Years ago, I sat in a staff meeting at a church I was serving; the purpose of the meeting was to talk about how we could attract more people to join the church. At one point someone counted the requirements for church membership that were already in place and made the startling discovery that somewhere between five and nine time commitments per week were required of those who wanted to become church members!
Outwardly, I tried to be supportive of the purpose for the meeting, but on the inside I was screaming, Who would want to sign up for this? I was already becoming aware of CFS (Christian fatigue syndrome) in my own life and couldn’t imagine willingly inflicting it on someone else.
The clarity that dawned in this moment caused me to start being a little more honest about what my own Christian life had been reduced to. While I was trying harder and doing more, there was a yawning emptiness underneath it all that no amount of activity, Christian or otherwise, could fill. It made no difference at all that I had been a Christian all of my conscious life, that I had been in vocational Christian ministry since early adulthood or that I was busy responding to what appeared to be God-given opportunities to become involved in many worthy causes. The more I refused to acknowledge the longing for more, the deeper and wider the emptiness became—until it threatened to swallow me up.
In the midst of such barrenness, it was hard to imagine what Jesus might have meant when he said, “I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10, NRSVScripture quotations marked (NRSV) are taken from the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition, copyright © 1989, 2021 The National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.). My responses to sermons and devotional reflections on this verse were cynical at best. The Christian life just didn’t feel that way to me. To make matters worse, it was hard to know where to go to talk about such uncomfortable realities. Life in and around the Christian community does little to help us attend to our longings, to believe that deep within there is something essential that needs to be listened to, or to offer much hope that our deepest longings could take us somewhere good. At times the deeper longings of our heart are dismissed as mere idealism—beyond the realm of possibility this side of heaven. At other times, subtle fear or outright discomfort arises in the face of such expressions of our humanity. The emphasis on human depravity in many religious circles makes it hard to know whether there is anything in us that can be trusted.
My first response to this dawning awareness was to try tweaking my schedule, learning how to say no more decisively, adopting new time management tools. But there comes a time when desire is so deep that mere tweaking is not enough. Finally I just gave in to it all, making the choice to radically reorder my life to listen to the longings of my heart and arrange my life for spiritual seeking.
What transpired was a time of utter openness, of questioning almost everything, of letting many of the outward trappings of my life—particularly my spiritual life—fall away until the deepest longings, those that are embedded in the very essence of our humanity, began to be revealed in all of their raw beauty and power. The longing for significance . . . the longing to belong . . . the longing for deep and fundamental change . . . the longing for a way of life that works . . . the longing to connect experientially with Someone beyond ourselves . . . these longings led me to search out spiritual practices—sacred rhythms, if you will—that promised something more. A way of life in God that felt more like flourishing than barely hanging on.
One of the most hopeful and disconcerting things about the spiritual life is that we cannot transform ourselves (or anyone else for that matter!) and neither do we have God in our back pockets so as to force God’s hand in any way. But what we can do is arrange our lives around a rhythm of spiritual practices that keep us open and available to the kind of intimacy with God that transforms us utterly.
When we are in touch with our deepest longings (instead of being completely distracted by surface wants and desires), a whole different set of choices opens up. Rather than being motivated by guilt and obligation—as in “I really ought to have a quiet time” or “I really should pray more”—we are compelled to seek out ways of living that are congruent with our deepest desires. Sometimes this feels risky, and it often opens up a whole new set of questions, but this is fundamentally what the life is all about: choosing a way of life that opens us to the presence of God in the places where our truest desires and deepest longings stir. The discovery of a life-giving way of life in God is available to all of us as we become more honest in naming what isn’t working so that we can live into a way of life that is more congruent with what we say we really want.
