Practicing Faith: Physical

Hello and welcome back to the Pastor Talk podcast.
It is once again a joy to
have you in the room as we seek to continue to explore different kinds of
practices of the faith and I think Clint that we’re really coming off of a pretty
deep topic as we talked about confession and forgiveness and recognizing that at
first that those are very close to the heart of the gospel and also I think
those are places where we often really struggle to navigate some of the depths of that reality.
We come in the face of our own brokenness and sin and the need
for redemption and we find in that moment some difficulty and we’re really
shifting gears here today.
We’re still going to be talking about practices of
the faith but I don’t know if you would agree with this.
It seems to me that
maybe there’s going to be less of that kind of theological depth in this
conversation but yet there’s a significant and important kind of breath
that we’re going to talk about.
We’re going to think a little bit together
about what it is for us to incorporate an understanding of the physical
realities of our life, our bodies,
our movement, what we do on a day-to-day
a different kind of practice of the faith.
Yeah, I think more so than the last couple of weeks, Michael.
This is less, I think as you say, less theological.
It’s perhaps more practical in some ways in
that it’s things that all of us can do.
We could easily incorporate.
It’s more practice-oriented.
In other words, there will be lots of things in this podcast
that one could go try and there will be lots of sort of acquisitional things,
things we could acquire and do.
And I think in some ways this is much less
expected conversation for Presbyterians.
This isn’t stuff that you and I have
encountered in seminary.
This is not stuff that is particularly part of the pastoral
regimen in terms of teaching and preaching very often.
And in fact, historically,
in the body-soul distinction,
in this idea that we are two
parts, our spirit and our flesh,
the flesh has very much in our tradition
tended to be downplayed.
And we certainly have bodies.
And maybe in some sense
Christians have thought that we should be healthy.
We should take some care of our body.
But I think historically there’s been a kind of minimizing of
the importance of things like movement,
of how can we combine those moments
where physical and spiritual work together to help us focus,
to help us be
aware, to help us recognize God in our midst,
and to embody some of that in our
prayer life, in our life of meditation and reflection.
And you know, some of the things that people are going to hear in this,
they’re going to say we already do
that.
And some of them are going to be very structured,
and I suspect maybe
brand new to people.
And they likely have not tried them.
But there is a
kind of catch-up, I think,
that catching up that the Reformed Church is doing in
regard to some of these conversations.
Yeah, and I think that some of that is actually connected even farther back.
And so to really reach back to sort of where this conversation about the intersection
between our spiritual life of faith and our bodies begins,
is actually in the
very beginning, as the early church was trying to sort of figure out what God
was doing in Jesus Christ,
there was significant controversy and debate
amongst the first Christians as they were trying to make sense of this man of
great authority, like we’re seeing in the Gospel of Mark.
Jesus is clearly showing
up with otherworldly power,
and yet he is of this world.
And so as the church
really struggled to make sense of that,
there were some clint who said,
you know, this guy Jesus,
he couldn’t possibly be fully human,
because humans are dirty and
messy and sinful and broken,
and no divine person could ever have a real
body.
So maybe, you know, if you saw him walk down the beach,
you wouldn’t see him
leave any footprints, because how could God’s feet touch the dirty sand?
Or there was talk about, you know, when Jesus ate, maybe he didn’t really eat food.
And from the very beginning, the point I’m trying to make is that from the very beginning,
there were some people really drawn to the idea that the spiritual is the thing
that we’re all trying to get to.
And the physical stuff,
we’re just sort of
trying to sweep under the rug,
right?
That you’ve got feet that get stinky,
and a body that needs to be showered,
and a body that gets sick,
that this is the
thing that’s decaying and dying,
and that the God part of us is the part that
goes to heaven, that lives forever, that looks and lives like Jesus.
And the reason why this matters is,
is because the early church at a number of its
years, and over again, in different circumstances,
but with the same voice,
know Jesus is fully God,
and Jesus is fully human,
that Jesus had a body,
and that body was really truly a body.
And the Reformers, now jumping ahead more than a
thousand years, the Reformers, we really were responding to a church that,
by the Reformers’ view,
had over-invested in things that were not God’s,
that they were beginning to externalize the gospel away from God’s grace,
and God’s work, and God’s Spirit,
to human things.
