Luther Smith
writes: “Thurman asserts that living the spiritually disciplined life enables
each person to be “alive to life.” (Smith, HETW, 130)
HT relies on
spiritual disciplines “to tutor our spiritual discernment so that both the
familiar and the strange are understood in light of the desires of God’s
heart.” (L. Smith, HETW, 32)
- Spiritual disciplines “tutor our
spiritual discernment.” This brings “understanding.”
Spiritual
disciplines “are meant to ‘ready’ the mind, the emotions, the spirit. They are
no guarantor of Presence… God reveals His Presence out of the mystery of Being.
With all of my passionate endeavor, I cannot command that He obey.” (HETW, 45)
- E.g. – if I played basketball. I
engage in “training” so as to compete in the game.
- The training, the “disciplines,”
prepare me for the game.
- Spiritual disciplines “train” the
body and mind and spirit of a person.
In Disciplines of the Spirit HT identifies
five spiritual disciplines:
- Commitment
- Growth
- Suffering
- Prayer
- Reconciliation
- Commitment
Mind
and spirit cannot be separated from the body.
“Commitment
means that it is possible for a man to yield the nerve center of his consent to
a purpose or cause, a movement or an ideal, which may be more important to him
than whether he lives or dies. The commitment is a self-conscious act of will
by which he affirms his identification with what he is committed to. The
character of his commitment is determined by that to which the center or core
of his consent is given.” (HETW, 46)
- In commitment there is a
“yielding.” There is a “giving oneself to…”
“Commitment”
is related to “surrender. “Whatever stands in the way of the complete and full
surrender, we must search it out and remove it.” (HETW, 48)
“Surrender
your inner consent to God.” (HETW, 48)
I
think “commitment” and “surrender” are like: jumping out of the plane and
trusting the parachute to open. It is a whole-being thing.
Like:
“I surrender all…”
- Growth
“Growth means
development in the life of an organism. It means change manifest in structure.”
(HETW, 51)
- “Change manifest in structure”
sounds like: transformation.
“There are
many adults who for various reasons have escaped this essential discipline of
their spirit. True, in terms of physical and intellectual development they have
continued to grow. Their bodies and minds have moved through all the
intervening stages to maturity, but they have remained essentially babies in
what they expect of life.” (HETW, 52)
- It’s either deep change or slow
death.
- It’s either maturing or endless
baby-hood.
- It’s either dining on spiritual
meat or drinking spiritual milk from the bottle.
One of the
real challenges of growth is crisis, and the “real possibility of failure.” “To
guard against this and be prepared to deal with it when it occurs is an
authentic discipline of the spirit… And
for the religious man, it is to grow not only in grace but also in the
knowledge and experience of God.” (HETW, 54)
- Ongoing engagement in the
spiritual disciplines prepares one for crises and failure.
- Always growing deeper… the body wastes away but the spirit is
being renewed day after day after day…
closer knowing and experiencing of God…
What HT says
about “growth” sounds like what I mean by spiritual transformation; the pain of
change.
- Suffering
“When a man
is driven by suffering to make the most fundamental inquiries the meaning of
life, he has to assess and re-assess his total experience. It may be that… he
has never thought seriously of God. He has taken his life and all of life for
granted. Now under the assault of pain he is led to wonder about the mystery of
life. Why do men suffer? He asks himself. He sorts out the answers available to
him…” (HTEW, 55)
“What would
life be like if there were no suffering, no pain? The startling discovery is
made that if there were no suffering there would be no freedom. Men could make
no mistakes, consciously or unconsciously. The race could make no mistakes.
There would be no error. There would be no possibility of choice at any point,
or in any sense whatsoever… Freedom therefore cannot be separated from
suffering. This, then, may be one of the ways in which suffering pays for its
ride…” (HTEW, 55)
“Why do men
suffer? They suffer as part of the experience of freedom. They suffer as part
of the growth of life itself.” (HTEW, 55)
“Without
suffering there is no freedom for man.” (HTEW, 56)
“What
hostility may do is to serve as a guide through the wilderness of our suffering
until we are brought to the door of the temple.” (HTEW, 56)
“There are
many people who would feel cheated if suddenly they were deprived of the ego
definition that their suffering gives them.” (HTEW, 56)
Silence
Thurman - “Sometimes
the quieting of one’s spirit in prayer exposes the area of sensitiveness to
God’s spirit which is submerged by much traffic.” (Meditations of the Heart,
21)
- Busyness covers up the true self.
Thurman - “The
sheer physical necessity [of taking time to go alone to pray] is urgent because
the body and the entire nervous system cry out for the healing waters of
silence.” (Meditations of the Heart, 27)
Thurman - “The
strength of the personal life is often found in the strength and intensity of
its isolation. The fight for selfhood is unending.” (A Strange Freedom, 191)
- The need for a still center.
- There’s a battle going on for the
“self.”
Prayer
Thurman -
“Prayer at its best is revealed when a man enjoys God and prays out of sheer
love of Him.” (Meditations of the Heart, 26)
- True prayer is about a
relationship. It’s 2-way communication.
- Love of God compels a person to
pray. This is not prayer as ritual.
Thurman -
First if all, “prayer… means the method
by which the individual makes his way to the temple of quiet within his own
spirit and the activity of his spirit
within its walls. Prayer is not only the participation in communication with
God in the encounter of religious experience, but it is also the “readying” of
the spirit for such communication. It is the total process of quieting down and
to that extent must not be separated from meditation. Perhaps, as important as
prayer itself, is the “readying” of the spirit for the experience.” (HTEW, 57)
- Thurman: “When one has thus been
prepared, a strange thing happens. It is very difficult to put into words.
The initiative slips out of one’s hands and into the hands of God, the
other Principal in the religious experience. The self moves towards God.
Such movement seems to have the quality of innate and fundamental
stirring. The self does not see itself as being violated, though it may be
challenged, stimulated, inspired, conditioned, but all of this takes place
in a frame of reference that is completely permissive. There is another
movement which is at once merged with the movement of the self. God
touches the spirit and the will and a wholly new character in terms of
dimension enters the experience. In this sense prayer may be regarded as
an open-end experience.”
- Cmp.
·
“Fundamental
to the total fact of prayer in the Christian religion is the persuasive
affirmation that the God of religious experience is a seeking and a beseeching
God.” (HTEW, 57)
·
“I
agree most heartily with Rufus Jones when he says that prayer at its best is
when the soul enjoys God and prays out of sheer love for him.” (HTEW, 59-60)
Waiting
Waiting/Creating
a space
- Thurman - “In the total religious
experience we learn how to wait; we learn how to ready the mind and the
spirit. It is in the waiting, brooding, lingering, tarrying timeless
moments that the essence of the religious experience becomes most
fruitful. It is here that I learn to listen, to swing wide the very doors
of my being, to clean out the corners and the crevices of my life – so
that when His presence invades, I am free to enjoy His coming to Himself
in me.” (HTEW, 45)
·
Cf.
Nouwen’s distinction between “waiting” as expectation, and “wishing.”
