With deep gratitude, we continue our exploration of Robert Ball’s Walking on Water: Self-Esteem and a Journey of Faith.  (for publication information and a way to secure a copy of this book, please see the post from August 13, 2012 – “Living in the good news”)

In this post we turn to the beginning of this very important volume where Dr. Ball gives valuable advice on our need to understand our deepest longing and the importance that we “recognize ourselves as spiritual beings.”

Convinced that the fear of insignificance occupies a central, tormenting place in the lives of all human beings, and that the only force truly capable of reducing that fear to the point where life becomes manageable, possible, productive, and fulfilling is the faith that we are loved, this book proceeds on the assumption that the deepest longing in all of us is a spiritual longing.

In using the word spiritual, I am acknowledging that the longing is not necessarily religious.  Indeed, many have found their experience of religion to be antithetical to their personal and spiritual needs.

To recognize ourselves as spiritual beings is to affirm that the longings within us cannot be satisfied without some acknowledgment of, some contact with, some relationship to a transcendent power.  Though I am offended by the notion that all spirituality can be enclosed within the parameters of the Christian faith, I am also limited to Christian spirituality by my own personal knowledge and experience.  I write, therefore, conscious of the limitations of my own experience and desiring to be as inclusive as I can.  My understanding of Jesus Christ is that his life and teachings were inherently inclusive, and my experience is that the gospel expressed in his life and death and resurrection, and proclaimed in his words, touches both the depths and the breadth of what it means to be human.  (6-7)

One of the strengths of these statements is that they come from an understanding that we humans are not God – we are not a higher power – we are finite humans who sadly often try to be the Creator rather than being content to be the created – created fully in the image of the Creator.

It would surely be helpful if the more of the religious world would be willing to live as God intended – stewards of creation rather than trying to be owners – people given the freedom of choice – fully conscious that we live, in the words of Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham*, in the spirituality of imperfection – another valuable contribution to the literature that everyone should take the time to read.

We will continue this journey in a couple of days by considering more of the valuable observations and insights from the work of Robert Ball.

*http://www.amazon.com/The-Spirituality-Imperfection-Storytelling-Meaning/dp/0553371320/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344952713&sr=8-1&keywords=the+spirituality+of+imperfection

One volume that has been a very important part of my recent study journey is a book that, sadly, seems not to be well known or easily available.  It appears that this incredibly helpful book is still available by contacting the publisher at the website listed below*.  It should be required reading for everyone!  The book is Walking on Water: Self-Esteem and a Journey of Faith by Robert Ball, and this book will provide the content for this week’s posts with deepest gratitude to Dr. Ball for his friendship and for being a mentor and colleague!

Once we begin believing that, “I am not that unloved child anymore,” all that comfortable familiarity is lost.  We can no longer go on feeling inadequate.  We can no longer say, “I’d like to be more patient and more loving, but I don’t have it in me.”  Once acknowledged, goodness has to be used.  If we have capacities for love and patience, we must begin living as patient and loving persons, thus producing the new experiences in our memory banks that affirm:  We are lovable and loving persons.

Practicing our faith, we will talk differently: no longer mumbling as if incompetent or being brashly assertive in an effort to cover our sense of incompetence.  We can also talk to ourselves differently, no longer condemning and shaming ourselves for failures and no longer portraying ourselves as victims of circumstance.  We can relate to other people differently: no longer afraid to be known, no longer feeling desperately inadequate and unworthy, no longer yearning to be someone else or despising those others who are (or seem to be) what we yearn to be.

Once we look into ourselves and find capacities for good, we can change our lives.  We need no longer be stuck with unsatisfying jobs or inconsiderate friends or abusive relationships.  We have choices.  We can no longer blame others for holding us back.  Being competent persons, having skills that are of benefit to the world, we know we can take risks to discover just who we are and where we belong.  The voices out of our past say, “To seek to succeed is to risk failure.”  The new reality – the good news – is that, believing ourselves to be loved, we can afford to put ourselves into positions where failure and rejection are possibilities.  We know that only in such positions are love and success real possibilities.  (198-199)

This is wonderful good news!!!

http://www.sbbks.com/walkingonwater.html

In his marvelous book Addiction and Grace* Dr. Gerald G. May writes of his own life journey.  Following is an important portion of that story that is very true.

