Spiritual Formation
Spirituality — the life of the Spirit — has enjoyed a renaissance in our day. My parents, of the World War II generation, never talked about it — for them, church and religion existed to take care of spiritual needs. But it seems that in the so-called postmodern world, more and more people have begun to understand spirituality as something entirely distinct from religion. For many, this is a subtle form of judgment against religion. Religion is communal, organizational, institutional; spirituality is personal, private, individualistic. Since America is a society that insists the individual is more important than the community, no wonder so many people feel like spirituality is better than religion! But I think it’s actually more healthy to see spirituality and religion as complementary, rather than adversarial. Religion involves form and structure, while spirituality involves consciousness and relationship. In terms of cultivating a God-infused life, religion concerns the skeleton and the muscle, while spirituality concerns the heart and the mind. Here in the world of form, we need both. Taken together, religion and spirituality help us to incarnate the presence of God in our lives.
The religion of Christianity offers a distinctive and beautiful wisdom tradition about how we, as individuals and as a community, can grow spiritually in response to the love of God in our lives. Traditionally, the custodians of this wisdom tradition have been called mystics; therefore, the wisdom tradition of Christian spirituality is also known as Christian mysticism. Please note that this is different from the common mis-use of the word “mysticism” to suggest occult or paranormal knowledge and experience. Christian mysticism is grounded in the Bible, the sacraments, the liturgy, and involves growth in holiness and a dedication to a life of prayer, devotion, and service to others.
The pages that link off from this one explore this wisdom tradition and how it is available to us to day. The first page, What is Spiritual Formation? offers an introduction to this concept: of being formed, by the Holy Spirit, through Christ, in the image and likeness of God. Subsequent pages look at the many tools and resources availabel to those of us who wish to open our lives to the Spirit’s work. It is my prayer that as you read these words, you will be blessed by a sense of the unique and wonderful way in which God is calling you to a more intimate, loving life of participation in the Divine Nature.
N.B. This list includes topics related to spiritual formation. If an item on the list is not yet hyperlinked to its own page, this simply means I have not yet written about that particular topic. Creating a website, like spiritual formation itself, is a long and slow process!
- What is Spiritual Formation?
- Contemplative Prayer (Centering Prayer, Christian Meditation)
- Writing and Maintaining a Personal Rule of Life
- Spiritual Direction
- Lectio Divina
- The Rule of St. Benedict
- Participating in the Sacramental Life of a Faith Community
- The Rosary
- Prayer of the Heart (the Jesus Prayer, Psalm 70:1)
- Retreats and Quiet Days
- The Daily Office
- Personal Study and Intellectual Formation
- Fasting
- Tithing
- Works of Mercy
- Personal Sanctification
- Devotion to particular saints and mystics
- Environmental Responsibility
- Personal Health: Diet, Exercise, Appropriate Sleep, Weight Training
- Interfaith Exploration
- Shadow-Work and Psychotherapy
- Hospitality
THE WEBSITE OF UNKNOWING is devoted to Christian mysticism, interfaith spirituality, Celtic wisdom, emergent theology, and assorted other topics. Click on the tabs above to explore all that this website has to offer.
July 11, 2007 at 8:58 am
CAN I ACCESS THIS PLEASE
December 8, 2007 at 1:17 pm
A wonderful blog. I’ve put it on StumbleUpon where many will have access to it.
January 6, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I want receive spiritual formation
January 6, 2008 at 4:21 pm
That’s wonderful! I hope the material I’ve presented on this page will help you get started.
January 21, 2008 at 1:09 am
I’ve requested to be added to your email subscription
also with my home email - thank you.
February 23, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Iwill love to have your book on spiritual formation to read. thanks.
Rev. frank lantei mills
box kn 1242.
accra-kaneshie
ghana
west africa
March 13, 2008 at 11:35 pm
I just found this site and thank you for it. There is a mystic that I have studied for yrs and would like to share with you. Joel Goldsmith. His teachings..”The Infinite Way” have helped me so much…the goal of his teaching is communion with God. Once you have God you have everything. To commune in the silence of your heart (home) is the most glorious thing..
March 30, 2008 at 8:46 pm
This is just a really, really nice compilation of sources. You’ve saved me hours of googling. And some darn good writing. I have been chuckling for ten minutes over the pithy name. ( You were trying to be humorous?!?)
Thanks.
March 30, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Me? Humorous?!?!
April 15, 2008 at 7:26 pm
I would like to cee more comments/articles in relation to Hospitality - as individuals, as community and corporately. Thanks - LHT
May 19, 2008 at 1:28 am
Curious…are you the same Carl McColman who wrote When Someone You Love is Wiccan??? I just finished reading it, and wanted to visit your website, and here I am???
