Practice is where intention and action meet.
~ Author Unknown

If we‘re faithful to our practice, our practice will be faithful to us.
~ James Finley

One should hallow all that one does in one’s natural life. One eats in holiness, tastes the taste of food in holiness, and the table becomes an altar.
~ Martin Buber

Rain falls in real time
And rain fell through the night
No dress rehearsal, this is our life.
~ The Tragically Hip

In the past two or three decades within the various Christian communities we have seen an increased interest in and attention given to the importance of spiritual practices in the life of faith. This is true especially of contemplative practices. My former teacher Tilden Edwards writes, “By contemplative I mean attention to our direct, loving, receptive, trusting presence for God. This attention includes the desire to be present through and beyond our images, thoughts, and feelings.”1 French philosopher, mystic, and political activist Simone Weil (February 3, 1909–August 24, 1943) whom Albert Camus described as “the only great spirit of our times” said, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”2 She also said, “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. . . Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.”3

Before I make some comments about spiritual and contemplative practices, let’s free up the word practice from its quotidian usage in which practice refers to the focused effort that prepares one for and leads up to a culminating performance, a formal recital or ball game, for example, or opening night on Broadway. This use of the word makes practice sound prior or inferior to and less than the “real deal.” As if, were there no game or recital or opening night, the practice would lose its purpose, meaning, and value. The uninformed protest, “What’s the point of practicing if we don’t get to play a game or give a recital or a performance in front of an audience?”

A true artist, a painter or ballet dancer or saxophonist or sculptor or poet or potter, does what they do not primarily to perform in front of others but out of love for the act of the art form itself. In this sense, the true artist, whether paid for their work or not, is always an amateur at heart, the word amateur coming from the Latin word for love. They do it because they cannot not do it if they are to be fully alive, true to themselves, alive to love, and to who God has created them to be. They do it because it’s where they create, find life, make meaning of their brief time on earth, give life, and participate in the liturgy of life.

The art form of a Christ-one is the all-embracing life form of Jesus, the paschal pattern of his life, death, resurrection, and eternal oneness with God. The art form or practice of the apprentice of Jesus is to transpose the message, meaning, and mission of Jesus into this time and this place in the singularly unique way that only they can.

As I am understanding the term practice within the life of faith, there is no dress rehearsal. It’s all the real deal. This is our life. The Jesuit novice in his second year of novitiate is practicing living out Ignatian spirituality as one expression of the Christ-life just as much as the Jesuit priest who has been ordained for 24 years.

A practice that has spiritual intent and content has some affinity with the exercise or execution of a profession. Whether the profession is law, medicine, accounting, or faith, practicing that particular profession refers to the actual performance or application of knowledge as opposed to merely possessing knowledge about law, medicine, accounting, or faith. The only difference is the action being performed and the intention and end toward which it is aimed. A profession is a public declaration less of what we do for a living than a testament of what we do with our life. Truth is, at least for Christians, few of us do for a living (job, occupation, career) what we do with our life, what we do with the aliveness of God who is Life. So, when we refer to practicing the profession of our faith, we mean consciously putting into action our response to being loved by the God incarnated by Jesus. Our practice is our life and our life is our practice. Again, generally speaking, the vocation and practice of each and every Christ-one is to transpose Jesus into the context of his or her life.

Spiritual practices, more specifically, are conscious ways of supporting, encouraging, and sustaining our ongoing Christ·ening. A contemplative practice is the conscious action or inaction intended to make us aware of and present to the One in whom we live and move and have our being. It is the full, conscious, and engaged enactment of some posture, movement, work, or deed with the intent of connecting to and/or communing with God.

It is important to note that this practice may be one that is overtly religious, for example, praying with scripture (Lecio Divina), contemplative prayer, praying the rosary, fasting, walking the labyrinth, chanting the psalms, grace before and/or after meals, and making an examen before going to sleep. Or it may be one or more of the traditional works of mercy inspired by the words of Jesus as recorded in Matthew’s gospel, chapter 25, verses 31 – 46: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, visiting the sick, visiting and setting free the  imprisoned, and burying the dead. As we see from these acts of mercy, while all contemplative practices are spiritual, not all spiritual practices are contemplative.

