Tony Jones: Spiritual Practices

Spiritual Practices Tony Jones

“We all might long for the spiritual direction that Adam received when he walked with God in the Garden…but we live east of Eden.”

Tony Jones, The Sacred Way

Tony Jones has compiled an easily readable compendium of spiritual practices that help us connect to God. The secret of the book is in the subtitle, Spiritual Practices for Everyday Life. We do not need to live in a monastery to practice these disciplines. Jones also brings in interesting notes about the history of how each practice began and developed. His book is first divided into contemplative practices such as silence, reading, the Jesus Prayer, centering prayer, meditation, Ignatian exercises, icons, spiritual direction, and the daily office. The second half of the book talks about active bodily spiritual practices such as the labyrinth, stations of the cross, pilgrimages, fasting, bodily prayers, Sabbath, and service. Lastly, he writes about developing a rule of life and gives us a short readable bibliography for each practice as well as a list of Christian spiritual classics.

I use Jones’ book as a reference especially when I am feeling disconnected from God. I first reread the sections in the book about the spiritual practices I am using in my rule of life to see something I have been missing. Next, I read in Tony’s book about a spiritual discipline that I am presently not using to try during this dry period. I also look over his list of books about the disciplines and the classics and pick out one to read. I have recommended the book as a way for someone to become immersed in the spiritual disciplines.

The Sacred Way can be a guide to tasting each practice perhaps a week or a month at a time. My favorite chapters keep changing. Today I identify most with the section on the Jesus prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” The prayer has been my constant mantra when I am fearful or impatient or meeting with someone with whom I am having difficulty. I identify with Tony Jones when he writes, “the Jesus Prayer has become very significant to me, maybe more than any other practice I’ve investigated, and it’s an important part of my Rule of Life.”

Joanna joannaseibert.com

spiritual tools

Spiritual tools

“ Living in a spiritual way is a lifetime job. There are always areas that need repair and new plans to incorporate into the design. So, having the right tools helps. Tools like curiosity and compassion. Like honesty and open-mindedness. There are basic tools like listening and study. There are specialized tools like discernment and meditation. Learning to use the tools from a mentor makes sense and practice is a given. Take care of your tools and they will take care of you: simple spiritual advice.”

Bishop Steven Charleston daily Facebook post

Bishop Charleston again offers us his tried and true well-used toolbox for a spiritual life. I am reminded of another manual to accompany Charleston’s toolbox for the spiritual life written by the Quaker, Richard Foster called Celebration of Discipline, The Path to Spiritual Growth. Foster’s classic offers a smorgasbord of a variety of rich spiritual disciplines. Foster divides thirteen disciplines into three categories, inward disciples of prayer, fasting, meditation, and study in the Christian life, the outward disciplines of simplicity, solitude, submission, and service, and corporate disciplines of confession, worship, guidance, and celebration. His book is one to read and re-read and become tattered, frayed, and worn with falling apart pages as we return to it over the years to try different spiritual disciplines that may work best in different stages of our life. God speaks to us in so many voices. Foster teaches us about thirteen of God’s well-known languages.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Remembering World War I

Remembering World War I

“This is a war to end all wars.” Woodrow Wilson

This past Sunday was the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, the Great War, the War to End all Wars. The war officially ended on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. This Sunday at 11 in the morning, bells tolled in churches all over the world. Special programs about the war were held all over the world most notably in England and Paris, France where the world’s diplomats met to remember what had happened before them.

Both of my grandfathers served in the war and came home. I never heard one grandfather talk about his experience. The other, Grandfather Whaley, rarely talked about the war itself but did talk much about being in the army. He was born in what is now the Great Smokey Mountain National Park. Going into the service was his higher education.

When I was in college, my grandfather wrote to me every week on his old typewriter where several keys would often get stuck. The type was uneven. Every letter, however, was full of his army experiences and how he related it to my new life in college. He would remind me that the best lessons were in the people I would meet and the places where I would travel. Almost every sentence ended with etc, etc, etc. I kept every one of his letters. The girls on my floor in my dorm would gather each week to hear about his wisdom from his life experiences a half century earlier in the army in World War I and about his present life in small town Virginia.

Did I forget to tell you that my grandfather also always enclosed a dollar bill with each letter.

Grandfather Whaley is closest man to us digging trenches in WWI

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com