Practicing Jesus

Part 6, The Little Way of Thérèse of Lisieux

Summarizing the last post, there's a huge hole in our spiritual formation efforts, a ''missing spiritual discipline." What would fill this hole is a spiritual formation practice that is daily, situational, direct and interpersonal. 

If that's the case, where might we find such a practice?

In my book Stranger God I describe my search for this practice, the "missing spiritual discipline." The Holy Grail of Spiritual Formation! 

After the publication of Unclean I was spending a lot of time consulting with churches concerning missional hospitality, welcoming our neighbors and the God who comes to us in strangers. Not surprisingly, after launching their hospitality initiatives churches were stumbling over the sociopsychological triggers that trip us all up. Difference makes us feel awkward, uncomfortable, hesitant, wary, and even afraid. We also bump into our prejudices and biases, both conscious and unconscious. 

You can vividly see the "hole" we're facing here in our spiritual formation efforts. Facing these interpersonal obstacles in churches, pastors might preach a sermon about the Good Samaritan. They might ask their people to pray for their city. Lovely and important things to do. But sermons and prayers aren't directly stepping into awkward and uncomfortable interpersonal spaces. We can listen to sermons and pray for our neighbors while keeping firmly in our social lanes, never encountering people who both challenge and bless us in their difference. 

So after Unclean churches kept asking me, "What can we do to form ourselves into people of kindness and welcome? Especially in those spaces where we find ourselves pulling back, behaviorally and emotionally?" At the time, I didn't have a great answer.

The answer I had offered at the conclusion of Unclean was partial and inadequate. Like many in the spiritual formation conversation, I had pointed to liturgy, Eucharistic practices in particular. To be sure, liturgy is powerful. And I think Eucharistic practices are an especially potent tool for spiritual formation. Many churches, nudged by Unclean, have found that weekly and intentional liturgies around the Table have profoundly shaped their shared life and missional imagination. Still, a Eucharistic liturgy is only once a week for a few minutes. There is not enough "time on task" to form us. There's also a problem with space, place, and social location. As a liturgy within the church, Eucharist, as a practice, isn't directly moving me out into uncomfortable interpersonal spaces.

And so, I started the hunt for the Holy Grail, the missing spiritual formation practice. I scoured the spiritual formation literature and read the biographies and memoirs of saints who displayed radical hospitality. Dorothy Day was my breakthrough. If you know about the life and witness of Dorothy Day, you know there's no better example of what it looks like to both extend and receive the welcome of Christ on the margins of society. People would make pilgrimages to her Catholic Worker house of hospitality in New York to find her sitting at a table drinking a cup of coffee with a heron-addicted prostitute. Many have described Dorothy Day as "America's Mother Teresa." In fact, when Mother Teresa visited the US she made it a point to visit Dorothy Day. When you inspire someone like Mother Teresa, well, that tells you something.

In becoming a student of the life of Dorothy Day, I encountered Thérèse of Lisieux and her "little way." Day described herself as a follower of the Little Way. She even wrote a biography about Thérèse. I also discovered that Thérèse and her Little Way had also profoundly shaped the life of Mother Teresa.

Obviously, all this caught my attention. What was this "little way" that had shaped both Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa of Calcutta, two of the great witnesses of Christian love and charity for "the least of these"? Could it be that the Little Way was "the missing spiritual discipline" I'd been looking for? Was this the Holy Grail?

As I describe in Stranger God, the answer was yes. The Little Way was "the missing spiritual discipline" I'd been looking for, a practice that is daily, situational, direct and interpersonal. To be sure, there are many "takes" about Thérèse and her Little Way, many commentators and interpreters. Most treatments describe the Little Way as a path of humble service and fidelity, rejecting grand and ambitious pursuits (professional and spiritual) to embrace the "smallness" of my life in doing good to those God has given me. But I'd argue that this perspective about the Little Way, while important and lovely, misses what I take to be the focus of the Little Way. I think the Little Way is best described as a spiritual formation practice that shapes us in the crucible of daily life as we face and intentionally step into challenging interpersonal situations.

For example, in her memoir Story of a Soul Thérèse describes her Little Way as an intentional practice of approaching, to share a kind smile and some conversation, with the sisters in her convent who were difficult to get along with. Relatedly, she describes the Little Way as a practice of not detouring around the sisters she would rather have avoided. She also describes the Little Way as mastering her irritation when a sister makes annoying noises during their shared quiet time of prayer. As you can see, these examples are less about humbly embracing our "small" life than intentional practices aimed at busting up unthinking social habits to get us out of our comfort zones. The Little Way is also about intentionally practicing patience with people who are driving us crazy. The Little Way isn't about embracing a small and humble life. The Little Way is about moving through your day with a spiritual formation agenda, the way Thérèse moved through her day, from practicing patience when facing irritation to moving toward people we'd rather avoid.

Simply put, what I saw in the Little Way was a practice that forms in us the fruit of the Spirit, a daily, situational, direct and interpersonal practice that forms in us virtues of patience, gentleness, kindness, and self-control. More, as seen in the lives of Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa, the Little Way is a practice that forms lives characterized by radical welcome and hospitality.

In the next two posts, I'll share a bit more about what all this looks like.