On Spiritual Practices and Rituals, an Insight from Henri Nouwen, and How They Become Habit
A Note from Me
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).