Pianos and prayer
Oct. 26th, 2005 01:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yrieithyddImagine someone gives you a piano for Christmas. Do you leave it in corner looking pretty (and being a useful surface to dump stuff on) or do you sit down at it regularly and practise and even have some lessons from someone who knows more about playing the piano than you do?
I suspect the giver would be far happier with you doing the second. After all, one imagines they gave you the piano because they wanted you to become a better piano player. I don't think either that they would think that your practise only counted if you were doing it because you were grateful for their gift, rather than because you felt that you had a duty to make use of the gift. They might prefer the former, but the latter, especially if it gets you through a phase where you're feeling `there's no point practising because I'm not getting any better and scales & exercises are dull and what's the point of them anyway?' Giving up in those times and not practising is not likely to make you any better, whereas if you persevere one day, it will hopefully all click into place and you find that those blasted scales & exercises have paid off and now you can actually play some interesting music quite well.
It strikes me that discipline in prayer is similar to discipline in piano practise. Yes, we are saved by God's grace; he gives us that gift -- to be like Christ. But having received it, we can't just leave it in the corner (either looking pretty or being a useful surface!) but need to sit down and work at it. Making time to pray and be with God in order to be better at being like Christ. It might be useful to visit someone who's been at this game longer than us to visit regularly to help us see what we're doing right and what's still not quite right as a pianist would go to a teacher. And there will be times when it feels just as though we're doing it out of duty, but as C.S. Lewis says, those trough times an actually be more fruitful than the peaks even though we cannot see it at the time. Actually that ties in with what the person quoted by a Westcott ordinand last night said that it's only after praying the office for 7 years that you start benefitting. I do not entirely agree. I think that over the past 3 years I have benefitted from saying the office, but I can certainly imagine that in a few more years there'll be even greater benefits. It's a long term solution not a quick fix.
On the boards of the Ship of Fools, someone started a thread (in Purgatory) called Spiritual Growth and asked How you grow spiritually? What disciplines/practices help you connect to God/Jesus? How does one stay fresh and vibrant in faith without becoming a legalist?
One poster responded:
I'm not too keen on the idea of disciplines and practices, although I'm sure I have them. Naming them 'disciplines' and 'practices' seem suspiciously like a nice way of saying 'legalism', so I tend to try to steer clear if I possibly can. So far the approach has worked well.
There followed a discussion both on that thread and on the thread in hell about the poster who made the second comment.* In the Hell thread, he asserted that words like discipline were backdoor legalism because we couldn't cope with the implications of grace and freedom (which we could never understand). Someone pulled him up on this and he (eventually responded)
Anyway, the only way out of relying on our own experience is God's kindness, and only he can supply that. He gives it freely to those who ask, which is why I think the idea of practising spiritual discipline is potentially insulting. It's like working to pay off a nice Chrissy present.
The above analogy was my response to it (and clarified in the light of someone's question as to whether our intent (out of duty or thankfulness) was important.
*Note to non-shipmates: One of the functions of the hell board is that it is place where personal arguments happen rather than them cluttering up other threads. In the case of this poster, he often annoys people and so there was an already open call to hell for him, thus someone who was riled with his dismissal of others' spiritual disciplines after he'd acknowledge he did go in for them himself brought it up on that thread.
I suspect the giver would be far happier with you doing the second. After all, one imagines they gave you the piano because they wanted you to become a better piano player. I don't think either that they would think that your practise only counted if you were doing it because you were grateful for their gift, rather than because you felt that you had a duty to make use of the gift. They might prefer the former, but the latter, especially if it gets you through a phase where you're feeling `there's no point practising because I'm not getting any better and scales & exercises are dull and what's the point of them anyway?' Giving up in those times and not practising is not likely to make you any better, whereas if you persevere one day, it will hopefully all click into place and you find that those blasted scales & exercises have paid off and now you can actually play some interesting music quite well.
It strikes me that discipline in prayer is similar to discipline in piano practise. Yes, we are saved by God's grace; he gives us that gift -- to be like Christ. But having received it, we can't just leave it in the corner (either looking pretty or being a useful surface!) but need to sit down and work at it. Making time to pray and be with God in order to be better at being like Christ. It might be useful to visit someone who's been at this game longer than us to visit regularly to help us see what we're doing right and what's still not quite right as a pianist would go to a teacher. And there will be times when it feels just as though we're doing it out of duty, but as C.S. Lewis says, those trough times an actually be more fruitful than the peaks even though we cannot see it at the time. Actually that ties in with what the person quoted by a Westcott ordinand last night said that it's only after praying the office for 7 years that you start benefitting. I do not entirely agree. I think that over the past 3 years I have benefitted from saying the office, but I can certainly imagine that in a few more years there'll be even greater benefits. It's a long term solution not a quick fix.
On the boards of the Ship of Fools, someone started a thread (in Purgatory) called Spiritual Growth and asked How you grow spiritually? What disciplines/practices help you connect to God/Jesus? How does one stay fresh and vibrant in faith without becoming a legalist?
One poster responded:
I'm not too keen on the idea of disciplines and practices, although I'm sure I have them. Naming them 'disciplines' and 'practices' seem suspiciously like a nice way of saying 'legalism', so I tend to try to steer clear if I possibly can. So far the approach has worked well.
There followed a discussion both on that thread and on the thread in hell about the poster who made the second comment.* In the Hell thread, he asserted that words like discipline were backdoor legalism because we couldn't cope with the implications of grace and freedom (which we could never understand). Someone pulled him up on this and he (eventually responded)
Anyway, the only way out of relying on our own experience is God's kindness, and only he can supply that. He gives it freely to those who ask, which is why I think the idea of practising spiritual discipline is potentially insulting. It's like working to pay off a nice Chrissy present.
The above analogy was my response to it (and clarified in the light of someone's question as to whether our intent (out of duty or thankfulness) was important.
*Note to non-shipmates: One of the functions of the hell board is that it is place where personal arguments happen rather than them cluttering up other threads. In the case of this poster, he often annoys people and so there was an already open call to hell for him, thus someone who was riled with his dismissal of others' spiritual disciplines after he'd acknowledge he did go in for them himself brought it up on that thread.
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no subject
Date: 2005-10-26 02:54 pm (UTC)Ooh! And a whole host of other strengths of the analogy... Thank you!
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Date: 2005-10-26 02:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-26 07:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-26 07:26 pm (UTC)if you are feeling brave... lunch?
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Date: 2005-10-27 01:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-26 07:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-27 01:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-26 09:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-27 01:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-27 08:12 pm (UTC)but mmmm
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Date: 2005-10-28 08:53 am (UTC)Nor do I. The link was between a piano teacher and a spiritual director. Writers of liturgies are possibly more like compilers of books of scales and exercises or teach yourself books. But I hadn't thought about that one.
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Date: 2005-10-28 08:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-28 09:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-28 10:15 am (UTC)*wanders off mumbling*
no subject
Date: 2005-10-28 04:12 pm (UTC)