And so I think there was a natural sort
of critique of talking about physical spirituality,
talking about habits of the
body, habits of being physical people,
mostly because I think they were
reacting to a church that they thought had gone too far down that road.
But, that said,
there are many Christian families and traditions that have preserved these
ideas, and I think for many of us today,
we live in a culture,
as you’ve already said, Clint,
that is obsessed with physical things.
And what we need as Christians
is not another diet plan,
it’s not another workout regimen,
it’s an understanding of how what we do in our body does matter,
and how God does have
something to say about it.
I think anybody that’s been Presbyterian very
long would be able to affirm that we’re not a very physical tradition.
We don’t dance,
we in worship,
we don’t raise our hands,
we’re not particularly expressive,
we don’t generally bow or get on the floor,
we don’t move much
during worship, we’ll stand and we’ll sit,
but it’s, you know, it’s orderly and it’s very minimal.
And so,
there is a kind of gap,
I think, in regards to most
Presbyterians’ spirituality of how the body can be a part of our prayer life,
our study life, our reflection and meditative life.
And the other side of
that, Michael, as you mentioned, is that we do live in this society that is
obsessed with the physical, what we eat,
getting in shape, diets,
and, you know,
not a month goes by that there’s not some new version of the the latest,
greatest workout plan or the latest,
greatest eating plan.
And I think we
want to make sure that we understand at the outset that’s not what we’re talking
about here.
This is not about being fit.
In only the most general sense is it
even about being healthy.
Christians affirm that we should be healthy as good
stewards of our body,
but that’s not the end goal.
The end goal is not to look good,
not to be able to wear a swimsuit,
not to, you know, be in shape or even to
live longer.
The end goal is to care for what we’ve been given and use it in God’s
service.
And so, as we have this conversation,
we have to make sure that
we understand.
We’ll have to do this again down the road a few weeks when we
talk about some of our meal time regimens and how Christians can
incorporate the understanding of food and gratitude into life,
but we’ll need to do it today as well.
That that’s not our main purpose here.
99.9% of what you
hear about body is not what we have in mind today,
and I think that’s
important to understand right at the outset.
Yeah, and part of that,
Clint, just to try to give it some shorthand,
is so much of
our culture’s obsession with the body is about what others see when they look at our bodies.
A lot of it is,
“I want to know,
are you eating asparagus right now?
Are you only eating red meat?” Some of this is a cultural sort of social thing,
and some of it is,
“We just want others to believe a thing that we don’t believe
about ourselves.” And that is the thing that Christians are going to want to
pause and linger on.
It’s the hardest part of that equation,
is that oftentimes we’re driven externally to do these things that give an appearance.
We do this all the time with our bodies,
and we don’t do that because we want to
glorify God in the gift that God has given us in our bodies.
We’re doing that if we’re honest,
because of something that we feel like we’re lacking,
a desire for fulfillment,
a desire for us to correct a narrative that within us
says we’re not good enough.
You know, whatever that is for us individually,
and each of us,
based upon the challenges of our life and the things
that we have allowed to take root in our souls,
they’re different.
But the point, as we now turn to this conversation about the physical practices of the faith,
is that these are always things that reframe us away from others and
what they think about us,
and the stories that we tell about ourselves,
to the truth of Jesus Christ,
His presence in our life,
and why that matters in our present moment.
And in some ways,
Clint, I guess that’s ringing a bell that we rung before,
but we’re now trying to sort of put this in another place,
right?
It’s not just about moments of prayer when we should be mindful of God’s
presence, but it should be moments of activity and moments of self-care.
And the great danger in that,
Michael, is in some instances these are things that
we’re already familiar with,
many times things we’re already doing.
So when we go
for a walk and we enjoy being outside,
we think of it as spiritual,
and it has a spiritual component,
but only by the broadest stretch could we say,
in fact, we would probably be stretching the truth to say that we endeavored to do it as a
spiritual exercise.
You know,
these are the folks who tell me,
“Well, I don’t go to church,
but I worship when I fish on Sunday morning,
or I worship when I play
golf on Sunday morning.” And I always ask the same question,
“Well, what text did you
study?
What was your text for the morning?” Because,
yes, we all like being outside.
