We long for more. We are constantly told there is more. Spiritual Formation practices are often sold as a perfect solution, until we realize that we bring our fallible selves along for the ride. I want to discuss the problems our selves pour into the journey of Spiritual Formation. Then I will offer a vantage point on attaining the experience of what I call more, that enjoys, and calls upon, a biblical anthropology situated in culture and community. First, join me as I turn sharply into a description of the visceral sensations of mountain biking.
I forget my separateness from the world. I cannot feel distracted, irritable, or lonely. I can’t notice the chronic pain in my back, and I certainly don’t think those ugly thoughts about myself. It’s a type of bliss mingled with adrenaline. I feel the squirmy turn of the tires and the crunch of leaves. I’m lost in a moment where the trees and dirt enthrall my senses, and I glance the nearest branch and whip past it. I can’t stop to ponder, because I am already deeply engaged. My faculties seem taught and simultaneously relaxed as I weave left, then right to avoid the rocks, and skip tree roots. It is the “miracle of immersion,” or being so caught up in an active, reciprocal — body-bike-ground — process, that I cannot be consumed by anything else. I don’t want to do anything else; I am ‘in.’ And importantly, I know what to do next, because it just fits. Everything my body has learned about bikes and these sensations becomes automatic. It is life-giving.
I am describing the state of flow (particularly as I experience it on a mountain bike, weaving down steep terrain), and how we live in response to it. We have all felt flow. It is the moments where consciousness of tasks and the effort to sustain them leaves our purview. It is freedom, if you will — or capture if you prefer — of the senses into the process of living as an embodied person. Flow is a neurological and physical experience that absorbs our attention into the present. Where has flow emerged for you? Let us be honest here, it is often not in the places commonly approved of in church circles. Cooking, art, making, reading, laughing, sport, sex, hunting, dating, hosting, drinking, raging, driving…? Over time, we increasingly turn to the activities we have enjoyed, where we have felt flow as I have discussed it above.
The Problem of Automatic Formation
Unfortunately, flow is rare compared to the humdrum of life. Without absorption in a state of flow and lives that often face the tedious “already-and-not-yet” of awaiting Jesus, we are often bored, unengaged, or at very least, easy to distract. This isn’t new to you, and you know your biology is highly attentional and reactionary. You perceive, attend, and react to things all day long. However, Matthew Crawford, author of “The world beyond your head,” explains that the structures that once organized our attention and answered, “What is to be done next?” are being eroded on-mass in an individualistic-technologized culture.
We participate less in organizations (church, unions, common interest groups) and activities (cooking, corporate worship, face-to-face conversations) that structure our attention in “narrow and highly structured patterns of attention” — what Crawford calls — “ecologies of attention.” People thrive in ecologies of attention where the structure tells you what to do next. Why? Because we don’t live with states of flow and habit teaching us what is next. Just think how easy it is to complete the task of brushing your teeth. You don’t think, brushing has its own ecology of attention. Yet as we spend more time bored and unmoored from the ecologies that shape how to spend our time, money, and energy, we become prime targets of another phenomenon that Matthew Crawford names — the Choice Architects. The Choice Architects are master marketeers, driven by economics. Harry Frankfurt an American philosopher provides insightful analysis on the Choice Architects in his book called “On Bullsh*t,” suggesting they are “exquisitely sophisticated craftsman who — with the help of advanced and demanding technology of market research, public opinion polling, psychological testing, and so forth — dedicate themselves tirelessly to getting every word and image they produce exactly right.” In other words, they just get you to do what they want.
Most of the time we aren’t in a state of flow, instead we are discontent, and fantasizing (often searching) for easier meals, better houses, sexier abs, compliant kids, a family vacay like the Marshalls, and that cool new pulsing massage gun-thing. As we long for more, we start our search by looking to friends, culture, and our array of favorite websites and social media. We want to be discerning consumers, but research by psychologists such as Brad Strawn and Warren Brown show that conscious deliberations are not the primary driving force of our behavior — moment-to-moment unconscious habits, emotions, and appraisals are.