Sheila Conner
May 19, 2008 at 5:16 am
Indeed I am, Sheila. I am the author or co-author of ten books, most of which are written from a Neopagan perspective. After a crisis of faith in 2004 — which occurred as I was writing the last of those books — I returned to contemplative Christianity as my spiritual identity. For insight into that crisis of faith and its resolution, please read After the Magic.
May 19, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Well, I’ll be darn. I’ve had quite a journey, too–from fundamentalist Southern Baptist, to Charismatic, to Vineyard, then, would you believe, the Catholic Church. I took a 3-year spiritual direction course, and THAT’S when I went through MY crisis of faith, 2005. I have taken Scripture literally most of my life, and I just found out so many things that really shook me. I realized by the end of my classes that I couldn’t even define myself as a Christian anymore by my own old definition. If I was still a Christian, I was a very liberal Christian.
I’ve had a mystical experience of Jesus since 1990, and have read most all the mystics over the years. It’s that love relationship/experience that’s kept me here as a Christian but I’m really struggling with organized religion. Even my Catholic Church as gotten too small. So, I’m still praying and searching. I’m not depressed anymore, although I have been. I’ve put all my eggs in one basket so to speak and I’ve discovered that basket has holes in it. My favorite saint for the last couple of years has been Mary Magdaline, simply because she had to bury what she knew of Jesus and let something new happen. So, that’s where I am–waiting for the next step of this journey. Very few answers and lots of questions. BTW, my kids have had their own crisis of faith, and my granddaughter (14) is trying to figure out how to combine Wiccan, Buddhism, and Jesus. 
She asked me recently if I thought it was possible–she wondered if the Catholic Church had room for her to be all three. Not here in this small S. Texas town, but who knows. Maybe someday. Have you heard of Richard Rohr and Matthew Fox? This may be too long for your blog. If so, just let me know.
Sheila
June 14, 2008 at 12:00 pm
What a wonderful website I have stumbled upon. I am very drawn by the Spirit to Christian spiritual formation and have, over the last ten years, found great depth and healing in finding myself immersed in centuries of spiritual flow. Through spiritual direction, meditation, covenant group, academy retreat, lectio divina, healing prayer, shadow work, writing, attentiveness to body, a rule of life, sacraments, silence, and studying the spirituality of saints, God has deepened my spiritual roots. I look forward to visiting your website often.
June 16, 2008 at 10:40 am
I just found this web site. and I’ve been doing some research on contemplative prayer or centering prayer and now this spiritual formation. I believe the Bible to be the true Word of God. Jesus made several statements that I stick to that will stare ius onto the straight and narrow.John 14:6.Jesus saith unto him,I am the Way,the Truth ,and the Life:noman cometh to the Father but by me. You will never find the true God by looking within yourself but by only going through Jesus because He is the door and the gate and if a man enters another way he is a theif and a robber. Again in Matthew 24:4-5Jesus answered and said unto them ,Take heed that no man deceive you for many shall come in my name ,saying Iam the Christ and shall deceive many. Look at Matthew and see for yourself how many warnings Jesus gives us about being deceived. As far as someone being involved in wicca,buddhism and Jesus is impossible .Read 2 Corinthains 6:14, light cannot have fellowship with darkness.,Jesus is the true light but Satan comes as an angel of light and will deceive many. He is telling the same lie today as he told Adam and Eve in the Garden ,”You shall be as gods.What deception!!!!!All this contemplative stuff and spiritaul formation may be wrapped in “christian terminology” bHe has but it’s all a lie from Satan. In 2 Thessalonians 2:9,12 .even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perhish because they received not the love of the truth that they should be saved. And for this cause God shall send them a “strong delusion”that they should believe a lie that they all might be damned who believe not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. “Remember Jesus is the truth and you will only find salvation through Him and the sacrafice He made on the crossand His ressurection. Pat
June 16, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Hi, pat!
I appreciate (and share) your wonderful experience of salvation through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, and His resurrection. I came to Him when (in the midst of following Buddhism and a Sufi master and a Hindu yogi) I read the very same verse that you quoted here: Jesus said, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through me. I found that I couldn’t argue with that! He is truly the door, the gate, the Good Shepherd, and I rejoice that I have come to know Him personally.