I realized that for both myself and other people, addictions are not limited to substances.  I was also addicted to work, performance, responsibility, intimacy, being liked, helping others, and an almost endless list of other behaviors.  At the time, it seemed just fine to be addicted to some of these things, but others I would have much preferred to be free of.  I had to admit that I had not freely chosen these things; my concern for them was not something I could control.  They were compulsions.

Tolerance and withdrawal were definite.  However, much achievement, intimacy, or approval I had, it was never quite enough.  I always wanted more.  And if I had to do without one of them, I would experience not only a craving for it, but also some degree of anxiety and even actual physical discomfort.  It occurred to me that my original “professional depression” had happened because I had been addicted to success and control.  It was, in fact, a withdrawal, it happened when I couldn’t get my fix of professional success.

Even my littlest bad habits and secret fantasies had the qualities of addiction.  I tried to take comfort in saying, “Yes, but my bad habits are inconsequential compared to alcoholism or drug addiction.”  That statement was certainly true, but it also felt like a self-justification, a rationalization for keeping my habits going.  It sounded too much like alcoholics I had heard saying, “Well, at least we’re not junkies,” while on the other side of the same hospital ward narcotic addicts were saying, “Well, at least we’re not winos.”

I can honestly say, then, that it was my work with addicted people, and the consequent realization of my own addictive behavior, that brought me to my knees.  I am glad.  Grace was there.  If my attachments had not caused me to fail miserably at controlling my life and work, I doubt I ever would have recovered the spiritual desire and the sense of God that had been so precious to me as a child.  Compared to what happens to people who suffer from alcoholism or narcotic addition, what happened to me may not seem much of a “rock bottom.”  But it had the same grace-full effect.  To state it quite simply, I had tried to run my life on the basis of my own will power alone.  When my supply of success at this egotistic autonomy ran out, I became depressed.  And with the depression, by means of grace, came a chance for spiritual openness.

I never did learn how to make spiritual experiences happen to chemically addicted people so their lives would be transformed.  I didn’t learn much of anything that helped me treat addictions, or for that matter any other form of illness.  But I become slightly more humble, through a growing appreciation of what I could and could not do to help myself or anyone else.  I also learned that all people are addicts, and that addictions to alcohol and other drugs are simply more obvious and tragic addictions that others have.  To be alive is to be addicted, and to be alive and addicted is to stand in need of grace.  (9-11)

In the next post I will make my attempt to link these remarks with our understanding of how we learn through practices and with groups in a manner that really is not possible by simply absorbing facts and amassing knowledge that is not realized in real life living.

*http://www.amazon.com/Addiction-Grace-Spirituality-Healing-Addictions/dp/0061122432/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344626994&sr=8-1&keywords=addiction+and+grace

From the writing of Peter M. Senge*:

The most accurate word in Western culture to describe what happens in a learning organization is one that hasn’t had much currency for the past several hundred years.  It is a word we have used in our work with organizations for some ten years, but we always caution them, and ourselves, to use it sparingly in public.  The word is “metanoia” and it means a shift of mind.  The word has a rich history.  For the Greeks, it meant a fundamental shift or change, or more literally transcendence (“meta” – above or beyond, as in “metaphysics”) of mind “noia,” from the root “nous,” of mind).  In the early Christian tradition, it took on a special meaning of awakening shared intuition and direct knowing of the highest, of God.  “Metanoia” was probably the key term of such early Christians as John the Baptist.  In the Catholic corpus the word “metanoia” was eventually translated as “repent.”

