Trust Fall
LETTER BY BRIAN MORYKON
The retreat facilitator wanted us to experience in our bodies a sensation of surrender. So he paired us up and invited us to do a “trust fall.”
In case you’re unfamiliar, a trust fall is where one person plants his heels and falls backward and blindly into the waiting hands of another. To get the full effect, the person falling must go past the point of no return. That’s the point where if the catcher fails, the faller lands flat on his back.
The descent is only a few inches and lasts less than a second. But that millisecond of mid-air suspension is enough for your heart to drop into your stomach — or perhaps your mind to drop into your heart. The memory of that moment serves for me as a physical reference point for trust. Sometimes I close my eyes and return to it when my body feels clenched in control.
A trust fall is also a metaphor for spiritual practices. It’s an imperfect one, as they all are, but I like that the picture emphasizes God’s work. We lean back; God catches. We take action, but God is the hero.
God being the hero is a good word for Lent, especially for those of us tempted to take on a fast or other practice as a way to prove something, be someone, measure up, keep up, or change ourselves.
We talk a lot at Renovaré about how God transforms us through spiritual practices. Transformation is vital but it’s a byproduct — a second thing, not a first thing.
Think of 2 Corinthians 3: “We all… are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory.” How are we transformed? By turning away from the law of self-effort and toward the Spirit of grace and freedom. By beholding — with faces unveiled by Jesus — God’s splendor, beauty, majesty, glory. (The word used for glory here, doxa, is where we get doxology: giving expression to the glory of God.)
Self-improvement isn’t the goal of life. “Jesus is the goal,” writes Joshua Choonmin Kang.
To riff on a Lewis quote, aim for life with Jesus and you’ll get transformation thrown in: aim for transformation and you’ll get neither.
And one more from David Benner: “When the spiritual journey is my own self-improvement project, the major product will be an ego that is in even more control than before the journey began.”
Maybe there’s something to that Sunday school acronym JOY: Jesus, Others, You. I’ve seen that formula applied in a fearful, striving, serve-til-you-burnout sort of way. What if we instead applied it in an eyes-on-the-prize, prefer-others, soul-care sort of way?
One practice for putting Jesus first is extended time alone in quiet with him. Yes, our old friends solitude and silence. (We’re a broken record but at least we’re stuck on a good track!)
Solitude and silence are a trust fall. It is an act of faith to fall from the so-called steady ground of work and words and believe Jesus will catch us and set us back upright — now, one hopes, with a little more confidence in his care and strength.
So, Lord, teach us, as your friend Dallas said, to “flop” — to put all our weight and confidence on you. In the big things. In the small things. We worship you. We trust you. We believe that no matter how far the fall, how painful the uncertainty, you’ve got us and have our best in mind. Amen.
Brian Morykon
Director of Communications
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LET’S DIVE IN...
CURATED BY GRACE POUCH
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1.
Calling out our frenetic self-improvement impulses, Ron Rolheiser says, “In our culture curriculum vitae is everything.… When most of our energies have to go into simply measuring up, life does become a tiring enterprise with an unhappy ending.”
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2.
Selections from Renovaré’s From the Inside Out Journal help you to reflect on how you see yourself, who God has created you to be, and how the process of change takes time and patience.
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3.
“There is nothing that requires more energy for the typical American Christian than the discipline of doing nothing.” Read an excerpt from Dallas Willard’s interview “Spirituality Made Hard” in which he explains that spiritual formation is neither a strategy for getting God to meet your felt needs, nor a way to improve your image or simply manage sin.
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4.
Humility shines through Pastor Joshua Choonmin Kang’s book, Deep Rooted in Christ. In a transcribed interview, Richard Foster and Chris Webb discuss Kang’s wise warning not to be impatient or heroic about spiritual formation: We don’t practice the disciplines to become spiritual giants, holy men and women of renown. We’re not on some sacred self-improvement program. Instead, “Jesus is the goal for all believers.”
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In his classic book The Way of the Heart, Henri Nouwen calls the discipline of solitude “the furnace of transformation” because it is there that we meet Christ, without whom we have no power to fight the false self.
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If you are looking for a way to meet with Jesus in listening silence beside others who share that same desire, we invite you to learn more about Renovaré’s Fellowship of the Burning Heart. FBH participants commit to listen generously to one another, forgo managing others’ impressions, and hold a generous space of silence for enjoying the presence of God.
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7.
The best way to learn about Listening Groups is to experience one through a free online drop-in group. When you are ready to join a year-long group, applications are currently open for groups online and in-person in Albuquerque, Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, and Manchester, PA.
Grace Pouch
Content Manager