A couple weeks after January 1, we may or may not be keeping our New Year’s resolutions. It’s a good time for a pep talk (at least, I need one about now!). Many of us probably made resolutions about starting a new spiritual practice, or being more faithful to an old one. That’s the kind of resolution I tend to make. But sometimes it’s hard to stick with it long enough for its transformative effect to kick in.
I like to remind myself of a story told in The Way of a Pilgrim, a classic written by an anonymous Russian peasant in the 19th century (trans. Helen Bacovcin; New York: Doubleday, 1978, pp. 91–92). This story may or may not be literally true, but I read it as an allegory:
An elderly man in an isolated Crimean village was sick; he had been abandoned by his wife, and his only caretaker was his 8-year-old godson. The boy was capable but also “mischievous and full of tricks. He ran around, screamed, knocked things over, and in general got on my nerves. I needed peace and quiet, for in my weariness and illness I enjoyed reading spiritual books. I had a beautiful book by Gregory Palamas on the Jesus Prayer, which I read practically all the time and I also prayed a little.”
But alas, the boy was a continual source of disturbance:
“No threats were effective to keep him from his pranks. So this is what I decided to do with him. I made him sit down on a bench next to me and I ordered him to say the Jesus Prayer without stopping. At first he did this reluctantly and often lapsed into silence. So, to have him do exactly as I said, I had birch on hand. When he said the Prayer, I peacefully read the book or listened to how he pronounced the words, but the moment he would become silent I would show him the whip and so scared him into praying again.
“At last I had peace and quiet in my house! After some time I noticed that the whip was no longer necessary, for the boy recited the Prayer willingly and diligently and I noticed a change in his behavior. He became quiet and restrained and did the domestic duties with greater care. . . .
“In the end he got so accustomed to the Prayer that he was saying it no matter what he was doing and without any coercion on my part. When I asked him what he thought of the Prayer he answered that he felt irresistibly drawn to say it constantly.”
Sometimes we think that a spiritual practice has to come easily to us. If we don’t enjoy it, we quit. But in this case, the boy’s spiritual practice transformed him, even though it was coerced.
So suppose I (the man) have adopted a new spiritual practice. It goes along okay for a while, but when the novelty wears off, I (the boy) tire of it. I have a choice: Will I quit, to satisfy the desire of the child in me for other amusements? Or will the adult in me push through my reluctance, and trust the practice to transform me?
Something to think about when we hit the rough places in our practice—