To grasp the meaning of “metanoia” is to grasp the deeper meaning of “learning,” for learning also involves a fundamental shift or movement of mind.  The problem with talking about “learning organizations” is that the “learning” has lost its central meaning in contemporary usage.  Most people’s eyes glaze over if you talk to them about “learning” or “learning organizations.”  The words tend to immediately evoke images of sitting passively in schoolrooms, listening, following directions, and pleasing the teacher by avoiding making mistakes.  In effect, in everyday use, learning has come to be synonymous with “taking in information.”  “Yes, I learned all about that at the training yesterday.”  Yet, taking in information is only distantly related to real learning.  It would be nonsensical to say, “I just read a great book about bicycle riding – I’ve now learned that.”

Real learning gets to the heart of what it means to be human.  Through learning we re-create ourselves.  Through learning we become able to do something we never were able to do.  Through learning we reperceive the world and our relationship to it.  Through learning we extend our capacity to create, to be part of the generative process of life. (13-14)

*http://www.amazon.com/The-Fifth-Discipline-Practice-Organization/dp/0385517254/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344520353&sr=8-1&keywords=the+fifth+discipline

Often, it seems, a number of different thinkers are thinking and writing about related subjects – and – fortunately, from time to time, great results are yielded by collectively utilizing observations that come from several different points of view.

I believe that is the case as we strive to find our identity, our reason for being, our greatest desire. 

In the words of Gerald G. May, M.D.*:  Regardless of how we describe it, it is a longing for love.  It is a hunger to love, to be loved, and to move closer to the Source of love.  This yearning is the essence of the human spirit; it is the origin of our highest hopes and most noble desire. (1)

Mark Smith, describing the work and thinking of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, writes:  Communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor . . . groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.  (http://www.infed.org/biblio/communities_of_practice.htm)

Or as Peter M. Senge** describes “learning organizations” – where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together. (3)

Concluding with a few more words from Dr. Gerald May: Grace is the most powerful force in the universe.  It can transcend repression, addiction, and every other internal or external power that seeks to oppress the freedom of the human heart.  Grace is where our hope lies. (4-5)

*http://www.amazon.com/Addiction-Grace-Spirituality-Healing-Addictions/dp/0061122432/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344341920&sr=8-1&keywords=addiction+and+grace

**http://www.amazon.com/Fifth-Discipline-Practice-Learning-Organization/dp/0385517254/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344341972&sr=1-1&keywords=the+fifth+discipline

As I was working my way through Teaching and Christian Practices: Reshaping Faith and Learning*, edited by David I. Smith and James K. A. Smith I had my first serious encounter with the work of Etienne Wenger who defines practice as action “in a historical and social context that give structure and meaning to what we do . . . a shared history of learning that requires some catching up for joining” (from “Introduction: Practices, Faith, and Pedagogy”).

Since that time I have done further study on Wenger and his work.  Here are some bits of information that should assist our understanding about communities of practice as we continue to strive to be the people that The Creator intends us to be.

Communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor: a tribe learning to survive, a band of artists seeking new forms of expression, a group of engineers working on similar problems, a clique of pupils defining their identity in the school, a network of surgeons exploring novel techniques, a gathering of first-time managers helping each other cope.

Not everything called a community is a community of practice. A neighborhood for instance, is often called a community, but is usually not a community of practice. Three characteristics are crucial:

1.      The domain: A community of practice is not merely a club of friends or a network of connections between people. It has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest. Membership therefore implies a commitment to the domain, and therefore a shared competence that distinguishes members from other people. (You could belong to the same network as someone and never know it.) The domain is not necessarily something recognized as “expertise” outside the community. A youth gang may have developed all sorts of ways of dealing with their domain: surviving on the street and maintaining some kind of identity they can live with. They value their collective competence and learn from each other, even though few people outside the group may value or even recognize their expertise.