We all love being on the water or being on the golf court.
Those things are already great.
We may already be walking.
We may already do some of the things that we might talk about,
and yet the idea of using them specifically as devotional time, using them specifically
as a moment of opportunity for spiritual growth is different.
And we have to be clear,
there is nothing wrong with going for a walk or a bike ride.
Those are wonderful things,
but it may not be true that those are spiritual things.
There are ways in which we can undertake
those activities with some intentionality that I think can move them into spiritual practice,
but we have to do so knowingly and on purpose.
Yeah, out of the Catholic church family,
particularly since the ’70s,
there’s been a conversation about mindfulness,
and there’s a strain of that conversation in which people talk
about the ability to prayerfully walk.
And generally what’s in mind there is,
say that you’re going to go out,
you most likely alone,
but maybe sometimes with a partner or a friend,
and as you’re going,
each step that you take,
you seek to be mindful of that sensation of
putting your foot on the ground and the next foot that goes on the ground.
And you begin to
try to open your awareness to what’s around you,
to not just see,
“Oh, it’s a tree,” but to see the
particularities of that tree,
to be watching and listening within your own mind as things start
sort of trailing inevitably,
you’re going to start thinking about,
“Oh, I need to get
paint and eggs, and I need to not forget to send that bill in the mail today.” And as these things
begin to happen, the idea is that that walk might provide for you a canvas upon which you could
invite God into that moment.
So the moment when you put your foot down and you land on that toe
that you stubbed yesterday and it hurts,
instead of you just ignoring it or cursing at it,
you invite God, “God, I recognize that it’s hurt.
I would invite you to be my healer.
I’m grateful for a body that generally does work.” And maybe that’s a moment where you recognize anxiety as you
find yourself thinking.
That’s a great opportunity then to invite God
into that moment, to say, “God, I sense that I’m anxious.
I need your presence and your peace in
this moment.” It becomes,
once again, I think a canvas upon which we can intentionally focus on
God’s action in our life.
Darrell Bock It’s a tricky thing,
Michael, in that we are doing something as a release from
doing things, and we are doing something with the idea that it’s not about the thing we’re doing.
At all.
So the walk is,
“I may take one step at a time,
and with each step,
I’m going to pray for
a person in my life,
and I may not move again until I feel that that prayer has been sufficient to
cover their needs and their situation that I’m aware of.
It may be that I’m going to go out
and I’m going to intentionally walk slowly,
and rather than walk past trees,
I’m going to stop
and I’m going to watch that tree.
I’m going to see the leaves moving in the wind.
I’m going to watch the birds move back and forth in it,
and I’m going to reflect on creation.
I’m going to reflect on what it means to have a home and to have a place,
and I’m going to think about seasons,
not just in nature but in my life.” And so the idea is that our movement engages us in the world,
which then shows us God and builds this point of connection,
a canvas, as you’ve said,
for us to experience God at work in the world and in us.
And I think you start at the right place,
Michael.
I think walking is probably the most ancient and the simplest version of that,
what could be called a prayer walk.
Sometimes that’s with very specific intentions,
“I’m going to spend
this time praying about this thing as I move.” Sometimes it’s,
“I’m going to walk quietly and
purposefully,
and I’m going to listen for what God might be sharing in this time.” Sometimes
it’s a certain place.
When I was in college,
I served as a resident assistant,
and our resident director challenged us to walk around our dorm,
to simply go up and down the stairs in the hallways,
and to pray our way around the campus,
specifically the housing buildings,
but the classrooms, wherever we might be,
to simply offer up in prayer those who live there or things
that might be happening in those moments, in those spaces.
I think the same could be done
around the church.
It could be done around your home.
You may have some self-consciousness at the
idea of striding around your house,
praying for your children or praying for your family,
but these are the kind of things I think we have in mind when we talk about a physical spiritual practice.
Yeah, Clint, sometimes I think that we get into our minds that God has a particular
preferential posture for prayer,
and friends, the truth is there is no scripturally mandated prayer posture,
right?
The idea of being on our knees,
of course, is the connotation of us bowing,
of us being closer to the ground.
It’s a form of deference and humility,
which we seek for our
souls to reflect as we turn our attention to the Most High God.