Consider then, the power of the Choice Architects to form our minds and habits in our current context: Liu, White, and Dumais, found web browsing data that suggests we often switch internet pages every 10 seconds, and Ellingson, who published a study titled “Social Media and the Self,” found high usage of social media scatters concentration, impacts memory, and lowers empathy and emotional maturity. To make matters worse, Mason, Brown, Mar, and Smallwood have discussed in “Driver of Discontent or Escape Vehicle” how this type of absentmindedness is associated with discontent, which is the opposite of our goal.
Ironically, pursuing gratitude would help us, as Elosúa has demonstrated in “The influence of gratitude in physical, psychological, and spiritual well-being,” how higher gratitude is strongly related to life satisfaction. And building on gratitude, Aker, Rudd, and Mogilner report in their paper titled “If money doesn’t make you happy, consider time,” that spending your time well improves the experience of life. Neurobiologically speaking, our brain is wired towards discontentment as we give away our time and attention, and ignore our bodies and the goodness all around. So, when the Marshalls’ vacay pics go up on social media you ‘mentally salivate,’ but then you are ultimately making yourself hungrier.
We need to rewind our lives to see the whole picture. Shults and Sandage have laid out in “Transforming spirituality” that life is a complex web of social systems that exert influence over your life. This means that before you even heard of social media your brain and automatic appraisals were being formed in critical ways. You also exert influence on the broad systems, but your influence is relatively minor due to the momentum and meaning embedded within family, church, society, and history.
The systems of our lives tell us how to think, what to value, what to do. This is a bigger version of ecologies of attention if you will. In “Socialization and the Sanctuary” Brendsel points out that the new Christian converts in Corinth provide a great example of this reality. Amidst these Corinthians continuing their sexual and immoral practices post-conversion, Brendsel notes, “It is their everyday, culturally conditioned walk that clarifies, crystalizes, and, we can add, cultivates their fleshliness, their foolishness, their thrall to the wisdom of the world.” Cultures have always been marked by heritage in such a way that their peoples’ lives testify to the culture’s values and views. We are no different; the pulses of the American dream, autonomy, self-discovery, approval, sexualized validation, and wealth are all around. We do this because our cultural story (and the choice architects) tells us these are the important things, the formative things, the validating things.
While pursuing the pleasures of modern American life many of us ignore the embodied cost of living counter to the kingdom. We don’t notice the toll of ignoring embodied life.
While pursuing the pleasures of modern American life many of us ignore the embodied cost of living counter to the kingdom. We don’t notice the toll of ignoring embodied life. Shame is ignored, next morning’s hangover is justified, the disappointment of loneliness submerged, and the freedom of confession and assurance avoided. The longing for love and acceptance ripples through us, but it is dismissed as we indulge the idols set before us by the choice architects. Thankfully, your Christian life and your personal God, offer you a new ecology of attention where you can respond to life giving love and experience more.
Addressing Active Formation
How did the Apostle Paul get the Corinthians out of their mire? He oriented them back to what seemed foolish (1 Corinthians 1:27). Following Paul, Chandler in her book “Christian spiritual formation” reminds us that love is “the essence of God’s character and personality, proceeding from the Father as demonstrated by the Son through the work of the Holy Spirit, which unconditionally upholds the highest good of others and fosters the same altruism and benevolence in human relationships without regard for personal sacrifice.”
Love is offered by the King as we are invited to approach in confession, with full assurance of pardon (1 John 1:9). Confession lifts our eyes to a bigger horizon, to the bigger story of redemptions and the kingdom. Through confession we pay attention to embodied life in the kingdom where choices matter, and there is an acknowledgment of consequences (Genesis 3:22-23). There is no better remedy for bitter shame and derision than the quieting love of the King, for his love has delt with the offense, the desire of our hearts, the need for protection, and the desire to experience worth (Genesis 15; Zephaniah 3:17; Romans 10:9-13). The prodigal found it (Luke 15), David knew it (Psalm 51), we need it, and the Lord supplies it.
