Agreed! I would suggest that the whole process is Spirit-led so we start with what the Spirit - the continuing voice of Jesus - is saying. The Spirit leads the discipleship pathway and shows us how to follow Jesus. All the spiritual practises serve this process...
Such wonderfully articulated and insightful thoughts. I’ve been having similar ones - including the idea that the very difficulties we experience (desolations), if worked through, (rather than engineered around, in ways like rules of faith) paying attention to body and spirit, and participating in how God is allowing us to ‘be with’ (rather than the dictates of what should be), draws us deeper into charism and earthed-spirit life, and thus the life God is drawing us to. Sometimes the way we can ‘be with’ looks very different and doesn’t fit into typical rules or rhythms of faith, and can be isolating. This, I wonder, is sometimes what leads people to leave faith communities, because this period of deeper listening and being with and practicing, doesn’t look familiar and is perhaps judged or simply not understood.
Anyhow, thanks for this considered language around a wonderful topic!
Hi Nina, thank you so much for taking the time to share this. Yes, we too often “engineer” a way through our own desolate states. So many times we hear that if we simply apply ourselves a little harder, practice a little more self-discipline or follow some “better rules,” we will resolve the spiritual emptiness inside us. And sometimes that does happen. But more frequently than not, it’s just a bypass around the true work of transformation.
It feels far more authentic to me — and certainly far more real — to choose instead to “be with” the state of being we find ourselves in.
And you nailed it again about feeling isolated. When our internal rhythms stop resembling the typical model of faith, we start to feel as though we are failing at best. In fact, at worst, we may be experiencing growth into deeper levels of understanding. It is little wonder that people disengage from their communities. How long do we expect someone to remain in a community when they believe that they are “listening deep within themselves,” yet everyone else believes they are walking away?
And as a pastor for 25 years, I noticed that many walk away from community with their desolation, not to attend to it, but to cover it over with sports, hobbies, and entertainment as a distraction from their souls. Or just into isolation as the manifestation of their desolation.
Some find more contemplative forms of faith that welcome and recognise desolations and have practices to explore.
Thanks for extending the ideas here. And great to see you at Waverley Abbey yesterday!
I think this is right to push back on treating spiritual life as a self-improvement project.
But there’s another risk on the other side.
If practices are framed mainly as receptivity, it becomes unclear where real ownership enters.
At some point, growth has to involve more than recognizing what God is already doing. It also has to involve choosing, consenting, and actually becoming something through those choices.
Otherwise you can end up with participation without authorship.
Which seems like a problem, because whatever we become should be something we can meaningfully own, not just something that happened to us
You are right that pure passivity is not the Christian life. If "receiving" collapses into something that simply happens to us, we lose responsibility, agency, and any meaningful sense of growth or ownership.
That is one reason why I have been trying to work with the language of participation rather than passivity, or, on the other hand, just programmed action. Participation holds together two things that are too easily pulled apart. On one hand, it resists the idea that we construct ourselves through effort or technique. On the other, it resists the idea that formation is something that happens to us without our consent or engagement. Participation is neither self-creation nor passivity. It is a responsive agency.
So there is ownership. But it is a different kind of ownership. Not "I built this version of myself," but rather "I have learned to say yes, again and again, to the life God is forming in me."
Long time no speak! Thanks for reading Sivin and the link to your article.
What I particularly appreciated in it was your emphasis on understanding tentatio as an integral component of formation (not an interruption) — which has a lot to do with what many of us have experienced firsthand; i.e., that our struggles, battles, etc. are not interruptions to prayer, but rather are part of how God forms us through prayer.
Connecting that to my own thoughts, I wonder if there isn't another aspect of how we begin with ourselves before we enter into something like a rule of life? In other words, I find myself pondering whether we ever begin with anything less than a complete recognition/determination of who we are in Christ prior to entering into rules such as Oratio, Meditatio, Tentatio?
It seems to me that a rule of life — whether it be individual or communal — emerges most productively when it stems from a recognised charism: the specific way that Christ's life is presently developing in each person/community. Therefore, practice does not create life; it simply sustains and deepens the life that is already being developed for them.
This causes me to see a significant overlap here! It is not practices/practices (participation/participate), but practices rightly-ordered toward participation.
Super helpful, Jason. Thank you. After reading I’m pondering of whether this concept of a rule of life as a charism that we tend also applies at the scale of a local church or even church tradition/movement.
