional breathing can be a practical way of regulating our emotions, grounding us in the present, and focusing our thoughts and energy.
This is odd, inasmuch as almost every other form of human endeavor that involves the kind of mind-body-spirit connection that Christian holiness and discipleship also involves, uses breathing as part of its practice. I’ve already mentioned other, non-Christian practices that make use of breathing. We might add to that the way psychotherapists use breathing exercises to treat patients with anxiety disorders, PTSD and so on. In most of the traditional martial arts, too, and especially in the advanced forms of martial arts, breath control is essential to mastery. From what I understand, the training that Navy SEALS go through also makes use of it. Singers and athletes and effective public speakers all need to learn how to master their breath if they are to master their craft. Like I say, in any human endeavor that requires us to be “whole selves"—mind, body and soul together—to do it well, at some point or another, you have to learn how to breathe.
So it leaves me scratching my head a bit, that we don’t employ breathing practices more in Christian spiritual formation, teaching followers of Jesus to breathe well. You may say: it’s because nowhere in the Bible does it describe “breathing” as a spiritual discipline. To which I’d say, I’m not so sure. I’ve already mentioned the breath/spirit connection in the biblical languages. Think, for instance, of God breathing into his newly-formed human beings “the breath of life.” Or remember the Risen Jesus doing it again, in John’s Gospel, when he breathes on them so that they may receive the Holy Spirit.
If that’s not concrete enough for you, let me remind you about Jesus, sitting all night on the mountain top in communion with his Father, and let me just wonder out loud if that kind of sustained prayer could have lasted for hours if Jesus hadn’t been practicing the kind of calm, controlled, deep breathing that is physiologically necessary if we’re to focus our thoughts and attention for hours on end. What about Peter in Acts 10:10-11? It says he sat down on the roof to pray and he “fell into a trance,” during which he receives a life-altering vision from God. I don’t know for sure if his trance-inducing prayer involved controlled breathing or not, but it sure doesn’t sound like it was of the “now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep” variety. We see a similar thing in Revelation. “On the Lord’s Day,” writes John the Seer, “I was ‘in the Spirit’ and I received”... well... a vision so heavenly and disturbing that 2000 years later we still tremble to read it.
I admit that none of this is what you’d call “hard biblical data,” and I also acknowledge that, as with all spiritual disciplines, it’s by the fruit you’ll know it. I can easily imagine someone practicing breathing as a gimmick or a “technique” and not drawing any nearer to Jesus, maybe even drawing away. But at the same time: when I imagine St. John the Seer on the Island of Patmos, so deep in his prayers that he passes “into the Spirit,” I can’t imagine that happening without some careful attention to his breathing.
I say that partly because, as I have been learning about breathing and its effect on us as whole creatures, I have been tentatively trying to be more aware of my own breathing. In my prayers, for instance, I often start with a simple breathing exercise that quiets my mind and focuses my thoughts on Jesus. I have started practicing breath control to ground me in the moment when I am doing ministry. I have started experimenting with breathing exercises as a way of regulating my response to stressful situations. What I have found as I’ve become more aware of my breathing as a spiritual practice is that I am able to direct my thoughts to Jesus more easily in any given moment, I am more attentive and receptive to his voice in my prayer times, and I am better able to “take thoughts captive” in my day-in-day-out response to the world around me.
I don’t want to be dogmatic about this reading, but maybe this is what Job was getting at, in Job 27:3, when he says: As long as my breath is in me, the Spirit of God is in my nostrils.
The Thursday Review: Squash and the Spiritual Life
If you were like me growing up in church, analogies for the Christian life taken from the world of sport (and somehow these seemed ubiquitous in the pulpits of my youth) always came off as a little contrived. The ones that didn't leave you flat felt forced. I recognize, of course, that sporting analogies have a long and deep biblical tradition. Paul himself likened the Christian disciple at various times to a boxer in training, a runner in a footrace, an Olympic athlete striving for the laurels. But comparing an Ephesians 1:17 Christian to a basketball player putting up a hail Mary against the final buzzer in the championship game (true story, true sermon) leaves one feeling like the preacher cared more about his sport of choice than the text he was wrestling with that week.
My sport of choice is squash. And the above paragraph is my disclaimer for the squash-court epiphany I'd like to share today. I was playing with my regular partner the other day, and, though I started off strong, somewhere around the third game in the match, I noticed things starting to slip away from me. I was running ragged, wearing down, chasing shots from pillar to post. Between gasps for oxygen, I could smell skunk on the wind.
Now for those who haven't played, or maybe forget, there's a T roughly in the centre of the squash court (and a little to the back), where the two serving lines converge. It's the prime piece of real-estate in squash, because as long as you're hovering roughly over the T, you can see most of the court laid out in front of you. From the T, you can anticipate drop-shots before they happen; from the T you can reach the back corners with ease; from the T you're in control of your game, and usually his as well. But as my game slowly unraveled, I suddenly realized that I'd not been keeping on the T. Instead I'd been chasing balls all over the place-- into the front pocket, digging deep cross-court, down into the opposite corner, now kitty-corner to where I was before. No wonder I was running down and running out of steam.
As I gasped for breath again between serves, I made a determined decision to stay on the T. After my serve, hover on the T; after my return, get on the T; after that long lunge to recover a drop shot, back to the T. And my game came back. It was actually quite amazing how quickly peace descended on me, as long as I stayed on the T.
Now for the epiphany: because in that moment, as I realized the difference staying on the T made to my game, I suddenly saw an analogy for the Christian life-- for my Christian life. When we "get off the T," and start chasing balls - our personal ambitions, fears, goals, agendas - into the corners and along the edges of life, the game unravels really quickly. When won't hover on the T, we risk burning up our spiritual stamina and burning out our hearts. When we fail to "get back on the T" after every shot, we wind up playing more and more desperately and out of control.
And the T is Christ.
And almost like the sting of a squash ball between the shoulder blades, it walloped me: "You've not been staying on the T." Blogs are probably not the best forums for true confessions, but let me at least say that right there on the court, in one of those rare flashes of clarity, I saw how sloppy I'd become in my discipleship of late, and next to that I saw how much burn-out and chaos I'd been feeling in my spiritual life as a result. And I realized the two were intimately connected: I'd not been staying on the T, and my heart knew it, and my soul had lost its wind because of it. The welt stung, of course, but it also woke me up: as long as you're staying as close to Christ as you possibly can, and keep your eyes open for where he is in any given moment, and move there, you'll be playing (as Paul might have said) "in such a way as to win the prize."
I won't tell you the final score that day, but I will tell you that I left the court with new resolve and eagerness to play (if I haven't yet pushed the sporting analogy too far)-- to play with my heart hovering "on the T."
An Ancient Path for a Modern World (I): Silence
I have been giving a lot of thought lately to the spiritual disciplines of the Christian faith, and especially, in particular, those disciplines that don’t normally get listed among the usual habits of a thriving Christian. At least, they didn’t usually get mentioned in the church circles I grew up in; indeed, some of them would have been viewed with not a small amount of suspicion, smacking too much of mysticism, fanaticism, or works-righteousness. I’m thinking here of things like: the practice of silence, fasting, meditation, listening prayer, and so on. Practices like these are often hard to pin down; they don’t come with a money-back “guarantee of results”; and they tend to be less explicitly biblical than the more typical “read-your-Bible-pray-every-day” agenda of the thriving Christian. As such, they don’t often get top billing in the list of things that Christians ought to do, especially in the hyper-utilitarian, results-oriented, bigger-brighter-louder-better culture of North American Christianity.