Hi Everyone,

This fall, I’ll be giving a series of talks on my book Dwelling in Christ. In preparing them, I keep returning to a morning twenty years ago that changed everything.

I walked down the stairs into the living room where my dad was preparing a sermon. Books were scattered across the floor, instrumental music was playing, and a candle was lit.

I filled my cup with coffee, walked back in, and picked up one of the books—The Life You’ve Always Wanted by John Ortberg. I wasn’t really reading. Just flipping. Until I stopped at the second chapter and read the quote at the top of the page. It changed the entire trajectory of my life:

When I read that, it was as if someone had touched an old wound, it was as if they had put their finger directly on my pain. Growing up, I didn’t understand how Christian spirituality worked. And that misunderstanding made me miserable.

I looked down to see who had written it. The name was unusual: Dallas Willard. I had never heard it before. So, I got online and ordered my first book … I devoured it.

Dallas showed me a new kind of spirituality (which was actually ancient), a transformational way of life with Christ. He offered me a process: taking up the spiritual practices and actually becoming Jesus’ apprentice. My life has never been the same.

But as I lived that life over the last twenty years, I kept running into experiences I didn’t fully understand. Seasons of dryness where God felt distant. Periods of temptation and affliction that seemed to expose my illusions. Moments of radical clarity and freedom. Times of growth followed by regression. And occasionally, fleeting experiences of union with God that felt almost impossible to describe.

At first, these moments felt disconnected, almost random. But over time, I realized they weren’t.

As I read my way back into the Christian tradition, I began noticing these same patterns everywhere: Thomas Merton. Evelyn Underhill. George MacDonald. Francis de Sales. François Fénelon. The Desert Fathers and Mothers. These writers, and others like them, weren’t merely theologizing abstractly. They were describing what tends to happen to a human being over a lifetime of apprenticeship to Christ.

It was as if they had mapped the inner terrain of transformation. And over centuries, their observations crystalized into a path.

It’s known today as the Threefold Way: the path of purgation, illumination, and union.

And the more I learned about that path, the more I realized something surprising: I was already walking it.

I didn’t need to understand the path in order to experience it. But once I could name it, I could participate in the transformational process more thoughtfully. It was like being given fresh eyes for the life I was already living … and for the journey still unfolding before me.

That’s why I wrote the book: to capture some of what I found, and pass it along.

If any of this resonates with where you are, I’d love to share more of the story with you. You can pre-order Dwelling in Christ on Amazon right now.

Pre-order Now

And as a thank you, if you forward your receipt to book@jonathanrbailey.com, I’ll send you Chapter One—along with the foreword by Richard J. Foster, another pivotal figure in my journey—one I look forward to telling you more about soon.

With you on the journey,
Jon

Behind my chair sits a ficus tree I bought four years ago. I imagined by now it would be taller, stretching its branches wide. Instead, it stayed small. I know why—too little water, too small a pot.

Six months ago I started giving it more water, more soil, and a bigger container. Now I see new lime-green leaves pushing out. It’s growing!

During that four year period, I often thought about just buying a taller tree, one that would fill the room. But I know now what would have been lost.

I would have had a bigger tree, but I wouldn't be any bigger.

I wouldn't have grown. I wouldn’t have learned. Through my blunder I’ve become a little stronger gardener. And that, I think, is the mercy of it. Growth can still happen through blunders—maybe especially through them.

I think love grows like this too...it grows through our blunders—the times we forget to water, the seasons when we’re distracted.

I don’t know, maybe our failings slow growth down, maybe they don’t. Maybe our failings are mysteriously a part of a deeper kind of growth happening below the surface of our life. Who knows?

But here’s what we do know, none of it can stop God. He will grow us into his loving likeness.

And in the end, our joy will not just be realized in what we’ve grown into, but in having been given the privilege of growing itself.

A Voice from the Past

“We must not rush onward to great measures before the time, lest God’s gift be debased by our hasty reception of it. For anything that is quickly obtained is also easily lost, whereas everything found with toil is also kept with careful watching.”

—Saint Isaac the Syrian, The Ascetical Homilies

A Question to Carry

How could tending one thing slowly change your view of love?

Thanks for reading,

—Jon

I often imagine that one day life will slow down.

