SPIRITUALITY, SPORTS AND PRACTICE
(An Edited Excerpt from Beyond Denial)
While talking recently with a young woman entering the ministry, I heard her speak several times about her “spiritual practice.” I’ve been thinking quite a bit about that word “practice” that she used. And today I’m pondering an analogy between the spiritual life and the world of athletes. Despite their surface differences, both spirituality and sports have one important element in common: the necessity of practice.
Consider an article I read this week about Ronnie Lott, the former defensive back with the San Francisco 49ers football team. In Lott’s final year of playing, his best days were clearly behind him. After practice one day, three of his teammates, while putting in time on exercise bikes, saw the veteran out on the field doing a seemingly endless set of tackling drills even after everyone else had gone inside. Ronnie Lott was already one of the best tacklers in his sport. As his teammates pedaled away, one of them, an older player, overheard two rookies commenting on Lott’s extra practice.
One rookie said to the other, “Look at that man. He’s a top guy. He’s a lock for the Hall of Fame. Why does he stay out there doing all those extra drills?” The veteran then said, “Don’t you guys understand? What you’re seeing out there shows why he will be in the Hall of Fame. It’s because he keeps on going out there practicing his game.” Beyond his natural talent (of which he had plenty), Ronnie Lott became the great player he was precisely because he never stopped practicing.
Our religious-spiritual communities could learn a lot from that. To have a consistent and growing spiritual life requires learning what it means to make spirituality a practice. Practicing the spiritual life involves many of the same things as practicing sports—as well as practicing the piano or a form of art; practicing medicine; or engaging in sound business practices.
Just as each of those fields requires ongoing work and learning, so also the spiritual life requires a commitment to practicing spiritual consciousness and awareness; and to making it a practice to think and act in ways that are in harmony with divine wisdom and insights. This is a process that involves repetition and regularity. And it demands of us the willingness and mental toughness to engage in such practicing even through and beyond the inevitable times when discomfort arises. In the context of spirituality, this involves doing our meditating and praying, our studying and serving, on a sustained and daily basis.
People in the ministry like me have been known to ask, “How is the state of your soul?” But here’s another question we might ask more often: How’s your spiritual practice coming along these days?