Friday, February 10, 2012

God and My Chiropractor


I have a stiff neck. Some days metaphorically, most days literally. Stiff and achy. I started seeing a chiropractor a couple of weeks ago.

Earlier this morning as I was lying flat on my face she was asking me, while her palms were touching the bottoms of my feet, to look toward different things—the corner of the room, straight ahead, my right shoulder, my left shoulder. Then she’d do certain ‘adjustments’ based on what she noticed with her hands.

As she did this we were also talking about prayer—about how it feels right sometimes to talk to God out loud. How she often talked to God out load before sleeping or just after waking up--how I do the same thing while walking.

Talking to God out loud can be a lot like journaling. Engaging parts of ourselves other than just the thinking part can be insightful. When we’re journaling or praying out loud we’re not just creating thoughts we’re also hearing or reading what we’ve created. By using more of our natural capacity for ‘speaking’ we’re also developing more of our natural capacity for ‘hearing.’ Any of you who journal (or pray out loud!) probably already know this.

The current ‘blog’ thread is about this kind of thing. Richard Rohr has been reminding us that Eckhart Tolle is a friend of many different traditions because he’s not telling anybody what to see or believe but is instead inviting and skillfully training anybody who's interested to learn how to see better.

I know very little about Eckhart Tolle, but I’m grateful for anybody who is able to help us humans better see what's most important to us. Seeing is one of the Forms of Spiritual Formation. Sadly, very few Christians value spiritual formation.

We do value spiritual transformation, yet we don’t understand how it works. We tend to think that being moderately faithful day by day will somehow, in God’s time and by God’s grace, transform us. It won’t. It doesn’t.

My chiropractor has spent years learning how to ‘see’ with her hands. I asked her about the process. She told me about her years of training--and how she was still learning. She said some older, seasoned chiropractors no longer had to ask patients to turn their heads different ways. They could just lay their hands on certain places and ‘know.’ She said she still needed to follow a more basic protocol. Me too.

As I mentioned, journaling and talking to God out loud can be really helpful. But, as we say in the South, there’s a whole ‘nother way of prayer that doesn’t involve talking at all. Listening to God is as important, probably more important, than talking to God. Yet how many of us have been skillfully trained in listening?

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could daily, hourly, moment by moment open our minds and hearts and hands to God to better hear what the Spirit is saying to us?

Well…we can. We have centuries of wisdom to explore, wise teachers to help—and best of all—no shortcuts.

As we learn to understand the active and living process of transformation, our longing to be transformed is a great and sacred force. Learning how to hear what the Spirit is saying to God's people is a huge part of spiritual formation and transformation. The process begins and continues as we come to trust that cultivating receptive silence takes work. 

How much work?

How long does it take a chiropractor to 'know' with her hands? When is the training over?

Thank God there are schools of chiropractice. Thank God there are schools of contemplative practice.