When shame, pain and loneliness are your company, come like the woman who wept as the Pharisee’s cried “sinner.” Weep at Jesus feet. Let him say, “Your sins are forgiven … go in peace.” The lived acts of confession and assurance are embodied—your body, your attention, your gratitude to the Lord is entwinned. It feels good, and so it should. Tolkien got it right when he helped us see through Aragorn, “The hands of the king are the hands of a healer.”
Have you struggled to experience the kind and healing hands of the King? I have, and it is common. We are called to embody the King to one another (1 Peter 2:21), because our bodies learn from the old experiences, the old ecologies, the old architects, and we need a new experience. It is no accident the King became embodied — he did so to meet us in our own. To gain our physiological attention in a new ecology, and to provide for our embodied reality.
The church is called to nothing less than to physically, relationally, and emotionally meet one another as Jesus did the “sinner” woman (Luke 7). Meeting one another means to hear with empathy and respond slowly as someone unfolds their stories and their pain before you. Truly meeting, is providing comfort before new direction. It means not judging, dictating, or provoking, but attending and noting patterns and connections. Then loving challenge may come. Strawn and Brown are clear in their work “Enhancing Christian Life” that if we don’t do this, we inadvertently assist the old ecologies that shaped a brain and body to automatically fear judgement, condemnation, and humiliation.
Implications for Spiritual Formation
Here I want to turn from noting how vital our attention, bodies, and relational interactions are, towards a discussion of the implications for Spiritual Formation — our becoming ever more like Christ.
Commonly, we hear that we are to love better, read the Bible, be the church, and formation will come. But the prior discussion lays the foundation for how to make these changes just as Paul did for the Corinthians. Paul showed the Corinthians, and we have noticed that we must shape attention ecologies that order our fleeting desires and help us sift through automatic cultural paradigms and popular choices. I suggest this is a necessary and often neglected part of our calling to stir up one another to love and good works, and aiding one another not to continue in sin (Hebrews 10:24-26).
Imagine kingdom communities with ecologies of attention and shaping architects that enliven us to joyful and faithful kingdom life. Such communities will facilitate the same conditions that sustained David (Psalm 42:4-5, 55:13-14), consistent relational-reciprocal-shaping that provides comfort, and supports us towards life with the King. I want to remind us of (and expand our thinking around) two key components of kingdom life that mightily influence ecologies of attention, remind us of the kingdom, and comfort us through trials: embodied friendship and liturgical communities. They are critical as we long for more.
Embodied Friendship
We have forgotten our embodied lives. Consider how odd (or at least different) David and Jonathan can appear to modern America (1 Samuel 20:41), and how uncomfortable we would become with Jesus’ expressions of anger and sorrow (Matthew 23:25, John 11:35) if we were to see it in our churches! Embodied friendships require us to take life within our body seriously. The first way to do this is allowing your body to inform you about your life. When answering the question “How are you really doing?” people often numb out, think about it, see a counselor, and often lie. Instead, sit for a moment and attend to your felt experience, alongside appraising the day objectively. Your bodily state and experience will tell you far more than our culture commonly believes. When friends accept an embodied life and join in caring for what you notice in this process, your true state becomes safe and meaningful. For example, you may objectively have a great day, but notice the tightness throughout your body that comes when you are anxious. Sharing this full picture allows you to examine what is truly going on in your ecologies of attention, temptations from the choice architects, and all the other factors in your life. When we accept ourselves and others in this full experience we are known and accepted, just like David and Jonathan. This is lifegiving because this it mirrors how we are loved by the King.
Sadly, embodied people in friendships have a problem, and Strawn and Brown describe it well in their book “Liturgical Animals.” They state that: “Many churches teach that what is believed about the creeds, Scripture, and so forth, not only forms the person but also motivates Christian behavior. Again, the process of formation becomes to fill persons up with the right kinds of beliefs so they will live rightly. The consequences here are that Christianity becomes understood primarily as an intellectual assent to a set of propositional beliefs, which among other problems, reduces Christianity to something accessible outside of the church”. As we have explored, what captures your attention and pre-sets your choices forms your habits, appraisals, and ultimately informs your actions. We need interactions that guide our attention, experientially show and teach us what is important, and engage our bodies to learn habits of a new community.