What a great question. And the answer is, I believe, yes.
In the New Testament, especially in 1 Corinthians 12, charisms are not private possessions. They are gifts of the Spirit given for the building up of the Body. Which means from the beginning, charism is inherently ecclesial.
Across Christian history, charism has not only been recognised in individuals, but in communities, orders, and movements.
You see this very clearly in the rise of monastic and later religious life. The Rule of St Benedict is a structure that sustains a particular participation/charism in Christ’s life.
Then Francis of Assisi. He gave up everything he owned. He lived among the poor. He found God in birdsong and rainfall and broken people. Others saw something in the way he lived and wanted to follow. The Franciscan rule came along after all of that. It did not invent what Francis had found. It gave it a shape that could survive him.
Then there is Ignatius of Loyola. His thing was different. He learned to pay attention to what God was doing in ordinary life and to go wherever that led. The Jesuits grew out of that. Their practices, like the Spiritual Exercises, were simply ways of keeping that attentiveness sharp and passing it on to others who felt the same pull.
Thank you for taking time to reply with such a generous and thoughtful response. I am part of the vineyard tribe in Aotearoa/NZ and we are having a very extended conversation about the charism of our tradition. Your response is very helpful.
One of the best explanations of a rule of life that I’ve seen! Thanks for articulating with clarity what many of us have experienced. I thought I was cheating when my customary stated the things I was already doing to maintain conditions where God could capture my imagination. I’d like to share this with the OMS cohort I’m facilitating as they seek discernment about moving forward with a customary and vows in the Order of the Mustard Seed.
Loved this Jase, you vocalised something I have felt yet didn’t know what and how to express. You have worded it very eloquently. Thank you for reminding me, even though I ‘know’ better, that to love much and to be loved is not about effort, no matter how it is dressed up and well meaning. We must get a catch up soon. R
Agreed! I would suggest that the whole process is Spirit-led so we start with what the Spirit - the continuing voice of Jesus - is saying. The Spirit leads the discipleship pathway and shows us how to follow Jesus. All the spiritual practises serve this process...
Such wonderfully articulated and insightful thoughts. I’ve been having similar ones - including the idea that the very difficulties we experience (desolations), if worked through, (rather than engineered around, in ways like rules of faith) paying attention to body and spirit, and participating in how God is allowing us to ‘be with’ (rather than the dictates of what should be), draws us deeper into charism and earthed-spirit life, and thus the life God is drawing us to. Sometimes the way we can ‘be with’ looks very different and doesn’t fit into typical rules or rhythms of faith, and can be isolating. This, I wonder, is sometimes what leads people to leave faith communities, because this period of deeper listening and being with and practicing, doesn’t look familiar and is perhaps judged or simply not understood.
Anyhow, thanks for this considered language around a wonderful topic!
Hi Nina, thank you so much for taking the time to share this. Yes, we too often “engineer” a way through our own desolate states. So many times we hear that if we simply apply ourselves a little harder, practice a little more self-discipline or follow some “better rules,” we will resolve the spiritual emptiness inside us. And sometimes that does happen. But more frequently than not, it’s just a bypass around the true work of transformation.
It feels far more authentic to me — and certainly far more real — to choose instead to “be with” the state of being we find ourselves in.
And you nailed it again about feeling isolated. When our internal rhythms stop resembling the typical model of faith, we start to feel as though we are failing at best. In fact, at worst, we may be experiencing growth into deeper levels of understanding. It is little wonder that people disengage from their communities. How long do we expect someone to remain in a community when they believe that they are “listening deep within themselves,” yet everyone else believes they are walking away?
And as a pastor for 25 years, I noticed that many walk away from community with their desolation, not to attend to it, but to cover it over with sports, hobbies, and entertainment as a distraction from their souls. Or just into isolation as the manifestation of their desolation.
Some find more contemplative forms of faith that welcome and recognise desolations and have practices to explore.
Thanks for extending the ideas here. And great to see you at Waverley Abbey yesterday!
I love your content, but the AI images are a turnoff...
I think this is right to push back on treating spiritual life as a self-improvement project.
But there’s another risk on the other side.
If practices are framed mainly as receptivity, it becomes unclear where real ownership enters.
At some point, growth has to involve more than recognizing what God is already doing. It also has to involve choosing, consenting, and actually becoming something through those choices.
Otherwise you can end up with participation without authorship.
