On Spiritual Practice, a Word from Dallas Willard, and Farming the Soul
A Note from Me
When I first started trying spiritual practices, I treated them like lifting weights. Do the reps, see the results. That’s how I understood practice—through basketball drills, through jogging, through the repetition of push-ups. You repeat the action enough and eventually you grow.
I thought prayer, fasting, and silence worked the same way. Put in the effort, get the outcome.
Fast, and gluttony will fade.
Repeat the Jesus Prayer, and attention will sharpen.
Practice silence and my words will grow wiser.
To be fair, sometimes those things happened. But over time I began to see a danger in expecting them to. When the expectation grew too strong, I felt I was the one in control. I became more like an engineer instead of a farmer.
In other words, I began to think of grace as a guaranteed return—a simple matter of managing inputs and outputs.
But spiritual practices are not exercises for acquiring virtue; they are ways of opening myself to God, to be filled with his life. God gives virtue in measure to my capacity to receive it, so that it does not harm me or others. The timing is never predictable. My effort has a place, but it is never decisive.
When it comes to spiritual practice, the question is not so much am I becoming stronger, but whether God’s love is taking deeper root within me? Am I growing in compassion, gentleness, self-control? Am I feeling less self-concerned? Self-focused? Am I growing more at ease with irritation?
That’s why I think it is always wise to pair the athlete metaphor with that of the farmer. The athlete builds skill. The farmer tends soil and waits. Both matter. But only one reminds us that growth is ultimately God’s work, not ours.
A Voice from the Christian Tradition
“A discipline for the spiritual life is, when the dust of history is blown away, nothing but an activity undertaken to bring us into more effective cooperation with Christ and his Kingdom. When we understand that grace (charis) is gift (charisma), we then see that to grow in grace is to grow in what is given to us of God and by God. The disciplines are then, in the clearest sense, a means to that grace and also to those gifts. Spiritual disciplines, “exercises unto godliness,” are only activities undertaken to make us capable of receiving more of his life and power without harm to ourselves or others.”
—Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines
A Question to Carry
Where have you mistaken discipline for control?
Keep tending,
—Jon
Like you, Jon, I adopted the athlete's way ... and like you found it more a means of controlling.
A few years back, I pondered over Dallas's saying: "Christians burn through grace like a 747 burns through jetful." I realised that I hadn't experienced such. So when a particular individual I struggled with was coming to stay with us I asked God to help me experience that 'burning'... every moment I felt a struggle I turned to Jesus, acknowledged my complete inability to love this individual well, and ask for more grace. And it worked. This individual commented when they left that they felt it was the happiest they'd ever seen me.
I think one aspect of farming is the surrender to the process and the weather ... and I discovered the trick to burning through grace was similar ... simply let go and surrender and allow God's love to increase and fill you.
Go well, Jon.