But what we sometimes miss in our
classical understandings of prayer is that all of these are simply moments of set-aside time to
invite the living God into our present moment.
And the truth is, Clint,
there’s some of us who
that motion actually helps calm their mind.
There’s some people that the physical movement of the
body creates this unique space in which,
because the body is doing things,
the mind can intentionally
invite God to be a part of that moment.
And if you’re one of those people by personality,
then this is a great gift.
And you should not carry this sort of guilt of, well,
I’m not good at this kind of prayer.
Well,
great.
I mean, that’s maybe a place you can work,
but there are many
other avenues open to you.
And I think another thing that’s worth sharing here at this point
is to remember that walking in particular has been throughout history the majority form of transportation.
I mean, it is the way that most common people got wherever they were going.
And still do.
And so the reality that walking isn’t for just some of us,
you know, a thing that we like to do,
it is for many the way of living.
And so, therefore, the spiritual practice of prayer
actually ties in to people’s everyday life,
a thing that you might do every day.
Maybe for us in the Midwest,
the analog would be every time you got into your car,
you started praying.
But I do think there’s the idea in praying as we walk this sort of intentionality for God to be
present for us to be mindful of God’s presence in the nitty gritty common do it every day kind of stuff of life.
And maybe we’re a little removed from that because most of us,
at least who are
listening to this podcast,
don’t walk everywhere we go to get groceries, to get water.
But yet,
in the midst of our normal everyday processes and habits of the things we have to do to be human,
God wants us to be mindful in those moments.
And I think there’s a lot of power in the metaphor of taking steps,
Michael.
It may be that
we feel stuck in a certain place of our life,
maybe in regard to our conversation
last week about forgiving a person.
Maybe we feel like there’s just a place that we’re struggling to get past.
And the idea of standing and praying and then committing a physical step that coincides
with that desire to move past that behavior,
that addiction, that grudge, whatever it may be,
the physical act of spiritual significance of what does it mean to leave something
behind,
to turn around and turn our back to something that we know is keeping us from being
the person God invites us to be.
And I think some of those physical gestures,
if that’s not comfortable,
I mean, I think something as simple as
getting up early or staying up,
well, you wouldn’t have to stay up very late at this point,
but to watch a sunrise or to watch a sunset prayerfully,
to watch the sun go behind the horizon
as you reflected on what did I do in this day?
Where did I see God at work in this day?
Where is it light in my life and where is it dark in my life?
What are the chapters of my life
that I think are setting and need to be left behind?
There are so many ways to incorporate
a kind of physicality,
and many of them don’t work well in church for lots of reasons.
I think that’s one of the reasons this conversation is interesting because so much of it has to do with our personal lives.
Something as simple, Michael, and this is maybe certainly more of your
background and tradition than mine,
but something as simply as the next time one would pray or the
next time you’re outside and you see something that elicits a sense of awe or creates a sense of wonder,
to raise one’s hands,
which is not an entirely comfortable gesture,
so make sure that
no one can see you if that’s important to you,
but go out somewhere where you’re moved by some of
the beauty of the world and just the physical act of raising your hands in praise as you join with
creation.
There’s something freeing in that.
When you get past the kind of anxiousness about doing
it if it’s new to you,
there’s a release in it that I think can be very, very helpful.
Yeah, once again, Clint, I think we have to highlight that the reason that this is different
from other practices like just going outside and doing yoga,
which isn’t bad,
is once again the
intentionality of that practice,
right?
And it’s not about what others see or what others think.
Quite frankly, and sometimes in cases,
it’s not about what you think.
It’s about you seeking to
invite God and to do that as we often do when we’re trying something new with other steps,
feeling like we have two left feet.
And I return back to that example that you began with because
I think it’s so helpful,
Clint, is what’s the difference between the person who worships God
by golfing and the person who seeks to bring intentionality to this?
And what I’ve heard when
I’ve been told that same thing is it’s on Sunday and I’m out golfing and it’s beautiful out there,
so Ergo, I’m worshipping because it’s a beautiful place.
The substantive difference is what is the
moment that you are looking for God in each and every one of those steps?
And the problem is when
you’re jotting down your score and you’re taking drinks and bantering with your neighbor,
you are not intentionally inviting God into that moment.