Which seems like a problem, because whatever we become should be something we can meaningfully own, not just something that happened to us
You are right that pure passivity is not the Christian life. If "receiving" collapses into something that simply happens to us, we lose responsibility, agency, and any meaningful sense of growth or ownership.
That is one reason why I have been trying to work with the language of participation rather than passivity, or, on the other hand, just programmed action. Participation holds together two things that are too easily pulled apart. On one hand, it resists the idea that we construct ourselves through effort or technique. On the other, it resists the idea that formation is something that happens to us without our consent or engagement. Participation is neither self-creation nor passivity. It is a responsive agency.
So there is ownership. But it is a different kind of ownership. Not "I built this version of myself," but rather "I have learned to say yes, again and again, to the life God is forming in me."
Thanks for reading and your thoughts!
Here’s my own adapted practice — imperfect but formative …
https://sivinkit.substack.com/p/seven-movements-of-renewal?r=149f7l&utm_medium=ios
Long time no speak! Thanks for reading Sivin and the link to your article.
What I particularly appreciated in it was your emphasis on understanding tentatio as an integral component of formation (not an interruption) — which has a lot to do with what many of us have experienced firsthand; i.e., that our struggles, battles, etc. are not interruptions to prayer, but rather are part of how God forms us through prayer.
Connecting that to my own thoughts, I wonder if there isn't another aspect of how we begin with ourselves before we enter into something like a rule of life? In other words, I find myself pondering whether we ever begin with anything less than a complete recognition/determination of who we are in Christ prior to entering into rules such as Oratio, Meditatio, Tentatio?
It seems to me that a rule of life — whether it be individual or communal — emerges most productively when it stems from a recognised charism: the specific way that Christ's life is presently developing in each person/community. Therefore, practice does not create life; it simply sustains and deepens the life that is already being developed for them.
This causes me to see a significant overlap here! It is not practices/practices (participation/participate), but practices rightly-ordered toward participation.
Thanks again1
Thank you this was so helpful and timely
Thanks for reading and sharing
Your welcome!
This might be one of the more important things I’ve read in my life. Thank you.
thankyou for letting me know that
Super helpful, Jason. Thank you. After reading I’m pondering of whether this concept of a rule of life as a charism that we tend also applies at the scale of a local church or even church tradition/movement.
What a great question. And the answer is, I believe, yes.
In the New Testament, especially in 1 Corinthians 12, charisms are not private possessions. They are gifts of the Spirit given for the building up of the Body. Which means from the beginning, charism is inherently ecclesial.
Across Christian history, charism has not only been recognised in individuals, but in communities, orders, and movements.
You see this very clearly in the rise of monastic and later religious life. The Rule of St Benedict is a structure that sustains a particular participation/charism in Christ’s life.
Then Francis of Assisi. He gave up everything he owned. He lived among the poor. He found God in birdsong and rainfall and broken people. Others saw something in the way he lived and wanted to follow. The Franciscan rule came along after all of that. It did not invent what Francis had found. It gave it a shape that could survive him.
Then there is Ignatius of Loyola. His thing was different. He learned to pay attention to what God was doing in ordinary life and to go wherever that led. The Jesuits grew out of that. Their practices, like the Spiritual Exercises, were simply ways of keeping that attentiveness sharp and passing it on to others who felt the same pull.
Thank you for taking time to reply with such a generous and thoughtful response. I am part of the vineyard tribe in Aotearoa/NZ and we are having a very extended conversation about the charism of our tradition. Your response is very helpful.
I have been to NZ many times and have many friends in the Vineyard. Be blessed in exploring your charism!
A great read, I especially felt happy to be affirmed in my own discoveries.
Wonderful :-)
One of the best explanations of a rule of life that I’ve seen! Thanks for articulating with clarity what many of us have experienced. I thought I was cheating when my customary stated the things I was already doing to maintain conditions where God could capture my imagination. I’d like to share this with the OMS cohort I’m facilitating as they seek discernment about moving forward with a customary and vows in the Order of the Mustard Seed.
Please do share, and thank you for reading and for your feedback.
Loved this Jase, you vocalised something I have felt yet didn’t know what and how to express. You have worded it very eloquently. Thank you for reminding me, even though I ‘know’ better, that to love much and to be loved is not about effort, no matter how it is dressed up and well meaning. We must get a catch up soon. R
Amen and yes!