As for your saying that it is impossible to find God within yourself–my pastor (of a Bible-believing fellowship) has compiled a list of 5 pages of verses which all talk about Christ in you, and you in Christ; God is Spirit, and He seeks those who will worship Him in spirit and in truth. Jesus does in fact dwell within us, and He fully desires for us to seek Him where He has chosen to live, His favorite dwelling place, in the heart of His people. It is certainly true that we have an enemy to fight, and a lot of counterfeit spirituality too; but your blanket statement–that “all this contemplative stuff and spiritual formation” is all a lie from Satan–is not warranted by the Scriptures or the Holy Spirit who is the Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of Truth. Jesus often went into private places to pray, and to communicate with the Father. As near as I can tell, the method He used looks a whole lot like the kind of contemplative prayer or centering prayer that so many Christian people are now learning to experience. Our protection from the lies and deceptions of our enemy is not some kind of closed exclusivism by which we reject everything that does not follow exactly the form of worship or “church” or prayer that we are familiar with! No, our protection is by the very same Holy Spirit we have been given in our salvation experience; He gives us many gifts that we need for our Christian walk, especially the gift of discerning of spirits so we can tell what is of Him and what is not. As far as “spiritual formation,” the Bible says in Romans 12, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…” I believe that you have begun a great adventure of personal transformation and spiritual growth in Jesus, just as many of the bloggers on here (and my friend Carl) have done. It would sadden me to think that you do not recognize this in yourself, or that you do not recognize some of your dear, loving, truth-loving brothers and sisters in Christ because of a difference in terminology or theology or religious practice. Jesus is a whole lot bigger than that, pat! And this includes your Jesus and my Jesus and Carl’s Jesus, and the Jesus of centering prayer: there really is only one true Jesus, and according to the Bible, He is at the center of everything, ruling in the Kingdom of heaven among all who call on His name in sincere faith.
God bless you as you seek to honor His name, in the love of the Truth,
Peter
June 17, 2008 at 9:51 am
Hi Peter. I know the Scripture that tell us that Crist is in us and we are in Him.I know the verse where Jesus speaks of the Spirit of Truth being within us.I believe these Scriptures to be ture. But comtemplative prayer on centering prayer or soaking as it is also called is part of the new age movement moving into the church.They use christian terminnology and explain it so as to make a person believe it’s gosple truth. Satan comes as an angel of lingt and he is deceiving many people. We are in the time of the great falling away. People are being swayed by every wind of doctrine and will not put up with sound doctrine. I believe we should go to a private place to pray and commune with our Lord but I do not believe we are to get to repeat a “word” until our minds are empty and we get into the silence or nothingness.The Bible says we are to think.Philippians 4:6-8.Ihave to go now but I would like to hear about your experience of how you got saved in the midst of all that you were involved in Pat
June 17, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Peter, I felt your response above was well worded and compassionate. Pat, I too am very much in favor of keeping centered on Christ, and I share your concern as someone who is radically Christian and who believes Christ is the way, truth, and life. I am by vocation a minister of the gospel and have been a Christian since I professed faith in Christ on a church retreat at age 10. But for me, this focus on the centrality of Christ is precisely what Christian spiritual formation is all about. To say that all spiritual formation is from the new age movement, imposed on the church, is to throw out many centuries of Christian prayer experience and spiritual flow … all because some people pray using these practices who are of other spiritualities. For me, Christian spiritual formation is going from a world of seeing religion as “doing” back to experiencing Christ as the true vine, and we the branches. It is letting God in Christ be a transforming presence in my life, changing me “from one degree of glory to another” as Paul said, so that I bear the fruit of love, “fruit that will last”. I think that there is certainly new age spirituality out there, and I admit that I prefer to think of it not as Satanic or false doctrine but as partial truth. However, I’m concerned about what is probably some rhetoric you may have heard, dismissing all spiritual formation efforts, because we are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Jesus himself was a spiritual formation teacher. His sermon on the mount was a reflection of God’s alternative values that change us, tranforming us into the image of Christ over time. He spent time in contemplation and silence and prayer as evidenced in the scriptures, even as people were clamoring for him to do things. And his prayers in the book of John indicate a real contemplative spirit. He was a faithful Jew, so he prayed the psalms letting the ancient words shape and form his prayer life, which is one reason he quoted them so often. Naturally, if particular prayer practices are not helpful for your spirituality than that’s okay. But it concerns me that spiritual practices rooted in Christ, that might be experienced differently for different people, would be dismissed, rather than accepted as part of the Holy Spirit’s movement in bringing forth the gifts of prayer among those called to a more contemplative life. For me, it enriches my spirit and deepens my roots, drawing me ever closer to Jesus Christ. It is a process of being conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of love. Having said all that, I do think for those concerned about purity of spirituality have a good point. Christian spirituality needs to be rooted in Christ, but I would say only fear would cause us to neglect to experience the breadth of spiritual practice, when Jesus promises his presence in the Holy Comforter who would teach us in the midst of all our spiritual exploration. Thanks for listening, Steve