When you ask them what is the text you’re studying,
I hear in that how are you inviting God to transform how you see the world around you?
It’s not just you appreciating beauty,
but is there an opportunity for God to critique
our sinfulness?
Is there an opportunity for God to proclaim grace and forgiveness?
And so each one
of these things that we’ve talked about, friends,
maybe you already have a practice of walking in
morning, maybe you already have a practice of hiking,
whatever that is,
maybe begin that with a text.
Just read a scripture,
read a passage and then meditate,
which is the spiritual word for think on,
ruminate,
consider,
leave that in the back of your mind and intentionally invite God to say,
“God, as I move forward today,
I would invite you to teach me something about this that I didn’t
know before.
I’m open and I want to learn.” And that posture of humility reflects a kind of
intentionality, Clint, that I think is substantially different than when we just say, “Well, I walk.
That’s good, but for what purpose are you walking?” And that’s the distinction that I see.
Yeah, Michael, I spend hours a week,
multiple hours a week on a bicycle,
and
I can generally ride on autopilot.
I mean,
the idea of reading the road and is there a car behind
me and what gear am I in and is there a hill?
I’ve done it enough where much of that is sort of,
you know, it’s not instinctual.
It’s just kind of subconscious.
But I think I would be
practicing dishonesty if I said that as a general rule,
that’s worshipful.
In fact, I find
that on the bicycle,
to have the kind of focus that it would take to be mindful and attentive
is not conducive to do anything else.
I mean, I try to imagine playing golf and
worshiping.
I think the idea that you’re thinking about the club and the distance and the whatever,
the idea that on the bike you’re thinking about,
“I have to take a right turn and then I have to
climb that hill.” I’m not sure that we appreciate the amount of focus it would genuinely take
to be able to do that.
It is not simply that I’m going to incorporate God into this activity that I do.
It is I am looking to make God the center of the thing I’m doing.
And I think that amount of
intensity,
that amount of awareness makes it pretty hard to split time with other things.
I mean,
are there people who are moved by God as they’re fishing?
Absolutely there are.
Could fishing be one’s regular practice of a spiritual life?
I won’t say that it won’t,
but it would take a lot of work.
I think we underestimate how hard it might be to have that kind of focus
and do other things at the same time.
Yeah, Clint, I think what you’re naming
so rightly is one of the unfortunate preconceptions that many of us bring to practicing faith,
and that is that if we were really good at it,
it would be easy.
And the truth is the spiritual
masters that I’ve read and had the privilege of seeing in my life have tool one communicated how
difficult and challenging the spiritual life is,
how practicing faith requires a lot of difficult
work.
And I know that’s not a great sales pitch for it,
but I do think there is a helpful measure,
Clint, of how much intentional choice you’re making in your practicing faith when you can
measure and see how much it has required of you.
And the things that we can easily slip into, I think,
often do bring a kind of peace,
which is good.
Thanks be to God.
If you’re out on the boat and it’s clear,
and maybe you see an overwhelming sense of awe at the sunset or sunrise.
That’s wonderful.
That’s beautiful.
And there’s a sense only ancillary,
ancillary that connects us to the creator God.
But I think what we’re trying to sort of find in this conversation,
we’re very much sort
of walking the conversation itself is we’re trying to help point out that the way that one
uses our physical practices to help us get closer to God is to intentionally set aside those practices
with the invitation to God and therefore the prescription for self that we will be mindful
of the one who meets us in this place.
And that’s substantially different.
Yeah, it sounds counter intuitive, but if you want to know how difficult it is,
think about the using your physical body to
achieve stillness, to sit and to breathe and to focus for say a minute,
and then spend five minutes
in silence and stillness praying.
For most of us,
that five minutes will feel eternally
long.
It will feel very, very long.
But when we bring an attentiveness of our body and even our
stillness, the stillness of our body,
whether we’re moving or not moving,
when we bring that
into our endeavor to reach God spiritually or to connect with God spiritually,
I think it would not
take long for us to realize that it’s going to demand some effort on our part.
Knowing the ancient church, Michael, as you know, there was this thing,
and many churches in our day have
started to recreate it.
Many camps have done it at least seasonally.
There was a thing called a
labyrinth, which is a word that means maze.
But as you think of a maze,
there are starts and stops
and dead ends.