I picture myself older, maybe in my sixties, with fewer responsibilities and more room to follow Christ without hurry. Those quiet days sound glorious. But here’s the irony: when quiet moments come now, I often resist them. I look for ways to fill the stillness, to push life back into motion, to speed up.

That’s when I realize how strong my illusions are.

I think I want slowness, but when it comes, I’m not so sure. At first that feels disappointing, almost paralyzing. But the longer I walk with Jesus, the more I appreciate seeing the illusion. That sight is a seed of freedom. It reminds me that I’m not living fully in reality yet—and that awareness can be the start of change.

Maybe the kind of slowness I long for isn’t something that just arrives later in life, when circumstances shift. Maybe it’s learned, like the way I had to grow into the taste of black coffee or red wine. It took time and patience to finally enjoy it.

Perhaps slowness works the same way. I need to let a little of it into my life now, not later, and learn to sit with it as it shapes me.

Deep down, I do believe I want slowness. I just need a little time to grow into it.

A Voice from the Past

“When I took a closer look at this I realized that I was caught in a web of strange paradoxes. While complaining about too many demands, I felt uneasy when none were made. While speaking about the burden of letter writing, an empty mailbox made me sad. While fretting about tiring lecture tours, I felt disappointed when there were no invitations. While speaking nostalgically about an empty desk, I feared the day on which that would come true.

In short: while desiring to be alone, I was frightened of being left alone.

The more I became aware of these paradoxes, the more I started to see how much I had indeed fallen in love with my own compulsions and illusions, and how much I needed to step back and wonder, ‘Is there a quiet stream underneath the fluctuating affirmations and rejections of my little world? Is there a still point where my life is anchored and from which I can reach out with hope and courage and confidence?’”

—Henri Nouwen, The Genesee Diary

A Question to Carry

Can you name one of your illusions? How might naming it lead to fruit?

Keep watch,

—Jon

As I’ve learned to sit with my own affliction, I’ve come to realize that it’s not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing. It wears many masks. It has many degrees of intensity, each revealing something different. Just as a bruise differs from a break, affliction presents itself in different depths, each one asking something unique of me.

There are those small, almost laughable irritations, and then the kind of hardship that settles in for a season, and sometimes tragedy strikes. This realization led me to create a more nuanced way of thinking about affliction, eventually dividing it into three layers or degrees—maybe naming them could help me hold them:

• Irritation, for me, represents the everyday annoyances that disturb me…

• Hardship refers to the challenges that persist for a season…

• Tragedy is the kind of affliction that alters life in a way that cannot be undone…

Recognizing these degrees of affliction has given me a framework to better understand my experience of purgation and how to respond to it. Because affliction, in and of itself, doesn’t transform us.

It’s not the tragedy, hardship, or irritation that shapes us; it’s the opportunities they present and the grace that meets us right in the middle of it.

*From Chapter 3 of my first book Dwelling in Christ: Discover the Threefold Path of Spiritual Transformation

A Voice from the Past

“God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn’t. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down.”

—C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

A Question to Carry

What irritations in your week might be small invitations to grace?

Until next week,

—Jon

Most days I step outside to tend the flowers in our hanging baskets and pots. It’s not much—trimming here, watering there—but it gets me out into the sunshine, or the wind, or even the rain when it comes. Each moment carries its own kind of beauty. Just this morning, turning the corner of our house, I noticed the long stretch of Saint Augustine grass lit up in dappled light, the blades in different shades of green, moving slightly with the breeze.

That simple scene stopped me.

Beauty has a way of doing that—slowing us down and reminding us that the world is more than errands and responsibilities. And for me, that moment of beauty opened into gratitude, a prayer without words. I thought of the one who made such beauty possible. The One who thought up light and shadow and the way green grass shifts between them.

Moments like that don’t last long. But they change me a little. They stir a small devotion, a longing for the source of all of this beauty. Such moments never fully satisfy. But they grow in me a greater hunger for the God of beauty.

A Voice from the Past

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike. This natural beauty-hunger is made manifest in the little window-sill gardens of the poor, though perhaps only a geranium slip in a broken cup, as well as in the carefully tended rose and lily gardens of the rich, the thousands of spacious city parks and botanical gardens, and in our magnificent National parks—the Yellowstone, Yosemite, Sequoia, etc.—Nature’s sublime wonderlands, the admiration and joy of the world.”

—John Muir, The Yosemite

A Question to Carry

Where could you slip away today to catch a little beauty?

