Practice, Practice, Practice.

One of the most heavily-watched athletic events is the Olympics. Whether it is the precision and grace of figure-skating, the power and physical mastery of gymnastics or the endurance and strength of the marathon, every event highlights the hard work and dedication necessary for humans to achieve their full potentials. Each athlete may begin with certain innate abilities but these remain merely a latent possibility until that athlete submits himself or herself to a systematic and rigorous training program.

In the same way that most human beings are born with the capacity to walk but require specialized training and development in order to become dancers or professional athletes, so also the spiritual capacities latent in every person need to be developed and disciplined. They need to be practiced. Just as baseball or football players in their spring training engage in a series of drills, agility exercises and weight training, so those who want to follow in the way of Jesus must engage in those spiritual drills and agility training of the heart that are necessary to become proficient as a player on Jesus’ “team.”

Using the analogy of sports, religion can be thought of as belonging to the realm of the team and sport in general, while spirituality relates more to the realm of the individual athlete, and his or her training and development as a player on any given team.

The word “religion” at its root means “to rebind.” Religion is that human social force that seeks to repair what is broken, to reweave what is frayed, to reconnect what is disconnected, to reintegrate what is disintegrated. Spirituality serves as the personal and individual application of this social tendency towards collective cooperation, order and harmony. A popular political slogan expresses this notion succinctly: “Think globally, act locally.” Spirituality acts at the local level of the individual person. Its methods, ideas, and perspective on the world arise out of the global perspective of religion.

In an earlier blog, I talked about the vision that Christianity offers the world, a vision of a world rebound, repaired, renewed. In my previous blog I wrote about how healing of our past is an important part of the spiritual journey, especially in order to live according to the vision that draws us forward into new possibilities.

Spirituality works to align our thoughts, words and actions with the vision that God has given us about the world. Religion is the container and bearer of meaning and value. Because of its more global perspective, Christianity as a religion articulates this vision about what is of value in the world, and how to live according to those values. Christianity also articulates how those values can be attained, and how they govern the actions of individuals and societies.  Spirituality serves as the way to cultivate those values in the conduct and behavior of individuals, especially as they relate to other individuals.

Returning to the illustration of athletics, we know that training and practice are required to transform a person born with the ability to walk and jump into an athlete who can run a marathon, a mile in less than a minute, do a triple axle, or swim 50 meters in record time. Training and practice is required to undertake the spiritual journey.  

Another analogy that illustrates this is acting. In order for any actor to be prepared for an actual performance, they must run through their lines and movements on stage over and over again in order to memorize their part. This is called “practicing.” The same is true for dancers. Similarly, athletes on a team practice together as a team over and over so that they develop their skills and learn how to work as a team. They have certain “plays” that they need to know as a team in order to compete in a game. In order to compete well and effectively, these plays must be so well-rehearsed and practiced that they are second nature to each player and to the team as a whole. In essence, through repeated practice and rehearsal, actors and athletes each internalize their lines, parts, routines and plays to the extent that the actor fully embodies their character such that they seem to actually be that character, and the athlete executes their plays so well that they seem to have been born to the game, or such that they are football or baseball itself.

This is the work of formation. Human beings have as part of their normal developmental process the natural capacity to learn, grow, change, and adapt. Human beings are malleable and formable. Because of this malleability, the primary way humans are formed spiritually is through the process of engaging in a set of practices that serve to reinforce and fashion a person’s behaviors and attitudes according to a particular set of values and beliefs about the world. These practices are called spiritual disciplines.

Virtually every religious system in the world has developed a set of attendant disciplines, and most of these disciplines are remarkably similar across the world. Practices such as meditation, prayer, alms-giving or acts of charity, corporate worship or devotional practice, and ritualized activities are among the disciplines most common around the world. There is evidence of these disciplines having been practiced for millennia – a testimony to what humans have found to be efficacious in all places and at all times.

Jesus was a practicing Jew in first-century Palestine. The Jewish spiritual disciplines for which we have evidence that he practiced include prayer, study of the Scriptures of his time, acts of charity, and the observance of religious rituals and festivals.  In addition, Jesus spent time alone in the natural world, engaged in fasting, urged repentance, performed works of mercy and justice as well as works of love and compassion. He engaged in acts of forgiveness and reconciliation, and worked to establish a new form of community among his disciples and followers.

All of these practices trained and disciplined his followers, and the church kept up their usage. They are the means whereby we train ourselves up according to the way of Jesus Christ, and live into the vision that God has for us and for the world. The more people who get on the team and take on the training, the more the world will be shaped according to God’s vision for the world.

That’s how we change our present.

(Images in this blog found at: Olympic runner at http://www.beijingolympicsfan.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/liu-xiang-beijing-2008-olympics-china.jpg;   frayed knot at http://transformationalchangecom.melbourneitwebsites.com/images/frayed_knot_web.jpg;  Jesus reading scroll from http://iamhisbeloved.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/jesus-at-the-temple-by-brian-jekel.jpg