On the labyrinth, there’s no dead end.
So it’s a large circle with a kind of
path that weaves through it.
And the idea was that you would come and you would stand on this path,
and you with others would take a step or two steps.
You may get to a place where there was
an intersection, and you would think about an intersection in your life,
and you would pray over
a choice that you were trying to make.
And you would listen for God’s input,
for God’s advice, or God’s leading in that.
And people would spend sometimes hours simply walking in this circle as
they would seek to find moments to connect with God in a physical and in a spiritual way.
It’s a neat thing.
I don’t think that many churches,
you may have seen it,
I don’t think that many churches do it,
but it is an interesting connection with an idea of our past.
And we may find as we move into the 21st century that churches seek to be more conscious of ways to
integrate the spiritual and physical,
because we’ve sort of lived with them the idea that they’re
divided for a long time.
And it will be interesting,
I think, to see where that goes.
One of the things I think that’s so interesting about this conversation,
Clint, is how differently it is going to be received by people from different vantages.
There are some for whom
physical activity has been a normative part of your life for as long as you can remember.
You spend time on the bike,
you spend time running,
you spend time training for the next half marathon
triathlon, whatever it is.
We have many people in our own congregation who are incredibly physically active.
And for them,
it’s not the activity unto itself that needs set,
it’s the intentionality that would have to happen to incorporate that as a spiritual practice.
That brings with itself its own kinds of concerns that need processed.
I think I can see it from a
vantage that’s maybe a little bit different from that.
I can relate to another person who might
come to this conversation where physical activity isn’t a granted.
It’s not something that you
already do to great measure.
In fact,
I was horrified a couple of years ago to read an
article about a youth,
he wasn’t even 20 years old yet,
who passed out and died in an internet cafe in Asia,
because he played video games for 48 hours straight without sleeping.
And he had it set up,
so he didn’t even need to go to the bathroom.
He wasn’t feeding his body,
he didn’t care for himself.
And he pushed his body beyond what it could handle.
And he literally died
from this sedentary video game experience.
And clearly,
I’m not speaking to a group of people
who that’s our existence.
But in extreme,
when we are lethargic,
when we don’t use our bodies,
when we treat our bodies as expendable waste,
and the only thing that matters is our mind,
we are losing an opportunity to engage with the God who created our bodies and called it good.
And so you might come to this conversation differently.
You might say,
“Oh man, you know, I don’t have a practice of walking,
or I’m not a person who’s naturally thought about
ways to engage.” And,
you know, for those of us who might be in that camp,
this may be an invitation to consider.
Well, instead of thinking of going out for that walk as the exercise you need to do
for your cardiovascular health,
maybe you could consider that walk as an opportunity to practice your faith.
And, you know, there are significant ramifications to how that not only transforms our
imagination of the thing,
but Clint, I think that difference in purpose might lead to a new
understanding of what that could be in the first place. One of the great barriers, I think, Michael,
and maybe more so in this conversation than
almost any other practice that we’re going to talk about is the idea of an achievement or of a goal.
You know,
a prayerful walk, if one were to pray their way through each step consciously,
deeply, stopping to listen,
looking at the world around them,
wondering what God was trying to
show them.
If one could do that deeply,
that may take 10 steps.
That may not look like,
“I’m going to go walk around hogsback.” That may look like,
“I’m going to go stand in hogsback until I feel
like God tells me to take a step.” And the idea of accomplishing something is probably nowhere more
dangerous than these kind of practices where we talk about being open,
being explorational,
looking and waiting and solitude and patience.
And the idea of trying to do enough or this thing,
one mile, two miles, “I’m going to take 10 steps.
I’m going to lift my hands.
I’m going to carry
this thing,” whatever that is,
there’s probably maybe no other area where those things will get
in the way quicker than to say,
“No, I’m going to go…
When I walk outside,
instead of hurrying to
my car because it’s cold,
I’m going to pause for a minute and think,
‘What does it mean
to be cold?
What does it mean to be warm?’ I’m going to stand for a moment in the cold,
and I’m going to pray for those who don’t have a home or who are worried about heating bills
or who live in places where there’s not enough resources and have to endure that at a regular
basis.” Those kind of physical moments that so often we rush past can be triggers of prayer,
triggers of reflection, triggers of compassion.
