Spiritual Practice and Seasons of the Soul

For several reasons I'm thinking about spiritual practices. Three days into Lent, it's hard not to consider fasting, prayer, and other spiritual exercises that might carry me up to Good Friday and Resurrection.

When persons ask me which spiritual practices are most important or are at the core, I usually am able to tell them about those that have been most helpful in opening my life to God, those that have most moved me toward a deeper attentiveness to God, self, others, and the world. I also have the benefit of hearing the stories of many, many people who engage in some kind of spiritual discipline, and their testimonies are helpful in thinking about core practices.

But whether with an single person or with a group, I generally try to be careful about prescribing spiritual practices as if one size fits all. Most of the time, I'll work through a process with the person or group and try to help them come to a sense of which practices are appropriate and nourishing for their unique relationship with God at that particular point in time.

I've had the opportunity to work this discernment process with a couple of groups lately. There is something organic about it that seems to resonate with persons. It is not a way to be let "off the hook," so to speak, so that spiritual practices become arbitrary or so that a person can be dismissive of them. Rather, it is a way of honoring the uniqueness of each persons connection to God, as well as honoring the different demands that a person's life-situation might make at a given time.

For instance, I try to help folks get in touch with what they are currently doing to nourish their souls. "What do you do right now that nourishes your soul?" I ask them to list as many as possible. I deliberately use the language of "nourishing your soul," because people don't automatically go to the usual spiritual disciplines. So things like, "walk the dog" and "read poetry" and "work in my garden" start showing up on lists. It makes conscious the daily, everyday things we do to keep our souls alive. I typically ask persons to notice what surprises them on their list. Most of us have two or three things on our "soul-nourishing" list that we didn't think was very spiritual. It's a nice surprise to find them there.

Next, I ask persons to list those spiritual practices in which they are currently engaged, things like prayer, fasting, worship, study, sabbath, etc. Put these on a paper, regardless of the frequency with which you do them. For instance, there are some practices that are daily for me. There are others that are weekly, others monthly, and others I address annually.

Then I ask folks to look at their list of spiritual practices and to evaluate their faithfulness to each practice. It's asking, "And how's that practice working for you?" We say that this practice is our intention, but then realize that it may or may not be opening us more deeply to God. Most of us have lists of spiritual practices that we don't actually practice or that have lost their effectiveness for us because we are in a different place now than when we began the practice. This discernment process clears out the clutter. It also can break up some strongholds of guilt, especially if we have a list full of spiritual practices that we no longer practice. Breaking up the guilt and shame that comes from feeling like a spiritual failure is a major healing toward having a life-giving relationship with God.

In the most crucial part of the process, I ask people to spend some quiet time with this question: "What season is it right now in your life? What is the season of your soul?" In other words, are you in the freshness and flourescence of spring? Are you in the heat and luminosity of summer? Are your leaves falling off as autumn? Do you feel dry and dark, with your growth taking place below the surface like winter? Where are you?

When I do this exercise for myself, sometimes I identify a season . . . and sometimes I identify a particular month of the year for myself at that time . . . once I even felt like God was saying a very specific date as the place where my soul was at that moment.

The season is important for a couple of reasons. First, the season in which I find myself can determine which practices I undertake. In the winter, for instance, I can't stand much rigor, so I have to give myself permission to do less. This happens for me when I'm in chemotherapy. I simply understand that for a period of time I'll have to do less. And it's okay. In the spring I may engage more. In the summer I may have still more energy for spiritual disciplines.

You'll notice, then, that this means I'll want to pause often to notice my own soul's landscape, to discern my own season. Very often, those spiritual practices I'm not currently faithful to are carry-overs from another season of life. They were appropriate at one time, but they are not nourishing or appropriate now. So I take them off the list.

The question I ask about which practices to undertake for the current season of life is, "What spiritual practices will sustain me in this season? What practices will nourish me in this season?"

The season is also important, especially for groups, because it helps us to see that we are all in different places. Small share groups or support groups, as well as large study groups, can hear others say, "I'm in spring," and "I'm in the fall," even as they themselves are in the winter. To prescribe one set of spiritual practices that would fit everyone leads only to guilt and can diminish the uniqueness of each person.

If you ask, "What about accountability?" I'll answer that it's very possible -- and helpful -- to be accountable to one another, and accountability can very easily happen without everyone carrying the same list of disciplines. I am invited to be accountable for my disciplines and you are invited to be accountable for your disciplines. We don't have to carry the same list to be accountable, but we can support one another, pray for one another, and hear the struggles we share in keeping our covenants.

My friend Peter has written an excellent essay (he calls it a blogpost, I call it an essay) on this understanding of spiritual practice. His images are very helpful. I encourage you to read more at his blog:

http://edensong.blogspot.com/2010/02/tending-garden-of-soul.html