2.      The community: In pursuing their interest in their domain, members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other. A website in itself is not a community of practice. Having the same job or the same title does not make for a community of practice unless members interact and learn together. The claims processors in a large insurance company or students in American high schools may have much in common, yet unless they interact and learn together, they do not form a community of practice. But members of a community of practice do not necessarily work together on a daily basis. The Impressionists, for instance, used to meet in cafes and studios to discuss the style of painting they were inventing together. These interactions were essential to making them a community of practice even though they often painted alone.

3.      The practice: A community of practice is not merely a community of interest–people who like certain kinds of movies, for instance. Members of a community of practice are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems—in short a shared practice. This takes time and sustained interaction. A good conversation with a stranger on an airplane may give you all sorts of interesting insights, but it does not in itself make for a community of practice. The development of a shared practice may be more or less self-conscious. The “windshield wipers” engineers at an auto manufacturer make a concerted effort to collect and document the tricks and lessons they have learned into a knowledge base. By contrast, nurses who meet regularly for lunch in a hospital cafeteria may not realize that their lunch discussions are one of their main sources of knowledge about how to care for patients. Still, in the course of all these conversations, they have developed a set of stories and cases that have become a shared repertoire for their practice.

It is the combination of these three elements that constitutes a community of practice. And it is by developing these three elements in parallel that one cultivates such a community.

“Etienne Wenger is a globally recognized thought leader in the field of communities of practice, who was featured by Training Magazine in their “A new Breed of Visionaries” series. A pioneer of the “communities of practice” research, he is author and co-author of seminal articles and books on the topic, including Situated Learning, where the term was coined, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity, where he lays out a theory of learning based on the concept of communities of practice, Cultivating Communities of Practice: a Guide to Managing Knowledge, addressed to practitioners in organizations, and Digital Habitats dealing with issues related to technology. His work as researcher, author, and consultant has influenced both thinking and practice in a wide variety of fields, including business, education, government, and social theory.”

All of this information may be found by visiting http://www.ewenger.com/theory/index.htm

When we begin our shared learning experiences in September we will be working together to become intentional practitioners in a community of practice.

*http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Christian-Practices-Reshaping-Learning/dp/0802866859/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344092567&sr=8-1&keywords=teaching+and+christian+practices

From Dr. James K. A. Smith*:  What if the primary work of education was the transforming of our imagination rather than the saturation of our intellect?  What if education wasn’t first and foremost about what we know, but about what we love? (18)

These past weeks have been very exciting for me.  For some time I have been contemplating the writing of a book.  That contemplation has centered on a number of very important and influential works by other writers, including:

Addiction and Grace by Gerald G. May, M.D.

The Spirituality of Imperfection by Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham

The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization by Peter M. Senge

Introverts in the Church by Adam S. McHugh

Good to Great by Jim Collins

Saving Jesus from the Church by Robin R. Meyers

Walking on Water: Self-Esteem and a Journey of Faith by Robert R. Ball

Falling Upward by Richard Rohr

Two additional volumes culminated my journey to this point.  They are:

Desiring the Kingdom by James K. A. Smith

Teaching and Christian Practices edited by David I. Smith and James K. A. Smith

All of these, and others, have led to the offering of two experiential learning opportunities that will be offered at Covenant Presbyterian Church (3003 Northland Drive) in Austin, Texas beginning in September.

Becoming– Sunday mornings at 9:30 beginning on September 9 – Practice being a new creation in a fallen world by deeply exploring the patterns of worship.

Human Beings Anonymous – Monday evenings at 6:30 beginning on September 10 – A fellowship for people practicing, one day at a time, how to overcome their common problems of worry, control, and exhaustion.

I very much hope that many of you will be able to join us for what I believe might be a life changing opportunity for learning by doing.

This post opened with words from James Smith – and – so it will close:

Our identity is shaped by what we ultimately love or what we love as ultimate – what, at the end of the day, gives us a sense of meaning, purpose, understanding, and orientation to our being in the world.  What we desire or love ultimately is a vision of what we hope for, what we thinkt he good life looks like. (27)

*http://www.amazon.com/Desiring-Kingdom-Worldview-Formation-Liturgies/dp/0801035775/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343925094&sr=8-1&keywords=desiring+the+kingdom

In the early 1960s Pete Seeger wrote the words and music for “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” and recorded it with Tao Rodriguez-Seeger.

