And the spiritual life has rhythms, too. The rhythm of advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter,
Pentecost, and ordinary time. The rhythm
of baptism, profession of faith, serving the church. The rhythm of prayer and Bible
reflection.
Ruth Haley Barton wrote a book called Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation. It is a book about what are classically
called spiritual disciplines. We might
also call them spiritual practices or spiritual rhythms. They are the practices that give a rhythm to
our spiritual life. Sometimes that
rhythm is imperceptible, or we wish that we had a faster rhythm. But even when we’d choose a different rhythm,
God works through them.
Another one of my favorite books about spiritual practices
is called Flunking Sainthood. The author, Jana Riess spent a year focusing
on a variety of spiritual practices. She
starts the year as a “lighthearted effort to read spiritual classics while
attempting a year of faith-related disciplines like fasting, Sabbath keeping,
chanting, and the Jesus Prayer” (pg. ix).
Each month she picks a discipline, reads some spiritual classics related
to that discipline and attempts to practice it.
And she struggles, even fails, with all twelve.
After a few months and a significant life experience, she
found that “Although I didn’t see it while I was doing the practices themselves
or even while I was writing the chapters in this book, the power of spiritual
practice is that it forges you stealthily, as you entertain angels unawares” (Flunking Sainthood, pg. 168). God used both her attempts at these different
practices, and even the process of failing, to shape her to become more
Christ-like and more able to reflect Christ to the world. She, like thousands of Christians before her,
discovered the power of spiritual practices, sacred rhythms, to shape Christian
life.
Growing up, I don’t remember hearing about spiritual
disciplines or spiritual practices as a group or term. And yet, we had plenty of them. We read Bible story books or other devotional
material after dinner. My dad sang to us
before we went to sleep. We went to
church twice on Sunday. My parents
taught me to tithe. We took an extended
family spring break trip to do hurricane relief in South Carolina. There were Christian rhythms in our
life. They shaped my Christian life and
how I practice my faith.
As I grew up, some of my rhythms have developed and changed.
They have shaped the rhythms of my life as a single woman. Like Riess, I have certainly failed
some. Over the summer, I’m going to be
reflecting on some spiritual practices that have been important in my life, or
that I would like to experiment with. I have plans to explore writing prayers, meeting with a spiritual director, keeping the Sabbath, and doing justice, among others. I
hope that I, and my readers, will learn new rhythms and that those rhythms
would shape us to become more Christ-like.
Drum picture by Martha Riley, used under a Creative Commons License.
Praying hands picture by C Jill Reed, used under a Creative Commons License.