A spiritual practice need not be one that is traditionally or explicitly religious. In contemplative practices, it is less what we do than how we do it. Your practice might be photography, journaling, working at the food bank, planting trees, taking a daily meditative walk in nature, baking bread, T’ai Chi, taking delight in your child or grandchildren, performing not so random acts of kindness, gardening, writing your Representative in Congress, deep listening, training guide dogs, quilt-making, philanthropy, earth care, adopting a special needs child, or one of my favorites, whistling (you try staying in a bad mood while whistling, even if you whistle the blues—go ahead, next time your soul is downcast and blue and flat as a slashed tire, try whistling the Negro spiritual “Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child” or maybe Simon and Garfunkle’s “The Sound of Silence” or R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts.” You’ll see).

Let me give another example of a spiritual practice and then an example of a contemplative practice both drawn from the commonplace occurrences of everyday life. I used to make a long commute to and from work on Southern California freeways. I wanted to make better use of my daily drives than I often did when I would veg out listening to Sports Talk radio. So I came up with the following simple spiritual practice. I call it The Re-membering Practice. I do this primarily when I’m driving on the freeway, as opposed to around town driving. It’s an alternative to contemplative prayer since the whole eyes closed thing while changing lanes on the freeway wasn’t working out that well for me. So, I simply say aloud the name of my children, one by one, or the names of my brothers and sisters and their partners or children or the name of friends or someone I know who is suffering or the folks who come to me for spiritual direction. That’s it. I turn it into a litany. It can be as long or short as I want or have time for. I say one name aloud to God and then I am quiet and drive a half a mile or so, holding that person in my mind and heart. Then I say another name. And after an extended prayerful pause, I say another name, and so on. I am not all-knowing, so I don’t know what each person is in need of. I simply re-member them aloud to God who does. And in my practicing of re-membering, I re-member myself to that particular person and to God.

A contemplative practice I accidentally happened upon was when my now 30 and 25 year old sons (their older sister missed out) would sit mesmerized watching Winnie-the-Pooh videos. I was taken by two things that shaped my practice: first, how completely engaged and enraptured they were. It was as if nothing else existed to them but Pooh bear and his buddies. My oldest son was in the Thumb Suckers Hall of Fame and he would watch with his spoon shaped digit inserted in mouth. So involved and focused was he, that when he smiled or laughed, he wouldn’t even take his thumb out of his mouth. Second, I was taken by how much delight the bear of little brain and his mammalian minions gave my boys. No matter how many times they had seen a particular episode, they were still as enchanted and jubilant as the first time they watched it. So, my practice became sitting to their side at maybe six feet away and watching them as attentively as they watched Pooh. And then I took wholehearted delight in their delight. Just that.

I remember a story about the Orthodox Metropolitan Anthony Bloom of Sourozh making a pastoral visit to an elderly Orthodox woman living in a Senior Care facility. The woman was having difficulty praying and was fretting overmuch about it. Seeing an icon on the wall behind the woman who was sitting in a rocking chair, and some knitting needles and a ball of yarn in a basket to the right of her chair, Metropolitan Anthony said, “Do you enjoy knitting?” “Oh, yes, very much,” said the woman. The priest responded, “This is what I would encourage you to do for your prayer. Each day turn your chair toward the icon and knit for 15 minutes in the presence of God.”

The woman is peaceful and relaxed when she knits. The runner or rower may feel most aware of and attuned to his body, creation, and God with each stride or stroke respectively. The gardener who loves to put her hands in the earth celebrates holy communion with creation and the One from whom all blessings flow. The widower who walks in the park, then sits alone on a bench thinking of his beloved, draws near to her and senses a pain commensurate to his love given, and gives thanks for their years together, and in so doing draws near to the God Beyond Borders. The directee of mine who watches the news some evenings with the sound off and pays attention to the nightly images and icons of anguish and grief, and upon seeing them holds them in prayer as did the burly logger I knew who when watching the news and seeing or hearing a story of woe would say aloud, “Mercy, mercy, mercy.” The woman who hikes each week to combat her depression, uses the time to silently lay her heart bare before God who is her sherpa.

