Reflection on "Practicing the Way"
Reflection on "Practicing the Way"
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down --
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
-Mary Oliver, The Summer Day
When Bishop Craig Loya invited the diocese to join together in reading John Mark Comer’s book, Practicing the Way, I scheduled a book study in August. Little did I know…
This isn’t a book you just read. It has drawn me into an examination of my spiritual life and challenged me to consider how I spend my time. I started adding up all the little things I was doing that just passed minutes by each day, and those minutes added up! I deleted a couple of apps on my phone and am trying to discipline my use of Facebook. I’m finding ways to slow down and pay attention, with less time scrolling through meaningless reels. I’m evaluating my schedule with the question: Is this what I planned to do with my one wild and precious life?
Comer talks about the hunger of our souls, our longing for community, our longing for happiness and how we search for it. Previously I’ve written here about the epidemic of loneliness the surgeon general warned about in America. While Zoom kept us together a bit during Covid, many of us have become a people more accustomed to sound bites and texts than a lingering conversation in community over a meal. How often we do we see Jesus gathered around a table and sharing a meal?
Decades ago, when Jesus was just coming to my deeper attention I was deeply influenced by the book, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, by Eugene Peterson. Comer brought that book back to my attention, reminded me of the spiritual practices that form us into followers of the Way of Jesus as we seek to “be with Jesus, become like him, and do as he did.” Turning God into a habit, renewing my personal Rule of Life, transforming me into someone who becomes like Jesus, does what he did, loves like he loves us. Practicing the Way is transformational, and it takes a lifetime.
Practicing the Way isn’t meant to be read alone. It’s a community practice, a call to a way of life, a call to apprentice with Jesus. Jesus didn’t apprentice a person, he gathered a group around him and called them his disciples. They learned together by being with him. This book offers an invitation to do the same. It awakens our hunger for a deeper, more meaningful life. Jesus told us he was the bread of life, and if we eat his bread we will never hunger. Practicing the Way gathers us around Jesus’ table and provides us with the bread of life.
Blessings on your journey,
Deacon Pat
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