Grateful for glimpses,

—Jon

I return to this longing again and again in my diary: to live more completely like Christ, to stop circling around it in words and actually do it, love like Christ loves. But then I notice how much waiting there seems to be.

Waiting for deeper change.

It’s frustrating—the pace of transformation. Like staring at a tree, you know it’s growing, it’s getting closer to the sun, but you can’t see the movement in the moment.

The question, then, is not whether the growth is happening. It’s whether I can trust the slow, almost hidden pace of God’s work in me?

Can I keep showing up: praying, forgiving, listening, serving, trusting that the small deaths will one day take the shape of Christ’s life in me?

Maybe that’s what transformation takes: living with the mystery that trees really do grow, even when we can’t see it.

A Voice from the Past

We have it in us to be Christs to each other and maybe in some unimaginable way to God too—that’s what we have to tell finally. We have it in us to work miracles of love and healing as well as to have them worked upon us. We have it in us to bless with him and forgive with him and heal with him and once in a while maybe even to grieve with some measure of his grief at another’s pain and to rejoice with some measure of his rejoicing at another’s joy almost as if it were our own.

And who knows but that in the end, by God’s mercy, the two stories will converge for good and all, and though we would never have had the courage or the faith or the wit to die for him any more than we have ever managed to live for him very well either, his story will come true in us at last.

And in the meantime, this side of Paradise, it is our business (not like so many peddlers of God’s word but as men and women of sincerity) to speak with our hearts (which is what sincerity means) and to bear witness to, and live out of, and live toward, and live by, the true word of his holy story as it seeks to stammer itself forth through the holy stories of us all.

—Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life

A Question to Carry

Think back one full calendar year, where do you notice one small sign of growth?

More soon,

—Jon

P.S. Just as a reminder, my book Dwelling in Christ is now available for pre-order on Amazon. If you grab a copy, forward your receipt to book@jonathanrbailey.com and I’ll send you Chapter 1 so you can start reading before September.

Growing up, Easter mostly meant new clothes, an egg hunt, and a long church service. I knew it had something to do with Jesus dying, but I mostly thought of that as something he did so I wouldn’t have to.

It was his job, not mine.

Only later did I begin to hear the invitation hidden in the gospel story. Jesus doesn’t just ask me to thank him for what he went through. He asks me to join him, to learn his way of self-giving love, to take up a cross of my own.

That’s a harder truth. It means following him into places where my self-centeredness dies—when I listen instead of defend, forgive instead of cling to a grudge, give up comfort to serve someone else. These are small deaths, but they’re real. And I think they matter more than we know.

Maybe that’s the point of Holy Week. It’s not just about remembering what happened long ago. It’s practicing how to die before we die, so the life of Jesus can take shape in us now.

A Voice from the Past

“Christ shows us his divinity not in a superhuman—inhuman—manner, but as truly human, human in the end common to us all. Put to death on the Cross, he voluntarily laid down his life in love for us, showing us what it is to be God in the way that he dies as human...

...It now remains for us to follow him to the end, not simply to stand by and watch, but to use our own mortality, our capacity for death, to follow him, taking up the Cross, being crucified with him, dying now to all that is fallen and sinful in ourselves and in the world, that we might rise with him, and he might live in us, as he promised.”

—John Behr, The Cross Stands, While the World Turns

A Question to Carry

In what small way might you join in Christ’s self-giving love this week?

Grace and peace this Holy Week,

—Jon

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I’ve been holding onto something for a few weeks now, and I’m finally ready to share it.

My book has a cover!

This thing started as a digital file on my iMac … just chapters and cursor blinks on a screen. Then it became a printed manuscript I could hold in my hands, flip through, mark up with a pen. And now it has a cover. The IVP design team did an incredible job.

Here it is:

This is the cover of Dwelling in Christ: Discover the Threefold Path of Spiritual Transformation, releasing this fall from IVP Formatio with a foreword by Richard J. Foster.

Let me walk you through what I see.

Look at the water in the foreground. To me, that’s the purgative journey—the early, often difficult work of moving through what needs to be shed.

Then your eye moves to the rising plane of land leading toward the house. That’s the illuminative way—where we start to gain our footing in the Christian life, even as it’s still an uphill climb toward something we can see but haven’t quite reached.