The journey begins as we learn to pay attention to our desire in God’s presence, allowing our desire to become the impetus for deepening our spiritual journey. It really can’t be any other way; if we skip this part of the process, our attempts at cultivating sacred rhythms will be nothing more than another program we enter into on the basis of external prodding or superficial motivations. Jesus invited us to stay with his questions, “What do you want me to do for you? What do you seek?” for as long as it takes to land on something solid within ourselves and discover what it is we really want. Psalm 37:4 indicates that there are true desires of the heart God longs to meet. After we have settled into our desires and named them in God’s presence then we are ready to be guided into the spiritual practices that will open us to receive what our heart is longing for.
The process of beginning to cultivate our own rhythm of spiritual practices that contributes to human flourishing begins with attending to our desire, noticing what words, phrases, and prayers seem to most consistently capture our sense of longing for God and for spiritual transformation as we are experiencing it these days. How bad do I want it? Am I willing to rearrange my life for what my heart most wants? We then express our willingness to God directly and acknowledge the mystery of spiritual transformation and our powerlessness to bring it about. It is important to know, really know, that spiritual transformation at this level is pure gift as we make ourselves available to God. Otherwise our rhythm of spiritual practices can become nothing more than a spiritual self-help program that is full of human effort.
Then we take time to listen to our experiences with spiritual practices. We reflect on our experiences with various spiritual disciplines and invite God to show us which have been most life giving and have resulted in true life change. We take note of those times when it seemed as if God met us in the context of our practices and of the transformation that resulted. We take note of which disciplines were most stretching for us as well. Which spiritual practices and relationships have seemed to be most powerful in meeting the desires of my heart? The next step is to begin developing a plan based on these reflections. What am I beginning to understand about my minimum daily/weekly/monthly requirements for ongoing spiritual formation? Which disciplines do I know I need to engage in regularly as a way of offering myself to God steadily and consistently? We ask God for his guidance in putting together a rhythm of spiritual practices that will meet our desire for life-giving connection with him and authentic spiritual transformation. It’s important to give thought to the disciplines practiced in solitude, disciplines related to life in our body, and disciplines related to life in community.
We take into account the limits and opportunities of our life stage, our personality, our current circumstances, asking questions such as the following:
We will also need to make practical arrangements, which may include communicating with those with whom we live and work. Such arrangements might include the following considerations:
Once we have crafted a plan that is concrete and specific, we commit ourselves to it prayerfully out of our desire for God rather than a sense of duty or obligation. Remember, a personal rule of life is a means of opening ourselves in a consistent manner to God’s transforming work in us.
Then we can periodically take time to notice. As we enter into this new way of living, we can feel free to explore and experiment with our rhythms and make adjustments along the way. After about six months, it’s good to take some extended time in God’s presence to notice how it is going and whether some larger adjustments need to be made. Every time we go through a major life change (getting married, having children, taking on a new job, retiring, moving, having surgery), we do well to reevaluate so as to make adjustments that are realistic for our new situation.
Desire has its own rhythms. Sometimes it ebbs, and sometimes it flows. But in the end it is the deepening of desire and the discipline to arrange our life around our desire that carries us from the shallow waters of superficial human wanting into our soul’s flourishing in the very depths of God. Sometimes the tide brings us closer in to the shore and the soul frolics in the waves. But increasingly we find our life to be hidden in the depths of God, and whatever is seen on the surface springs up from those depths full of beauty and I don’t know about you, but I yearn for the freedom and beauty of a life that is completely oriented to the reality of God. I long to experience my soul hidden and content in the very depths of God, so that what is seen on the surface is transformed and energized by what takes place in those depths. The choice to orient our life to God’s transforming presence is always ours; sacred rhythms help us to say yes to this desire, day by day by day.
Ruth Haley Barton is founding president of the Transforming Center (www.thetransformingcenter.org), a ministry dedicated to caring for the souls of pastors and Christian leaders. A trained spiritual director (Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation), teacher, and retreat leader, she is the author of numerous books and resources on the spiritual life, including Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership, Sacred Rhythms, and Invitation to Solitude and Silence.