Personal Disciplines and Communal Practice (Video)

Recently, I had the chance to speak to some of the leadership of the church I serve about moving from a deciding body to a discerning body. In an effort to guide the group toward discernment, there are both personal disciplines and communal practices. This video was an effort to teach different disciplines and practices.

You may not care to watch this entire video, I do not blame you - I don’t like to listen to me, too. However, if you are interested in some of the disciplines and practices, I have put minute marks below for your reference.

• Description of the soul - 1:00

• Discipline vs. Practice - 3:00

• Difference between prayer, contemplation, meditation - 4:00

• Why we would rather choose to decide than discern - 9:00

• The discipline of breath prayer - 11:00

• The discipline of centering prayer - 12:30

• The discipline of the Jesus Prayer - 16:00

• The disciplines of contemplation 23:40

• The Examen - 24:45

• Lectio Divina - 27:00

• The disciplines of meditation - 29:00

• Parable of The Useless Tree 30:30

• Prayer for indifference - 35:40

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I hope this teaching is helpful for you to either participate in these disciplines and practices or at the very least give you something to push against and discover your own Lenten disciplines and practices. (These minute marks and links are also in the comments of the video on Youtube.)

The Telos and The Scopos

The second chapter of John Cassian’s work entitled “The Conferences of Desert Fathers” begins with Abba Moses expressing the following:

All the arts and sciences, said he (Moses), have some goal or mark; and end or aim of their own, on which the diligent pursuer of each has his eye, and so endures all sorts of toils and dangers and losses, cheerfully and with equanimity.

Then in chapter four Moses is to have said:

The end of our profession indeed, as I said, is the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven; but the immediate aim or goal, is purity of heart, without which no one can gain that end: fixing our gaze then steadily on this goal, as if on a definite mark, let us direct our course as straight towards it as possible, and if our thoughts wander somewhat from this let us revert to our gaze upon it, and check them accurately as by a sure standard, which will always bring back all our efforts to this one mark, and will show at once if our mind has wandered ever so little from the direction marked out for it.

Abba Moses taught the end is the kingdom of God while the goal is purity of heart. What that means is that Abba Moses thought that in order to reach the end (Kingdom of God) we must focus on the goal (purity of heart). We cannot reach the Kingdom of God without purity of heart but if we have purity of heart we are more likely to reach the Kingdom of God.

The difference in the telos and the scopos is made clearer by the Stoic Arius who said that the scopos is the target we shoot for while the telos is hitting the target. I think of it like a golfer hitting the ball is scopos while the cup is the telos.

The UMC spends a lot of her time working to achieve the end (make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world) and we are failing. Not because it is an incorrect ends/telos (although we only adopted this mission statement in full just twelve years ago), but because paradoxically we are more likely to hit the target if we focus on our scopos, not our telos. A golfer is more likely able to land the ball near the cup (telos) if they focus on hitting the ball (scopos). In fact taking your eyes off the ball and looking at the cup is a detriment to actually getting the ball into the cup! The golfer who focuses on the ball (scopos) and not the cup (telos), has to trust that by doing so they will get closer to their telos.

Many in the universal Church are fascinated at landing the ball in the cup that there is little time given to focus on the stance, ball, swing and follow through.

Focusing on making disciples for the transformation of the world then is like focusing on the cup and not on the ball. We are focused on the scorecard and not on the swing. We are focused on something that, regardless of its virtue, decreases our chances to actually land the ball well.

Rather than focusing on the end, the cup, the making disciples, I wonder if we were to shift our eyes and focus on that which will be more helpful to reach the same ends? What if were to take the advice of Abba Moses and have the goal of purity of heart. Or perhaps Jesus who said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Matthew 5:8)

It is my conviction that pastors are much more interested in cultivating the heart of a person than to make a disciples, because a disciple can still betray and deny Jesus, but one who is the heart of Christ cannot do anything but love like Christ. What would a Church look like if we were to focus on cultivating purity of heart?

“But”, Richard Beck says, “hearts aren’t easily changed. You can’t change hearts with pep talks, protests, podcasts, Facebook rants, tweets, or a really good sermon. Hearts require spiritual formation through habits and practices that directly address the social and psychological dynamics at work that keep us from seeing and welcoming each other.”

Slave, Hired Hand, Friend - Relating to God

So many in the world now are experiencing a level of cloistering that we never imagined. We are all looking for “coping” mechanisms and hacks to navigate this new sense of being isolated. For Christians, there is a deep tradition of social distant practices which we in the Protestant world have sort of misunderstood and eschewed. Those are the practices developed by the Abbas/Ammas of the deserts of Syria and Egypt. These proto-monastics have many stories of how to be in relationship with one another and with God while practicing social distancing.

For those of us new to the disciplines of silence, solitude and mystery, it may be tempting to consider how we relate to God before we engage in these practices. Because how we understand our relationship with God, influences how we practice these disciplines. I find the Gregory of Nyssa had a decent way to think about different stages of how we relate to God.

First we could serve God or practices these disciplines out of fear, like a slave would do. Fear that if we do not then God will be displeased and we will bear the wrath of the Master. Gregory goes on to say that rather than that of a slave, sometimes we serve God or practices these disciplines like a hired hand looking for a reward or payment.

Perhaps you have experienced or seen these ways of being in relationship with God. That we should do things so that we don’t get punished or that we should do things for a heavenly reward. The motivation to do things in service for God may be motivating but it also dismisses how the incarnated God known as Jesus, calls us friend.

This is where Gregory suggests we should be serving God and practicing the disciplines - out of friendship with God. Out of pure love of God like that of a child who identifies God as their parent.

So this season of practicing different disciples, consider do you feel like you are slave, hired hand or friend of God. And do not forget that only one of those is Good News.

Deciding and Discerning Distinction

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In church world, we often do not make the distinction between deciding and discerning. For the most part we favor the word deciding over discernment - if we use that word at all.

To “decide” means to cut away. When we make a decision we cut away the options we do not want or like or deem less appealing. When we decide we tend to assign a judgement or an evaluation of that which we decided against. Once we decide, we consider our choice good and the thing we cut away as less than good or perhaps bad.

To “discern” means to to separate. Separating is value neutral. That is when we separate our laundry we are not saying that “darks” are good and “lights” are bad. We are just separating things into piles. Discerning is a value neutral process where we separate out that which is discovered.

Discernment is like panning in a river. We pull many things from the living waters and look and sort. We may think we are only looking for gold, but when we sort things out we may discover other beautiful things. These beautiful things may not be what was originally sought, however these beautiful things are retained. We do not call the other rocks “bad” or “unworthy.” We only sort in order to see clearly. If we assign some value to things as we sort, then we are not discerning we are deciding.

Discerning is non-threatening and requires patience. We tend to place a premium on having a decisive mind that we fail to appreciate the value, joy and faithfulness the discerning heart.