And then there’s the house in the distance. That dwelling place is union—life with God, life with the Trinity. If you look closely, there are three small lights glowing from within: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

I’m so thankful for this cover. It communicates so much of the journey.

This book has been ten years in the making, shaped by my own winding path of spiritual formation, by the deep wells of the Renovaré community, and by a growing conviction that most of us are exhausted by a version of transactional faith.

Pre-order Today

Today, pre-orders officially begin:

Pre-Order Now

Pre-order Bonus

And if you pre-order, I’ll send you the entire first chapter as a PDF so you can start reading right away. Just forward your order confirmation to book@jonathanrbailey.com and I’ll send it your way.

Pre-orders are how a book like this gets a fighting chance. They’re what tells the industry that people are paying attention. If the themes of this book resonate with you, ordering now makes a real difference—and sharing this email with someone who needs it makes an even bigger one!

More to come in the weeks ahead. For now, thanks for being with me on this journey.

Grateful,
Jon

P.S. Now that you’ve seen the outside, stay tuned … in the coming weeks I’ll be giving you a look at what’s inside.

Pre-order Today

When I first started following Jesus, the emphasis in my circles landed squarely on doctrine. Get those straight, and you were on your way to Christian maturity. That’s where the thrust was—learning the “right” things, information acquisition, getting answers for thorny issues.

I’m not against learning. I love to learn. Books and ideas have shaped me in deep ways.

But as I’ve read my way into the Christian tradition, I’ve come to see that living your faith—what’s known as spirituality—came before study.

In other words, living with Christ came before developing theological clarity. The early church lived first, then reflected. They prayed, forgave, ate together, cared for the poor—and out of that life, theology was born.

When we reverse the order, there’s a danger. Theology without spirituality can be wielded like a weapon. Right ideas can end up hurting people when they’re cut off from the living Christ.

But when theology grows out of our lives with Jesus, it takes on a different character. It becomes less about proving and more about guiding, less about winning arguments and more about shaping us in love.

That shift changed everything for me.

A Voice from the Past

“No one in the earliest Christian communities thought in terms of a ‘theology’ developing alongside a ‘spirituality.’ What we see is an evolving practice (both communal and personal) that generated a variety of challenges to language, imagination and self-understanding. As has often been said, Christian doctrine took its distinctive shape only through reflection on the distinctiveness of how Christian women and men actually prayed.”

—Rowan Williams, Passions of the Soul

A Question to Carry

What have you discovered about God through fasting, prayer, or almsgiving (giving to those in need)?

Until next week,

—Jon

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Some weeks I feel caught up in Christ—reading, praying, listening, and sensing God’s nearness. Other weeks, I feel dull. Distracted. Even disinterested. The swing between these two states can be disappointing.

When I was younger, I thought these ups and downs meant something was wrong. The dissonance made me feel like a fraud. But then I started reading through the Christian tradition and I realized this is the story of everyone who seeks God. Saints, mystics, and monks all speak of the same struggle: hearts that burn one moment and flicker the next.

It helped to see that I wasn’t alone.

My hot-and-cold emotions toward Christ weren’t proof of failure but proof of humanity. Feelings rise and fall, but they don’t define the depth of my life with Jesus. What matters more is the return, the steady choosing, the quiet turning toward Christ again and again—even after seasons of emotional distance.

So when you notice the distance, don’t panic.

Try not to put too much confidence in feelings. Instead, keep moving, one step at a time, trusting that God understands, nothing takes him by surprise, and even when we ignore him, he both waits and beckons us back.

A Voice from the Past

“Like waves in the sea do all these feelings in my soul constantly displace each other: inspirations and then dejections. How surprising is the life of this sea! If only this present depth would remain forever, if only the sea of my soul would not prove the plaything of every wind.”

—Sergius Bulgakov, Spiritual Diary

A Question to Carry

What helps you keep moving when your interest in Christ fades?

Turning,

—Jon

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Looking back on my early days of training in the Purgative Way, I can see how it was juvenile:

• I wanted immediate union

• I wanted to be holy, now

• I wanted divine-likeness, quick

Again, who doesn’t look at the fruit of the Spirit, the virtues of Christ’s life, the beauty and radiance of God and grab for it? Like Mary in the garden—or Eve and Adam in Eden, we grasp.

It’s not all that bad, just premature.

I think what surprised me most about those early days is that I was still living out of my old transactional mindset even though I thought I left it behind.