When we’re hungry, and we’ll have a whole
conversation about it, but rather than just grab something to eat,
we may find ourselves
praying for those who are hungry,
which then may move us to go to the grocery store and drop
something off at the food pantry.
So there needs to be an open-endedness to these kinds of prayers
that I think is hard for many of us,
really hard for some of us.
You know, the devil’s advocate’s going to say, “Pastor Clint,
you’re crazy.
I’m not going to
stand outside while it’s cold.
You’re nuts.” Of course.
And, you know, I think it’s important.
We said we weren’t going to dive really deep here,
but I just want to sort of illustrate this point.
John Calvin and his institute in the very
beginning, he framed his entire theological project,
his understanding of what we needed
to know about God with knowledge of self and knowledge of God.
And we sometimes miss the
knowledge of self part of that equation.
In other words,
we often, I think, go through our days
without ever really feeling ourselves.
We go through our day without ever recognizing,
“Oh, man, I am cold.
Like that might mean something.” Or,
“Oh, I really am hungry.” And
I know we’re going to have a conversation about that.
I’m horrible with that,
though.
I often don’t know that I’m hungry.
I ignore that part,
not consciously, subconsciously.
And so, Clint, I think the idea that we might want to spend some time as we seek to practice our faith,
to know God more,
will require for us to seeking to know ourself more.
That’s counterintuitive to a person who has not given any thought to this.
That may just seem a little crazy.
But maybe take it by faith.
Give us a little bit of benefit of the doubt here.
When you seek to incorporate practices in your life that do increase your knowledge of self,
when you do take moments to recognize,
“This is how I feel.
This is where my body’s at.
This is
what is going on.” When we open ourselves to that kind of personal reflection,
that sort of personal awareness,
there’s an amazing way that God can then enter into that moment in a way that God couldn’t have otherwise.
Because there’s this kind of proportional relationship,
if we do not know ourselves,
then we don’t know the things that we need to confess.
If we don’t know ourselves,
we can’t allow God to bring the forgiveness that God intends to bring.
So even this conversation is connected to those previous conversations.
It does matter that we take this time and that we open ourselves to God,
even if that connection doesn’t seem obvious.
A word of caution, Michael,
before we maybe close with some practical thoughts.
But there is within this broader conversation a strain I think we should be aware of,
and that is the idea that people have brought suffering on themselves as an idea that somehow self-flagellation
would please God.
So people would reflect on the pain of Christ on the cross,
and they would put
a nail in their hand,
or they would think about Christ’s scars,
and they would have themselves
whipped, or they would wear things that would do damage to their feet as they walked,
or they would stand out in the cold for hours until they were hypothermic or maybe even had had frostbite.
And the idea was it was penance,
and it was punishment,
and it was to get in touch with
their own brokenness and to experience the suffering of Christ.
And for the most part,
I don’t want to cast judgment,
but for the most part,
the church has looked at those things and
said, “Well, that’s egotistical.
It is dangerous.
It is more about you than it is about Jesus.”
And that’s not what we’re talking here.
You know,
again,
these are spiritual practices.
Can you devote running a hard marathon to Jesus and reflect on the suffering in it?
Yes, absolutely you can.
Do you need to?
Maybe not.
You likely don’t need to do that.
The idea here is to simply
incorporate into our prayer life and into our reflective life.
Michael, you bring up a good
point.
You know, if you’re going to go
out for a walk,
say you walk it.
I’ve mentioned hogsback.
Maybe you start with Psalm 120.
I lift my eyes to the hills,
and maybe you hear those words as you walk.
It’s a matter of intentionality.
But I think we do want to…
I don’t think that it needs said,
but I think it’s worth saying that when we talk about sort of self-punishment and self-discipline
and anything that does harm to self,
that’s not at all.
That’s a very different conversation,
and the church has viewed those efforts with pretty significant skepticism.
Yeah, that’s a very helpful word.
And I think as we move towards more practical conclusion here,
friends, this isn’t rocket science,
and that’s part of the problem.
The problem is that for
Presbyterians who often spend a lot of time to get our minds around the thing,
the challenge here is to not get your mind around it.
The challenge is to change your practices around it.
