e have been taking lots of walks lately. I don’t only mean ‘we’ in the sense of my 5-person family. Our neighbourhoods at-large seem abuzz with friends and families escaping the confines of their homes for some exercise and fresh air. While many aspects of our culture are at a standstill, nature seems to keep on ticking along uninterrupted. The trees refuse to social distance while their branches still dance in the breeze, the birds aren’t on lockdown, and the grass and plants continue to grow and produce. Creation proclaims its aliveness in the Creator.
It occurs to me something similar is true for our interior worlds. While so many aspects of what was ‘normal life’ grind to a halt, our spiritual lives, with the rest of the cosmos, continue to shift, grow, and develop. The Spirit’s work hasn’t stopped. Still, some of our most familiar and traditional places and ways of engaging the Spirit have been upended, and that leaves many anxious, uncertain, lonely, and asking the question:
What can spiritual life and growth look like in seasons of crisis?
Our first answer might naturally be to ‘pray’. This is a great answer. Quite possibly, this is the best answer. For some, however, it might also bring up another question, a more fundamental question: How? How do we pray, or serve, or worship, or grow in moments like this?
This series will seek to respond to these questions by exploring a few time-honoured practices of prayer (practices for our interior world), worship (practices of outward expression), and acts of service and love (practices that move us toward family and neighbours). For some, engaging these practices will feel like walking down a familiar, well-worn path, and for others they may seem like uncharted territory – not unlike the world in which we currently find ourselves.
I think it is important to state at the outset, that none of these practices are better, holier, or truer than the others. As the great philosopher and Christian thinker, Dallas Willard often said, “The disciplines [spiritual practices] of the spiritual life are not godliness; they are wisdom”. These practices in and of themselves do not bring us closer to God. But, as we engage them with honesty and humility, our hearts become cultivated to more readily receive divine grace which is so desperately needed for our transformation into Christ-likeness.
So, however and wherever you find yourself during this unique moment in history-
“Welcome!”
I humbly invite you onto this magnificent, surprising, difficult, joyous, life-losing, and wonder-inducing journey that is the work and grace of the spiritual life.
-Phil
**These articles were first written and published as a 5-part series for QBMagazine.org.au
Comment