What’s worse is I thought a mindset could be left behind. I guess I thought of it like a raincoat or a baseball cap, something I could take off after a thunderstorm. But, of course, a mindset doesn’t work like that—it was embedded within me, woven into the way I viewed the world, and it wasn’t going to disappear because I wanted it to...

...There was a silver lining though, I was noticing it.

And noticing, the spiritual masters say, is actually a kind of growth in itself—a kind of advance, a first step in the Illuminative Way.*

*From Chapter 2 of my first book Dwelling in Christ: Discover the Threefold Path of Spiritual Transformation

A Voice from the Past

In a letter to a married woman, Francis de Sales offers counsel to someone eager to advance too quickly...

“I approve the idea that in your prayer you remain with the beginners’ method a little longer, preparing your mind by reading and arranging the points, using your imagination only as needed in order to focus your thoughts...Persevere in overcoming yourself in the little everyday frustrations that bother you: let your best efforts be directed there. God wishes nothing else of you at present, so don’t waste time doing anything else...I beg you, moderate your spiritual exercises, and in this regard give a good deal of weight to how your husband feels about them.”

—Letters of Spiritual Direction

A Question to Carry

When have you caught yourself grasping for growth too quickly?

Keep noticing,

—Jon

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There’s a practice I’ve returned to again and again for the last twenty years. You won’t find it in any classic list of disciplines. Yet I’ve seen it tucked into letters of spiritual direction, hidden in footnotes, passed along quietly like a secret. It isn’t dramatic, but it has helped me so much.

The practice is simple: getting up early.

In my Rule of Life I name it this way:

Early Rising

Early rising is how I make space for meditative prayer and study. It’s how I seek first the kingdom of God.

Some years that has meant 5:00 a.m., other seasons 6:00 or even 7:00 in the summer. The clock shifts, but the heart of it stays the same. Early rising is what allows me to begin unhurried, to seek God first. It is a keystone habit, one that sets others in motion too.

I’ve come to see it as a kind of abstinence—an ascetical practice of self-denial. By giving up a measure of sleep, I gain space for God. The trade is costly in its own way, but the return is greater: time set apart for prayer, for quiet, for steady attention.

When I miss it, I feel it. The day moves faster, my attention scatters. But when I keep it, I find margin—space to breathe, to listen, to be.

After so many years, I can’t live without it.

I don’t practice it perfectly, but I do practice it persistently.

A Voice from the Past

“You greatly need certain free hours to be given to prayer and recollection (deep reflection). Try to steal some such hours, and be sure that such little parings of time will be your best treasures. Above all, try to save your mornings; defend them like a besieged city! Make vigorous sallies (sudden attacks) upon all intruders, clear out the trenches, and then shut yourself up within your keep!

—François Fénelon, The Complete Fenelon

A Question to Carry

Do you have a daily or weekly practice that gives you unhurried time?

Thanks for reading,

—Jon

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One of the practices in my Rule of Life is called Looking Back: One Day and One Year. It goes like this:

Every morning I read two of my past diary entries, one from exactly a year ago and one from a day ago. It’s a quick way of tracing where I’ve been long-term and short-term, noticing growth and change I might otherwise miss. Sometimes it surprises me. Sometimes it humbles me. And it always reminds me that I am on a journey.

This morning, the entry I came across was from the start of Lent last year. It was a note to myself about fasting:

“Why do I do it? Not to perform, not to prove, not even mainly to train my appetite. At its heart, fasting is about love…it’s about cultivating God’s kind of love within me. It’s a way of saying no to something small, so that my yes to God’s transforming work inside me can deepen and mature.”

What does God’s kind of love look like?: Patience, kindness, gentleness—to name a few.

And what does that look like in real life? For me, patience is listening to my teenager's whole story without jumping in to fix it. Kindness is noticing my wife looks tired and handling the dishes without being asked. Gentleness is correcting my daughter without raising my voice.

So that’s what I keep reminding myself during this lenten season of fasting. I’m doing this because I want to become a more loving person, I want to love like God loves.

For Lent this year I’m fasting seconds—only one plate of food for me and no more!

One plate. One small no. Making room for a deeper yes.