And so maybe for you,
it’s setting that time.
You’re going to go for the walk,
and instead of putting on your
heart rate is and how many miles you went,
you leave that home,
you bring your Bible,
you start with that scripture passage,
and then you allow that to live in your memory.
When you get distracted as you walk,
you bring that prayerfully to the throne of grace,
and then you let it go,
and you turn back to that reflection.
That alone would be a great start if you wanted to intentionally use
your body in a practice of prayer and faith.
Yeah, maybe on your drive home instead of simply
recognizing that there is a nice view,
you park the car, you get out,
you sit for a couple minutes, and you listen.
You just try to hear the creation,
and in it listen for God’s voice to you.
The problem I think,
Michael, is there are no magic bullets in this conversation.
We like the idea that someone will give us a program and we’ll just do it.
Well, this is far more open-ended than
that.
I think the idea of a walk,
I think the idea of simply pausing.
Sometime especially early in the
morning, we’ve had beautifully clear mornings lately as we,
temperature drops and the atmosphere
opens up a little bit.
The view we’ve had of the stars has been amazing.
And if you can simply stop
and spend a few moments in the early part of your day acknowledging the sky.
Again, there are many, many Psalms that would talk about the heavens and the stars.
The book of Job could help you there,
lots of other passages.
But simply to pause and carve out even a couple of minutes to reflect on
the awesomeness of the creation and thereby the awesomeness of the one who created it.
And those are the kind of things that as you do, they become easier.
They become, I think, easier to find and easier to do.
And I think we find ourselves more deeply engaged with the whole
of our life as we move forward,
which is, as we’ve said from day one in this podcast,
the overarching goal.
The idea is to be increasingly aware of God in our midst,
in our lives and in our world.
Yeah, I don’t want to bring an edge to this comment either,
Clint.
But for some of us,
maybe one of the takeaways of this conversation is maybe to
reframe some of the things that we are doing.
If you’re a marathon runner,
if you’re a golfer on Sunday,
maybe instead of sort of,
even if it is somewhat jokingly,
attributing it to a faith
practice, maybe we just own up to,
I enjoy that, or that’s good for me and healthy and I like it.
And by the way,
God is moved by the things that bring joy to God’s children.
That’s a good thing.
But maybe it would be good for us to create some separation between the intentional practice of
using our body to bring us closer to our creator and the things that we do for enjoyment,
for hobby, for fun.
Because really,
the substantial difference between them,
I do think, invites us to grow into a place where I think many of us have a lot of place to grow.
And this overlaps, we’ve intentionally kind of not dealt with this because it overlaps a
conversation we’ll have down the road.
But keep in mind that there is a whole arena of this with things like painting,
carving,
project kind of works.
Maybe it’s clay,
the physical works of our
hands and the way in which that can be meditative,
the ways in which that can be prayerful.
You may already be doing something for you that is largely a spiritual kind of exercise.
And we recognize that and we want to talk about that, but it doesn’t.
We think it belongs in a different podcast,
and so we didn’t bring it up today.
But that’s a whole other realm,
Michael, is the idea of
focusing on something maybe we’d not do with our whole body,
but we might do.
It might be a painting.
And as we painted a bird,
we reflected on the creation.
We reflected on God’s role in the world that we see around us.
And I do,
I feel like we’re saying the same things
repeatedly, but the idea here is to simply be more mindful,
to be more aware,
to have our eyes open
to the things that we so often miss and to participate in them rather than let them go
by.
Because as we do that,
we’ll find not only are we more in touch with God,
we are, as you said, more in touch with ourselves,
and by consequence, more in touch with the world around us and with
others around us, which is the mark of movement in the Christian life. Well, we’ll continue on with another spiritual practice next week,
and we look forward to that conversation.
I guess one of the only housekeeping things we’re saying is today is the 50th Pastor Talk podcast.
And so I don’t know what that means,
if it means anything,
but a happy 50th
Pastor Talk podcast.
And thank you for joining us for all of these conversations.
We certainly
wouldn’t continue them if it wasn’t for your engagement with us.
So if you found something helpful,
subscribe, like, share,
pass it on to someone who might find it helpful.
All of that helps people find us,
and we continue to enjoy the engagement and conversations that this inspires with others. Thank you all.