Curious Christian

Reflections on culture, nature, and spirituality from a Christian perspective

What makes an action a genuine practice?

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Matt Stone

2009-06-01

I have been thinking over a comment Donald Schell made in Spirituality & Health:

As some Christian clergy and laity work to reclaim a language of Christian practice for the sake of Christian formation and community, I wonder how willing we are to ask ourselves and our congregations to submit to the sheer repetition and steady attention that would make anything we do together in church genuinely a practice? Is our church culture too expert-driven and so focused on what we know and what we’ve been taught that it separates us from the learning opportunities (and confusion and frustration) that come with real practice?

There is a danger in rote learning, in repeating without understanding. But there is also a danger in spontenaity, if it is persued with the same habitual mindlessness. True practice requires our attention. I am reminded of the challenges of Jesus. Do we have the eyes to see? Do we have the ears to hear? True discipleship requires discipline.

Tags Christian, Discipleship

4 responses to “What makes an action a genuine practice?”

Jarred

2009-06-01

I”m reminded of an email conversation I was involved in a few years back. The list was to discuss Pagan spirituality and magic. There were a considerable number of ceremonialists on the list and the topic of the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram came up. One person commented that they had gotten so good at doing the LBRP that they could do it in x minutes. (X was some ridiculously small number.) One of the more experienced and respected ceremonialists chimed in by saying, “If you’re trying to speed through the LBRP to see how quickly you can get through it, you’ve missed the entire point.” It seems to me that the same can be said of any spiritual practive/discipline.
I think part of the issue is that a good practice needs to find that balance between being rote and being spontaneous. That way you get the benefits of a consistent and familiar practice while still leaving yourself open to new insights or an expanded experience. To offer another analogy, let me draw on my experiences in dance class. We do many of the same basic exercises every week in class and I’ve even gotten into the habbit of doing many of those exercises for my own warm-up before class begins. This allows for things to become familiar and I get into a good mindset for the coming class. It also allows the instructor to pay more attention to the newer students in the class because she knows those of us who have been taking class for a while can work through the exercises on our own with only the occasional glance and minor correction from her.
But on the flip side, our instructor switches things up a little every now and then (usually at the beginning of a new eight week session). She may suddenly decide that we’re going to do a series of of ront de jambes after we do our tondu sequence instead of immediately turning around to do the tondu sequence on the other leg. This forces us to keep our brains engaged the entire time while still doing the same basic exercises rather than just mindlessly doing them in the same order every time.

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Matt Stone

2009-06-01

I am also reminded of many a martial arts movie i have seen, where the ultimate aim is to act without form, but with the understanding that you can only get there if you know the forms very well. Christianity is ultimately about loving without limits. But we begin with many limitations and practice is what brings those limitations to our awareness. For example, its only as I engage with diverse community that I realise how difficult it is to love some people, that I realise what real forgiveness is all about. This is not pleasant, this is not easy, this is something I have to persevere with.

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Lucy J

2009-06-04

Hey, everyone, it’s me… Lucy J! I’ve been away for a while… studying and stuff, but I’ve got a bit of time to come back to some blogspots occasionally coz I’m having this trimester off while preparing for a big world trip in a month’s time – YAY! Well off formal study, but not off full-time work, sadly.
Totally with you on the ronde de jambes, Jarred, and Matt I’d hafta say that knowing the forms VERY well provides foundation for the best improvisations (jam sessions, or maybe “jambes sessions”) 🙂
Here’s my thoughts which were stimulated by this thread, especially the “D” words mentioned in the Schell quote (discipleship and discipline)…
One of the writers I admire is Dallas Willard. His theology is informed by a number of factors including very practical experience. He asserts that disciplines are practices which help us achieve something we could not ordinarily achieve. I take that to mean that if we can’t do something, we can learn to do it by practice i.e. imitation, repetition etc. Something about us changes by the practice, to enable us to be able to do the thing we couldn’t do before… in essence, a level of transformation occurs.
We could not, but now we can.
I tie that in with another concept – that of getting to know something/someone by practice… i.e. intentionally spending time and effort to do so.
This specific kind of knowledge was in the awareness of the ancients and is particularly embedded in the language of some of the Old Testament writers. It speaks of a personal relationship between the knower and the thing that is known. In this sense it is not just being aware of the existence of a thing, but the relationship between the knower and the known, or the significance that the known has for the knower. Hebrew understandings of an individual person were more holistic – the total being of a person, rather than a dualistic body/mind concept, and so knowing something meant that the whole person was engaged with the process of knowing, not just the mind, and with such knowledge always comes an emotional reaction resulting in action.
Full comprehension of [the known] object manifests itself in action which corresponds with the relationship apprehended cf. the difference between theoretical ignorance and deliberately chosen ignorance (refusing or avoiding the practice).
Through a process of time, trial and testing, full knowledge of something or someone is gained and the final stage of knowledge is called WISDOM according to several source books on such matters.
Maybe that has something to do with why it is important to practice things, really practice things… through practice, we become wise and we can experience the fun and pure joy of masterful “jambe sessions” instead of fluffing around in undisciplined ignorance?!

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Matt Stone

2009-06-04

Lucy J, welcome back! Nice to hear from you. I totally get you with this. I think this has some bearing on the eclecticism issues we’ve sometimes discussed here too. If we’re not careful eclecticism can easily degenerate into undisciplined ignorance. However a disciplined eclecticism, grounded in a tradition of some sort, can be very creative.

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