A Voice from the Past

“Don’t say to me: ‘I have fasted for so many days! I have not eaten! I have not drunk wine! I have gone without bathing!’ Show me instead that, being wrathful, you became meek; and being cruel, you became compassionate. If you are intoxicated with wrath, to what end do you afflict your flesh? If you are filled with envy and covetousness, what benefit is there in drinking only water? I am not concerned with what is on your table, but whether your evil disposition has been transformed.”

—John Chrysostom, On Fasting and Almsgiving

A Question to Carry

What small fast can you train with this Lent?

Keep it simple and easy (Remember modest practices nurture humility, grand practices can breed pride).

A blessed Lent to you,

—Jon

Toward the end of his earthly life, Jesus said to his disciples: “I no longer call you servants… but friends” (Jn 15:15). At the center of the Unitive Way lies a union so intimate and relational that it becomes nothing less than friendship with God.

This, I think, is one of the reasons Jesus will always be Jesus. Always human. Always embodied.

I didn’t always understand this. For a long time, I held a more transactional view: that the Son of God put on flesh, became Jesus of Nazareth, completed His mission, and then shed his humanity and returned to heaven. Mission accomplished. Over and done with.

But that’s not incarnation—it’s intervention.

Emmanuel does not mean God visits us.

It means God with us.

God will forever manifest himself through the resurrected humanness of Jesus. The Incarnation is not just about God rescuing us, it’s about God relating to us. It’s about God longing to be with us. It’s about God inviting us into his life.

Through Christ, that’s exactly what we’re offered: an eternal friendship rooted in mutual delight—one that deepens without end.*

*From Chapter 10 of my forthcoming book Dwelling in Christ: Discover the Threefold Path of Spiritual Transformation

A Voice from the Past

“Orthodox Christology, after all, insists not merely that there is no conflict or rivalry between Christ’s divinity and his humanity, nor merely that they are capable of harmonious accord with one another.

Rather, it asserts that humanity is so naturally compatible with divinity that the Son can be both fully divine and fully human at once without separation or confusion, in one agent whose actions are all therefore at once fully human and fully divine.”

—David Bentley Hart, You Are Gods: On Nature and Supernature

A Question to Carry

How does it change your view of God to see Jesus as still human?

Grateful you’re here—more soon

—Jon

I’ve noticed that when life feels scattered, I come back to something simple—my breath prayers. In through the nose, out through the mouth. It’s almost too ordinary to notice, yet it’s always there. Sometimes I notice I’m doing it without much thought, sometimes I breathe on purpose. Either way, it’s a constant companion.

What I like about this practice is how unremarkable it is. It doesn’t require a book, a journal, or an app. I don’t have to schedule it or pack it along. All I have to do is pay attention. That’s why I’ve made it the heart of my Rule of Life. I pair my breath with the Jesus Prayer, and together they become a rhythm that carries me: through the day, through my life.

There’s something I like about this. The spiritual life isn’t always about adding more. Sometimes it’s about noticing what’s already here. My breath reminds me that God is near, not far off. Transformation doesn’t happen by chasing the extraordinary but by attending to the ordinary, over and over again.

Maybe this week you could notice your breath too. What if each inhale and exhale was a reminder that you are alive, sustained, and not alone?

A Voice from the Past

“To be aware of my breathing is to be aware of life. Breath and spirit are one in the Hebrew word ruah. What amazing generosity of a God to give us this gift which we have in abundance throughout our lives and yet can so easily take for granted.

Then, as I stay consciously with my breath, I may begin to see this gentle rhythm of breathing in and then breathing out again as a microcosm of my whole life: that first breath which I took in at birth; that last breath that I shall take when I die and give my life back to God.”

–Esther de Waal, Lost in Wonder

A Question to Carry

Where do you see God in the ordinary rhythms of your life?

With you in the simple things,

—Jon

I’ve been thinking about a line in C.S. Lewis’s preface to George MacDonald. It’s a 365 Anthology of Lewis’s favorite quotes from the Scottish novelist and lecturer. He says that MacDonald’s father “forbade his son to touch a saddle until he had learned to ride well without one.”

At first it sounds like a hard-nosed, old-world kind of thing—a test to make the boy tough. But I think it’s something else.

Imagine learning to ride a horse bareback.

There’s no leather seat to steady you, no stirrups to catch your feet. Your body has to stay close to the horse, learning his movements from the inside—every shift, every rhythm, every change of pace. Over time, you begin to move as he moves. The knowing that forms here doesn’t come from control, but from vulnerability and nearness.

