Faith Venture

He decided we would eat at one of those Brazilian steak houses where they bring new cuts of meat as long as your little token on the table is turned to green.

Turns out he is on a “keto” diet to lose weight. Only eats steak. One a day. Protein and fat. Has lost 30 lbs. Many are on a program where they count points penalizing for eating sugar-laden foods and fat. They lose weight. Many count calories. Obsess over counting. They all lose weight.

This all reminds me of the laws God gave Moses in order to organize the newly freed slaves into a new society. Ten commandments. (Quick, can you name them?) And maybe 612 more laws. Most were designed to keep the Hebrews alive in the desert. They worked at the time—mostly.

But the society institutionalized those laws. And added more. By the time of Jesus, a group called the Pharisees went around trying to get right with God by following every law plus others they made up. And they enjoyed pointing out the difference between themselves and others.

Jesus said that wouldn’t work. He said it’s about the heart. And following him. Not his laws. Him.

When I read Paul’s letter to his friends in Galatia, I glimpse what freedom from the law is. If our heart is right and we follow Jesus, then we don’t have to obsess over the laws. We just do what Jesus expects of us. It’s in our daily walk of life.

It is like weight. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Keep the pantry and refrigerator stocked with good, whole food. Don’t stock overly processed snacks and meats. Try this:

• Reduce portions
• Purchase “real” food at the grocery (no junk in the house)
• Eat slowly

Or as Dr. Michael Pollen put it:

• Eat food
• Not too much
• Mostly plants

In spiritual life:

• Reduce reading to real spiritual texts
• Center daily life on prayer and meditation
• Serve others

It doesn’t have to be complicated.

Best-selling author and screenwriter Steven Pressfield publishes a weekly newsletter called Writing Wednesdays. He often talks about the practice of being a creative. This is similar to the practice of entering a spiritual practice as we delve into a deeper spiritual life.

Recently he quotes a dance teacher, “This class is a practice. When you step inside this studio to dance, leave behind your fear, your competitiveness with others, your anger, your worry, your grudges, your complaints, your dissatisfaction with your lot, your greed for glory, your avarice for attention. You are here to dance as well as you can. Leave your ego and your problems outside.”

Pressfield adds his own advice:

In other words, when our motivation is grounded in our ego, we do not have a practice. Or to flip that statement on its head, the aim of a practice is effacement of the ego.

Whether we enter prayer, meditation, study, or even service, these are foundational words. Leave the ego behind—that part of us that seeks control and “me-first” attitudes.

This morning I am sitting at a table in a room full of tables populated with about 300 engineers. The presenters are talking about how to use digital data to transform product development and eventually business.

This is similar to our journey of developing and using spiritual practices—study, prayer, meditation, service, and the like.

When we pause and look back over our lives, we can observe how our practices have changed how we live. We have, so to speak, undergone a transformation from someone a little or a lot lost, directionless, drifting through life with the development and habits of our practices.

I have seen how many years of meditation, for example, have changed my inner workings from insecure and anxious to calmer (not perfect) with a broader understanding of people. I have learned tolerance and empathy.

It is never too late to begin a spiritual practice. Let the engineers talk about digital transformation. We can practice personal transformation. And it never ends.

[Side note: I just received a notification that 16 years ago today I started this blog on WordPress. That, in itself, was a transformation.]

Steve Jobs co-founded Apple Computer and led it to greatness. He famously picked up ideas from many sources. He was in the process of dropping out of Reed College when he heard about a calligraphy class. He audited it. That led to the innovative fonts and interfaces of the Macintosh.

He traveled to Japan to observe manufacturing. All the workers wore uniforms. He thought, if I wore the same thing everyday, I wouldn’t waste any time figuring out what to wear every day. Therefore his trademark black turtlenecks and jeans.

My first job entailed a lot of walking around the manufacturing facility. After a few years, I was “promoted” to a desk job in a rather small office area. I didn’t notice anything until April when our church league softball team began practicing. I could barely run from home to first base. From then on I got up a half-hour or more earlier and went outside to run. One little routine which evolved to run (outside where possible), weight training, Yoga in the mornings followed by sauna then start the day.

Following a hectic six-week period in February and March 2020, we moved to a new city and state the first week of the pandemic shutdown. No more gym, but up every morning to run or walk around my new environment. Be outside in nature. Birds and a variety of little furry critters. It was the routine of up, exercise, breakfast, contemplate and write every morning that kept me sane.

There are things you can do that you don’t have to waste time thinking about every morning. And now you are prepared for your day. 

I have followed and taught on the work on Spiritual Disciplines by Richard J. Foster and Dallas Willard. Some people call them Spiritual Practices due to negative connotations of the word discipline.

If you have tried to develop a regular practice of study, prayer, meditation, and silence and found it difficult to sit every day, or even every other day, then you have met what the writer Steven Pressfield calls The Resistance. He defines it in his classic book for creative people The War of Art.

He discussed it recently in his email newsletter. “We have a practice in order to confront and overcome Resistance. A practice by definition defeats Resistance because it produces work every day with total focus and dedication. And a practice is lifelong, so we know we’ll never quit.”

He explains further with thoughts that should help us in our own spiritual practice if we but infuse them into our lives:

I was years into the act of having a practice before I even thought about its efficacy as a strategy to overcome my own Resistance. Resistance was (and is) a given for me. It wakes up with me. I know I will have to face it every day, and I know it will never diminish or relent or go away. But I have a practice. That’s all I need to know. I know at a certain time of day I will go into a certain room. I will enter with a very specific mindset, i.e. “Leave your problems (and your ego) outside.” And I will engage in a very specific (though infinitely varied in the moment) enterprise. I have left Resistance outside as well. It is not allowed into the space where my writing practice takes place.