Craig Dykstra makes the claim in his book Growing in the Life of Faith that Christian practices are not ultimately ours but God's. That is a profound claim. By taking his stand there he essentially claims that the goal of life is not mastery and control - it is to discern and participate in the work of the Spirit.

All throughout Christian history, we have heard the same mantra over and over again: the harder you try, the worse off you are. From a distinctly Reformed perspective we can frame this concept as the reality of sin coupled with the assurance of God's sustaining work. What Dykstra is driving at is an understanding of a sustaining God that gives any practice we do a renewed, and different, sense of meaning.

Traditionally in culture, the value that holds primacy in any practice is mastery, and we have historically taken that value and imposed it upon our religious practices. Dykstra gives us the example of prayer in which he notes that foisting the value of mastery upon prayer places it at odds with the actual movement and spirit of the practice. If our God is a sustaining God, he reasons, then our proper response in prayer should be one of receptivity. Our desire should be to intuit the presence of the Spirit through prayer so that we may more readily see where the Spirit is working in the world.

Fr. Thoman Keating, called the father of the modern Centering Prayer movement, likes to say that, because we are so self-centered, any time we participate in God's work it is an accident. Prayer, he says, makes us more accident prone. When we pray, one of the significant realities that occurs to us is that we are not all those things that we had previously chosen to identify with. The goal of prayer is to, as Fr. Keating says, "wait on God...and then wait some more. It is being willing to wait on God to the nth degree."

Anyone who writes about the significance of prayer or meditation will tell us that the benefits of the practice do not often come during the practice itself. The result of prayer is not the attainment of a trance-like state, but of a centeredness in which the movement of the Spirit is more easily detected. With this idea in mind, we can begin to see how the idea of mastery sounds absurd. Anecdotal evidence from many teachers of prayer point to the most significant effect being a calmer spirit that is open to loving others and many practitioners found their lives becoming more focused when they decided to give up and simply pray, rather than stress about "getting it together." How is it possible to have a mastery of that?

Some may be confused at this point, saying that we are mistaken for doing away with excellence as a virtue in Christian practice. I would tend to agree with them if I had interpreted Dykstra as advocating that. An important distinction for us all to realize is that just because mastery has be shot down from its pedestal as the "creme de la creme" of values does not mean that excellence does not still have its proper place in the life of Christian practice.

I have heard that Calvin once said that the only thing that we can do is put ourselves in a position to receive the grace of God. The practices of the Christian faith can mediate some measure of grace for us, but they can do so only if we learn and practice them diligently, consistently, and under the wise instructions of those that have gone before. Excellence should not be the stated goal of the practice, but it must be the underpinning attitude with which you practice.

Dykstra uses an example from baseball to make this point. He points out that there is a difference between poor pitching, good pitching, and brilliant pitching. In order to be a brilliant pitcher one must practice pitching with excellence under the guidance of an acknowledged brilliant pitching instructor. Likewise, if one wants to have an effective prayer life, they must submit themselves to learning prayer from those that have gone before them - those that have looked upon the face of God and can point you in the right direction.

Excellence, we come to see, involves not mastery but discipline. Discipline, as I see it, is what Nietzche called "obedience over a long period of time in a single direction." It is the word obedience here that always has struck me, for it implies that there are things that I must do in order to achieve an end goal. If we look back at Dykstra's pitching example (or at the practice of prayer) we can see that there are certain things that must be done in order to reach the stated goal. One must: a) diligently participate in the said practice, b) reflect on the experience of the practice, and c) allow for comparison of the experience with the experience of others (hopefully someone wiser) for both affirmation and correction.

If the goal of prayer is communion with God, then one must: a) pray diligently and consistently, b) reflect upon the experience of prayer and its resulting effects, and c) compare one's experience with others as a means of refining the practice. The belief is that execution of these three steps will assist one in reaching the stated goal of prayer: in Fr. Keating's words, "to become more accident prone."

Beginning on November 6, during Wednesday Night Live (after dinner, from 6:30-7:30p), we will begin exploring the many practices of Prayer. We will learn different methods and practices, we will explore the theology of prayer and its effects, and we will submit ourselves to the experience and wisdom of others.

I hope that you will make time to be with us.

Looking forward,

Landon