I think there’s a parallel here for my own journey of transformation. I keep wanting the supports first—certainty, stability, something to hold me in place. But again and again, God seems to ask me to climb on without them. Not to make the ride harder, but because he is the kind of Father who knows how learning actually happens.

For it’s only when my life feels exposed—when I have to stay close and learn in motion—that something deeper begins to form. Not a propped-up kind of knowledge, but a knowing shaped by vulnerability.

A Voice From the Past

“You arrive at enough certainty to be able to make your way, but it is making it in darkness. Don’t expect faith to clear things up for you. It is trust, not certainty...”

—Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being

A Question to Carry

Where might God be asking you to ride without a saddle right now?

One stride at a time,

–Jon

The Threefold Way has become my map—a map of spiritual country, a kind of geography of the soul, transformational terrain.

One of my favorite discoveries was the realization that I was already on the path these saints were describing. I didn’t need to know about it to experience it.

For example, I was already training with spiritual practices, albeit a little haphazardly. I was already in the throes of temptation, struggling with how to think about it. And I had already been puzzling over my affliction, questioning how anything good could come from it.

Again, I didn’t know any of this at the beginning of my journey. It wasn’t a prerequisite. But one of the great things about coming to know the Threefold Way is that it drew me into a more thoughtful rhythm of participation—not to achieve more, but to receive more.

And over time, the fruit of that grace began to show up in surprising ways.

All of this worked a special joy inside me—a joy in seeing myself a part of something larger. Of living into a great synthesis, a solidarity between saints—their footprints producing a path for mine.*

*From Chapter 1 of my forthcoming IVP book, Dwelling in Christ: Discover the Threefold Path of Spiritual Transformation

A Voice from the Past

“’The map is not the reality,’ as the old Zen Masters used to say. We can get lost in our representations, we can mistake the image for the real thing; sometimes we just have to look up and be where we are in order to see where that is. This certainly applies to our Christian pilgrimage. It is very helpful to have the images, ideas, maps and drawings of other Christians to help us on our journey that is what tradition and community are for - but in the end it is no substitute for personal encounter and real presence, for looking up and being where we are with Christ.”

–Malcolm Guite, Word in the Wilderness

A Question to Carry

Can you recall a time when you were on a spiritual path without realizing it?

Still on the way,

–Jon

I was rereading through last year’s diary and realizing how often I described my soul as a wasteland. I was more consumed with work than usual that year. Plus, I was struggling to change my parenting approach, right at the moment my teens needed me to change.

It was a dry and exposed season—no shade, no stream.

I wrote about previous seasons of refreshment, when my soul felt more ordered. The more I thought about it, though, the more I began to doubt it. Was it just wishful thinking? What was the old reality of my soul? Was it as water-rich as I remember? Or had I been living an illusion all along? I don’t know.

Time has a way of uncovering illusions.

If I could just see things clearly, I wrote, then maybe I could chart a better way forward.

Making our transformational journey across the Threefold Way feels a lot like that: Wandering, wondering, waiting—without knowing how long.

Nowadays I’m trying to learn to live in the wondering, not rushing to trade it for something more certain.

A Voice from the Past

“We must not worry about our souls. We can’t do much. We must remove obstacles (chiefly by continually humbling ourselves and being little) and God does the rest ...

You are on the look out for ‘consolation’ (that is, a felt sense of God’s presence, sweetness, or encouragement), merely because you still imagine that you are not serving God properly when you are in dryness.

Make up your mind once for all that dryness is best, and you will find that you are frightened at having anything else!

Embrace aridities (periods of dryness or seeming barrenness) and distractions and temptations, and you will find you love to be in darkness, and that there is a super sensible light (a hidden, non-sensory communion with God) that is simply extinguished by consolation!”

–Abbot John Chapman, Spiritual Letters.

A Question to Carry

What helps you keep walking when the path feels aimless?

Wondering and wandering,

—Jon

P.S. Only 10 days left to sign up for the three-hour virtual workshop I’ll be leading with Renovaré on Cultivating a Rule of Life!

The workshop is offered twice—Thursday, January 29 (6–9 PM EST) and Saturday, January 31 (12–3 PM EST).

When I think about the shape my life with God takes, three words keep coming back: practice, ritual, rhythm. They sound alike, but the distinctions matter.

