Invitation to a Journey

I got the first few books that were listed for last semester's beginning classes for the MSFL. They're all so....GOOD! I've been reading Robert Mulholland's Invitation to a Journey...and finding a clearer vision, intention, and means of living a life of dicsipleship to Christ. He starts by defining "spiritual formation" - terminology, in our culture of self-improvement, that can so easily be misused. As Mulholland defines it, spiritual formation is "a process of being conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of others" (p.15). The chapters on creation gifts and holistic spirituality took an in-depth look at Jung's personality types and how these would influence the journey to Christlikeness. This is not approached from the standpoint of, "This is my personality type, so it's ok that I don't want to do this discipline or that practice. It's just not me." No, no. Instead, we look at and nurture our personality preferences...but we also challenge our preference to develop balanced habits.
Mulholland then goes into the classical stages of Christian pilgrimage: awakening, purgation, illumination, and union. Interestingly, this was touched on at the very beginning of the "Mystic Saints" retreat in Pecos. Purgation is the stage, I think, that we want to gloss over. So many conversations in the church center on the initial conversion experience (awakening) and the "high times," when we suppose God is going to zap us into perfection. Purgation is the slow and painful process of releasing the habits of thought and behavior that keep us from Him....of allowing our hearts to be transformed so that we become the kind of people who can be united to Him. It is this stage that we find the spiritual disciplines - means by which God is given access to the deepest places of our hearts (though there is a need for discipline through every stage in the journey, it seems they are most prevalent in purgation - though I could be totally wrong :o).

What I read today is an exploration into the "classical spiritual disciplines." Mullholland gives a totally new perspective on the very definition of prayer and touches on spiritual reading....but what has really captured my attention are his thoughts on liturgy. Consisting of worship, daily office, study, fasting, and retreat, liturgy is a "personal structure of daily activity" that helps us to more continuously see our lives in the context of "God's new order of being" (pp. 115-116). It's a daily rhythm that is essential to the journey....it helps us to stay rooted in a different reality from what is contstantly pressing us in the visible world. It reminds us of the community of believers, companions on the journey, with and for whom we are being transformed.

This is all sooooo...yummy! Next we go into the nature and dynamics of the spiritual disciplines.