For those who are too young to remember . . .

Where have all the flowers gone long time passing . . . girls have picked them every one

Where have all the young girls gone long time passing . . . taken husbands every one

Where have all the young men gone long time passing . . . gone for soldiers every one

Where have all the soldiers gone long time passing . . . gone to graveyards every one

Where have all the graveyards gone long time passing . . . covered with flowers every one

And each verse ended with the question:  When will they ever learn?  When will they ever learn?

Our world today is a mess!  That may seem to be one of the great understatements of all time, but, a look at history indicates humanity’s lack of success in ever living in peace and love.  Long time passing . . . will we ever learn?

Father Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation yesterday spoke important truth for us in this time and place:  Once Jesus’ great and good news became a reward-punishment system that only checked into place in the next world instead of a transformational system in this world, Christianity in effect moved away from a religion of letting go and became a religion of holding on.  Religion’s very purpose for many people was to protect the status quo of empire, power, war, money, and the private ego.  So in many ways, we have not been a force for liberation, peacemaking, or change in the world.  One thing for sure is that healthy religion is always telling us to change instead of giving us ammunition to try to change others.  Authentic Christianity is a religion of constantly letting go of the false self so the True Self in God can stand revealed – now (http://cac.org, July 31, 2012).

From Father Richard’s book Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life*:  I find that many, if not most, people and institutions remain stymied in the preoccupations of the first half of life.  By that I mean that most people’s concerns remain those of establishing their personal (or superior) identity, creating various boundary markers for themselves, seeking security, and perhaps linking to what seem like significant people or projects.  These tasks are good to some degree and even necessary.  We are all trying to find what the Greek philosopher Archimedes called a “lever and a place to stand” so that we can move the world just a little bit.  The world would be much worse off if we did not do this first and important task.

But, in my opinion, this first-half-of-life task is no more than finding the starting gate.

I believe that we learn the skills and beliefs that we need for the second half of life by practicing – one day at a time – how to overcome our common problems of worry, control and exhaustion.  In the next post I will describe an opportunity to be part of a learning community of practice that will begin in just a few weeks.  I hope you will accept the invitation to join us and be part of our learning together as we continue our journey of living.

*http://www.amazon.com/Falling-Upward-Spirituality-Halves-Life/dp/0470907754/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343827962&sr=8-1&keywords=rohr+falling+upward

For many, the name Vince Lombardi (1913-1970) brings to mind the very successful coach of the NFL Green Bay Packers – whose tenure with the Packers included wins in the first two Super Bowl games – 1966 and 1967.  Lombardi is also well remembered for saying “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.”  As I have studied for this series of posts I also have discovered that he apparently frequently remarked “Practice does not make perfect.  Only perfect practice makes perfect.”

In my reading and preparation I also discovered the following which reminded me of my earlier years as a student of the piano – from an article by Annie Murphy Paul:

In an article titled “It’s Not How Much: It’s How,” published in the Journal of Research in Music Education in 2009, University of Texas-Austin professor Robert Duke and his colleagues videotaped advanced piano students as they practiced a difficult passage from a Shostakovich concerto, then ranked the participants by the quality of their ultimate performance.  The researchers found no relationship between excellence of performance and how many times the students had practiced the piece or how long they spent practicing.  Rather, “the most notable differences between the practice sessions of the top-ranked pianists and the remaining participants,” Duke and his coauthors wrote, “are related to their handling of errors.”

The best pianists, they determined, addressed their mistakes immediately.  They identified the precise location and source of each error, then rehearsed that part again and again until it was corrected.  Only then would the best students proceed to the rest of the piece.  “It was not the case that the top-ranked pianists made fewer errors at the beginning of their practice sessions than did the other pianists,” Duke notes.  “But, when errors occurred, the top-ranked pianists seemed much better able to correct them in ways that precluded their recurrence.”