All it takes to convert some common everyday or weekly experience, situation, appointment, activity, responsibility, or pleasure into a spiritual or contemplative practice is to consciously consecrate it to God as such, and, for example, use the proverbial wait in the doctor’s office to wait on God or while nursing your little one in the middle of the night exhausted beyond words to close your eyes and imagine climbing into the lap of God yourself. At the core of all spiritual or contemplative practices is attention and directing the heart to God. It might be done before or after an experience, duty, or deed or, if the situation allows, during the action, for example while showering, waiting for the plane to board, sitting outside in the morning listening to the chorus of birds, or while sitting alone, still and quiet, with your cup of coffee appreciating “the divinity of what just is.”

Former monk, author, and spiritual teacher Jim Finley defines a contemplative practice in this way:

A contemplative practice is any act, habitually entered into with your whole heart, as a way of awakening, deepening, and sustaining a contemplative experience of the inherent holiness of the present moment.4

In other words, when the rower rows, when the knitter knits, when the gardener works in the garden, or when the retired lumberjack watches the news, it doesn’t mean while doing so they must be mentally thinking about or imagining God. Rather, at some point they simply pause and acknowledge silently in their heart or speak aloud a simple sentence that expresses their intention to offer their attention to what they are doing as their prayer. In other words, simply turning her chair toward the icon on the wall, the woman has stated her intention and she offers her prayer of attention not by focusing on the icon but by giving total attention to her knitting.

Simone Weil wrote a seminal article titled, “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God,” in which she argues, “The Key to a Christian conception of studies is the realisation that prayer consists of attention.” Rather than just reading for the accumulation of temporary knowledge so that the student can pass the test at the end of the week, the Christian student can use studying (or any other activity) to practice the kenotic (self-emptying) movement of Jesus in the incarnation as described in Philippians 2: 5-8:

For Weil, true and total prayer involves giving one’s undivided attention in order to commune with God. She uses the Greek term kenosis (self-emptying) to describe the self-forgetfulness that is involved in giving her full attention to God. Just as Jesus lets go of his “equality with God” to be fully attentive and present in love to humankind and all creation, so too the pray-er lets go of his or her self-involvement in order to redirect her attention to the Divine Lover. With this understanding of prayer as attention, Weil argues that anytime we offer something or someone our complete presence and undivided attention, whether chopping and stacking firewood or watching our children or grandchildren watch Winnie-the-Pooh, it is a spiritual and contemplative practice and a form of prayer.

I want to end this reflection by emphasizing the following:

All genuine spiritual or contemplative practices
do one of two things:
wake us up or keep us awake.

But awake to what?

To many things:
to the presence of God, to the movements of the Spirit,
to what matters most,
to what is worth the investment of our life while here on earth,
to what grieves us the most,
to what genuinely enlivens us or benefits others,
to where we need healing or liberation,
to things that evoke gratitude or compassion or solidarity
to things that form or transform us,
or to what we most yearn for and hope.

And the most efficacious practices
are ones that awaken us or keep us awake
to Love, that is, to the reality
that God is a God of extravagant love,
that all creation is a sacrament of God’s love,
that our being here, our very existence,
is the result of a labor of love, by Love, for the sake of love,
that is, for the sake of being lavishly loved by God,
for the sake of knowing ourselves as known and loved by God,
and for the sake of participating in Divine Love
by incarnating love in both seemingly little ways
and in obviously larger ways, so that love
becomes real and credible and delicious
and liberating and viral
because—
as it was in the beginning,
is now,
and ever shall be—
it’s all about love
let me say that again,
it’s all about love
receiving it humbly and gratefully,
responding to it generously. and
enacting it regularly.
It’s as simple,
as self-implicating,
and as salvific as that—
world without end.
Amen.

Friends, if you enjoy and benefit from the reflections on THE ALMOND TREE at The Sacred Braid, please pass the word and link to others and if you are on Facebook “Like” The Sacred Braid page (rather than my “personal” page which I mainly use to direct people to TSB page). Gratefully, Dan.

NOTES
1 Edwards, Living in the Presence: Disciplines for the Spiritual Heart, 2. 
2 Weil, First and Last Notebooks (I don’t have access to my library as I write this)
3 Gravity and Grace (See above)
4 Finley, Contemplative Heart, 46.