Embodied friendships entail being physically present with others, just like the early church (Acts 2:46). This way we are shaped by holistic experience and not just ideas. Some intentional friendship ideas: share how you really feel and think about yourself; ask how they are really treating their family and why; ask if they feel lonely, confused or helpless in any part of their life; notice when a friend seems like they are projecting their view of Jesus rather than engaging Jesus as he is; hug them; cook together; talk about, financial choices, sex, dating, medical concerns; ask for help; do physical activities together; check on them—don’t make excuses. All of these embodied actions create learning feedback loops that impact appraisals, character, and attention.
Strawn and Brown urge us to recognize that the church is beautifully positioned to form new ecologies of attention with thick relationships because of its purpose: to bear witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ as it is constituted by God’s people in their acts of worship. Exploring the potential of the church for formation, Strawn and Brown comment, “Formation will not happen when merely sitting in proximity to one another in weekly church services. Congregants must be purposeful in their willingness to engage and respond to each other.” What could this look like? Join in more vibrantly with current liturgies because they form ecologies of attention. They help you and those next to you focus. Engage so that others notice your engagement and are invited to what is important. You may even notice a collective experience of flow, where you are joined together in habit forming joy. Collaboratively, the acts of embodied worship (songs, prayers, confessions, creeds, community groups, men’s/women’s meetings, bible studies, meals, funerals, parties, service days…) form your habits, expectations, and choices.
Liturgical Communities
Liturgical communities are groups that agree (and allow their embodied selves) to be viscerally reminded, encouraged, impacted, and led by one another. They become Christian liturgical communities, and highly formative, when they direct their purposes and activities towards the Kingdom so that habits are formed, appraisals are changed, and authentic engagement arises. Again, the early church displayed these qualities in a manner few churches experience today. For those in Corinth, Paul outlines the beauty of a diversely gifted body living intimately with collective purpose and organized by loving commitment (1 Corinthians 12-13).
Embodied, agreeing, and mutually impacting communities are the New Testament expectation (Colossians 3:16, 1 Timothy; Titus 1:13-16). Of course, we must remember that these communities are messy, speak about the hard and shameful, love intentionally, and certainly allow for mistakes. Our experiential collectives organize life under the reign of the King. To participate you need to bring an embodied self that is willing to feel (or at least try), share, be cared for, be honest, and forgo the lies of the choice architects and the flesh.
The paradigm for Spiritual Formation isn’t just spiritual disciplines behind closed doors, it’s open doors and corporate life. First, anchor yourself in a liturgical and formative community by returning to your church home with intentionality and consistency. Second, join in with the full range of church life even if it’s not your comfort zone. Third, be creative in extending liturgical life towards the New Testament example. For example, what if liturgies were said facing one another in an experience of embodied unity? Or, you regularly invited people into your home to share in meal prep, and consumption, as you ask how they experience Christ in their life? Or, you created a practice of writing, and sharing laments, and praying for the authors. Or, set up screen time accountability in Sunday school groups? Get creative, what does formative liturgical community look like in your context?
The paradigm for Spiritual Formation isn’t just spiritual disciplines behind closed doors, it’s open doors and corporate life.
To become Christlike, to experience more, I suspect we must start by putting down our phones, reducing online communication, asking one another better questions, care expressively, and lovingly create patterns of worship and embodied friendship that shape our attention and choices. Our culture and our temptations are changing, but the calling on the church remains the same. We have models, and a history displayed in scripture. So, do you long for more, the feeling of flow, connectivity, and joy? How might the Lord be challenging you to engage formation in new, and communal ways?
Paul Loosemore is an assistant professor of counseling at Covenant Theological Seminary.