Without deliberate practice, even the most talented individuals will reach a plateau and stay there.  For most of us, that’s just fine.  But don’t delude yourself that you’ll see much improvement unless you’re ready to tackle your mistakes as well as your successes. http://ideas.time.com/2012/01/25/the-myth-of-practice-makes-perfect/

This reminded me again of one very important element of my mother’s insistence on my beginning my piano practice each day by participating in the practice of sight reading.  The practice I was doing was much more important than I ever could have imagined at the time – a practice done by many before me – and – thanks to my mother, the practice was done in a manner that led to regular and constant improvement in my craft and my training.

I strongly believe that this concept is very important and it will be the springboard for coming posts as we continue to move toward understanding how we learn – it is much more than repetition and it is much more than memorization of cognitive facts and information.

Please – join in the conversation!

The reality of “practice makes perfect” is much more than human willpower.  It involves real scientific data and discovery.

An article in Psychology Today* offers a good place to begin to grasp an understanding of the science of “practice makes perfect” – an article well worth reading. This article tells the story of a young tennis player growing up in Montana who learned both tennis and life from his father:

“Although being a state tennis champion is technically what got my father a college scholarship, that ‘trophy’ is secondary to everything else that he learned on the tennis court that stuck with him for the rest of his life.  His brain was rewired through his daily workouts.  He was able to transfer his ‘eye for the ball’ into ‘focus’ and remain intellectually sharper than the rest.  His daily tennis practice gave him the physicality, dexterity, and stamina to be a world-class surgeon.

My father wanted me to be the next Björn Borg.  I put a lot of pressure on myself to succeed from a very young age.  I wanted my father to be proud of me and I worked very hard on the tennis court.  When I was growing up, tennis was our only real alone time and we played every Sunday.  His coaching was based on an understanding that muscle memory is stored in a part of your brain called the “cerebellum” (Latin: little brain).  My dad’s mantra to me as a kid was: ‘Carve the grooves into the cerebellum, Chris.  Think about hammering and forging your muscle memory with every stroke.’  The cerebellum is the #1 reason that practice makes perfect.”

Sadly, the same science that teaches that “practice makes perfect” in learning desired skills is also the science that leads to an understanding of the process of abuse and addiction.  This will be the focus of several coming posts, but let us open the door for consideration by turning to one of my favorite and most read volumes, Addiction and Grace** by Dr. Gerald May:

“We human beings are the most adaptable creatures in God’s creation.  Our adaptability has allowed us to dominate the world.  But our very capacity to create new normalities for ourselves also makes us vulnerable to countless attachments.  As every attachment forms, a new normality is born.  With each new normality, addiction exists.” (78)

I offer one more important bit of reading to conclude this post and move us toward future days and weeks.  This is from another book that everyone should have and read – often, The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning*** by Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham:

“The ‘language of recovery’ that is storytelling involves not dogma or commandment, not things to be done or truths to be believed, not theory, conjecture, argument, analysis, or explanation, but a way of conversation shared by those who accept and identify with their own imperfection.  Following the tradition of Western spirituality, Alcoholics Anonymous aims to convery experience rather than to ‘teach’ concepts.  Always truthful to experience, the language of recovery makes it possible to see – and thus to understand – reality differently.  And it is in this different vision that spirituality begins.” (160)

The journey continues – please join the conversation.

*http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201110/no-1-reason-practice-makes-perfect

**http://www.amazon.com/Addiction-Grace-Spirituality-Healing-Addictions/dp/0061122432/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341840391&sr=8-1&keywords=addiction+and+grace

***http://www.amazon.com/Spirituality-Imperfection-Storytelling-Search-Meaning/dp/0553371320/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341841369&sr=1-1&keywords=spirituality+of+imperfection+storytelling+and+the+search+for+meaning