• A practice is something I choose and repeat—prayer, fasting, almsgiving.

• A ritual is something handed to me by the church—eucharist, baptism, a wedding.

• Rhythm is the cadence of action, a pace that’s sustained.

Each one of these has its own kind of power. And all of them can be infused with grace.

Practices are meant to become rhythmic. And the more rhythmic they become, the more likely they’ll become habit. Over time, daily breath prayers, weekly fasts, and yearly retreats become less like isolated actions I take and more like the soft beat of a drum that’s easy to follow.

Ritual is meant to become rhythmic too. The more rhythmic it is, the more it also forms me. Weekly eucharist, yearly baptism remembrance, annual seasons like Advent or Lent—these weave my life into Christ’s story again and again making the ritual habitual.

A maturing life in Christ is one where practices and rituals are finding a rhythm. They’re becoming habits that slowly form me into love.

A Voice from the Past

“One of the things a monastery like this does for you is give you a new rhythm, a sacred rhythm. While teaching in New Haven I was very much aware of Sunday as a special day, but beyond that all the days seemed the same—only different in their relationship to the school calendar. Here the rhythm is different. Not only Sundays are different, but all the days of the week have their own nuance, determined by the psalms and hymns you sing the Scripture lessons you hear, and, most of all, by the Eucharist you celebrate. In the beginning I was hardly aware of how I was being pulled slowly into a new lifestyle, a new way of perceiving time and a new way of experiencing God’s presence. But now after more than a month of participating in the daily rhythm of this community with a minimum contact with my previous life, I find myself thinking about the Holy Trinity, the life of Christ, about St. John the Baptist, St. Benedict, St. Bonaventure, about an often repeated Gospel passage, a certain psalm, and a catch phrase in a biography of a saint. It seems as if I am being slowly lifted up from the gray, dull, somewhat monotonous, secular time cycle into a very colorful, rich sequence of events in which solemnity and playfulness, joy and grief, seriousness and lightness take each other’s place off and on.”

—Henri Nouwen, The Genesee Diary

A Question to Carry

What practices or rituals do you long to become more rhythmic in your life?

Walking with you,

–Jon

I’ll be leading a three-hour virtual workshop with Renovaré on Cultivating a Rule of Life. We’ll explore the wisdom behind a Rule and spend time shaping a living framework suited to your current season.

The workshop is offered twice—Thursday, January 29 (6–9 PM EST) and Saturday, January 31 (12–3 PM EST).

The new year is a natural check-in for me and my Rule of Life. It’s not a chance to reinvent everything, but a moment to look at the spiritual practices that I’m training with. So I pull out my Rule of Life and sit with it for a couple days—reading through what I’ve been working toward, noticing which practices are giving life, which ones I need to scale back or let go of. Sometimes these yearly reviews are encouraging. Sometimes less so.

Either way, I try to let the review be honest.

There’s no guilt in releasing practices. No shame in trimming down ones that turned out to be too ambitious. And there’s joy in adding a new practice that I sense the Spirit may be inviting me into. One year it was volunteering at the soup kitchen downtown. Another year it was lengthening my breath prayer from three minutes to four.

Again, the point isn’t to overhaul everything in January. It’s to remember that life with Jesus is a long journey—marked by starts and stops, missteps, and new realities. Of course, you don’t need a new year to make these kinds of changes, but it is an ideal time to pause, reflect, and recalibrate.

So this year, I’m keeping what’s working and releasing what isn’t. And I’ll stay open to what God might be inviting me into next—whether it’s a simple tweak, or a recommitment to keep walking the same path.

A Voice from the Past

“A Rule offers ‘creative boundaries within which God’s loving presence can be recognized and celebrated.’ It does not prescribe but invite, it does not force but guide, it does not threaten but warn, it does not instill fear but points to love. In this it is a call to freedom, freedom to love.“

—Henri Nouwen, Rule for a New Brother1

A Question to Carry

What spiritual practice might you release this year to make space for something new?

Staying open to the next step,

–Jon

P.S. If this kind of seasonal review resonates, I’ll be leading a three-hour virtual workshop with Renovaré on Cultivating a Rule of Life. We’ll explore the wisdom behind a Rule and spend time shaping a living framework suited to your current season.

The workshop is offered twice—Thursday, January 29 (6–9 PM EST) and Saturday, January 31 (12–3 PM EST).