A Priest, a Doctor, and a Toddler
I’ve got a joke for you. A priest, a doctor, and a toddler walk into a bar… just kidding there is no punch line. Sometimes seemingly unrelated things coincide in life to help you see things more clearly. Over the past few days a book called Domestic Monastery, which has been on my reading list for over a year, a podcast called The Drive, thank you Karl for the recommendation, and walking Soren to his preschool class have all continued to crystalize the process of spiritual formation in my life.
In Domestic Monastery, Roman Catholic priest Ronald Rolheiser uncovered how one does not have to adopt the lifestyle of monks cloistered away in medieval monasteries to obtain deep communion with God. In his book, he helps us see how the ordinary rhythms of domestic life that most of us live can actually help form us more into the image of Jesus. I found great comfort in this short and easy read. In my last post, I mentioned how for the past several years I have been diving into the early church mothers and fathers and learning how they practiced contemplative spirituality. While much of what I have read has been helpful it has been easy to romanticize their lives. I often joke that if my family disappeared, dark, I know, I would probably become a monk or a hermit and reach a new level of enlightenment. If I am being honest I get very frustrated when my prayer time in the morning gets interrupted by a crying 2-year-old, or I have to cut it short because of an early meeting. Doesn’t everyone know I am communing with the living God, come on?! But reading Rolheiser’s book helped remind me that the Holy Spirit uses the ordinary routines of domestic life to form us into the image of Jesus, which is the end goal of Jesus’ disciples.
Speaking of end goals… that is where The Drive podcast by Dr. Peter Attia comes in. When I was at my sister’s wedding a few weeks ago I got to catch up with my good friend Karl. Karl is always reading and listening to interesting things. He mentioned this podcast because he has been diving into longevity. How can we live longer and healthier lives? He warned me that Dr. Attia kind of thinks he is God, but if you can get past that he has some really interesting and practical things you can take away from his show. In his practice, Dr. Attia has his patients start with their end goal in mind. What do they want to do when they are in their 70s, 80s, or 90s? Once those goals are established he comes up with a protocol to reverse engineer what they need to be doing in their 40s and 50s so they can do x,y, or z in their 90s.
This made me think about what kind of person I am becoming. If my desire is to look more like Jesus, what is the Spirit inviting me into today to help me along in the process? If I want to be bearing the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, well into the later decades of my life… how can I, in partnership with God, reverse engineer my life in a way that creates and environment where the Spirit can cultivate and bare fruit in my life?
What set of practices have I adopted?
What rhythms am I living into?
How are these practices forming me?
Are they helping or taking away from my discipleship to Jesus?
These are all things that I think many of us, myself included, don’t give much thought to. If we do think about them at all, it may be more about our career or physical health than the health of our soul and our life with God. This leads me to my third and final point.
This morning I was walking Soren to his preschool class. He no longer wants to be carried. He insists on walking. Which is great if we aren’t in a hurry. This morning I was in a hurry, but he wasn’t. He stopped to examine every plant, every pebble, and every insect. A walk that should have taken about 10 seconds took well over five minutes. My natural tendency is to scoop him up and carry him to class. But this morning I didn’t. This morning our walk to class was a spiritual discipline. The ordinary domestic task of walking to class was a practice in patience, a fruit of the Spirit, which is something I want to cultivate as I grow older. The Spirit used my toddler’s spirit of wonder and exploration to cause me to pause and ask myself what kind of person I want to become. How can this ordinary task help form me into that kind of person? Am I willing to submit to the process or do things my way?
Thanks to a priest, a doctor, and my toddler the Spirit has helped me see how the smallest and most ordinary things can be used by God to help form us more into his image. So, I pray that this week you may begin to pause and ask yourself and God what kind of person you want to become. And then be open to how the Spirit is inviting you to partner with him as he grows and forms you more into the image of Jesus through the most ordinary things.
Grace and peace till we rise in glory.
