Focal Practice as a Path, Pt. 1
Article originally published in summer 2024 in Cowley Magazine.
Awake, awake to love and work!
The lark is in the sky;
The fields are wet with diamond dew;
The worlds awake to cry
Their blessings on the Lord of life,
As He goes meekly by.
Singing these verses in our monastic service of morning prayer—in an indoor chapel, from a printed page—evokes memory, imagination, and desire (“Not Here for High and Holy Things,” words by George Anketel Studdert-Kennedy). I remember the many early morning walks I have taken; I imagine the worlds around me on every side full of crawling, flying, burrowing creatures, continually drawn into being by the breath of their Maker; I yearn for yet further, deeper relationship with God’s world as its beings sing their million-throated witness to Life in its fullness.
But when the hem of my habit is drenched with the same diamond dew; when I have responded to the relentless song of the first robin by rousing myself out into the enfolding half-light of dawn; when my own ears have heard the blessings cawed and warbled into the clinging mist before the work of human worship has even begun; it is then that I know, by the Creator’s grace, the heart of the hymn of creation. My boots flecked with grass, my beard slick with the fine spring rain, singing a hymn becomes more than an aid to memory, imagination, or desire. My mouth is full of praise that has become my own because it has also become the world’s praise resounding through my voice, returning to its Source.
Praying morning prayer daily; singing a familiar hymn with devotion; getting out of bed because that first enthusiastic robin is singing her heart out; lingering to witness the primeval moment the sun breaks the tree line and the world is, once more, gifted with light . . .
Even if our own list would differ substantially, we know intuitively that these activities share an underlying kinship.
Though small in themselves, they orient us toward the focal concerns of our lives: the things that matter most and give meaning and value to all else. Giving ourselves to their patterned observance, we give ourselves to God: the generous source and grateful recipient of our prayers, praise, attention, and wonder. They are, in the phrase of Albert Borgmann, focal practices.
A focal practice is an engagement, a habit, an activity that we take up frequently—daily or at least weekly. It requires attention, effort, and skill honed over time. This combination of qualities means it may at times feel burdensome, a task that demands more of us than we can summon when our schedules demand convenience or our hungers urge us to instant gratification. But when, with patient fidelity and love, we take up the arduous task, it yields a deep satisfaction and fulfillment of purpose that is often hard to describe. Traditional spiritual disciplines such as scripture study, contemplative prayer, and liturgical worship clearly form a time-tested repertoire of focal practices. But many other activities fulfill the same purpose and can easily become prayer with the right inward orientation: playing an instrument; tending a fire; baking bread; learning the birds in our ecosystem by sight and sound. Indeed, these were the daily practices of premodern humanity, among whom the classic spiritual disciplines first blossomed. To live on this earth with a purpose that rendered the struggle and pain worthwhile meant ordering one’s life around focal things. Focal practices safeguarded the centrality of those things.
Borgmann is a philosopher of technology and a Christian. His notion of focal practices is set within a larger project: advancing a vision of responsible engagement with technology in ways more closely aligned with matters of ultimate concern.
I have found the notion of focal practices helpful on many levels. The term accurately describes most of the activities embedded in the rhythms of monastic life. These include the Daily Office and Eucharist; monastic customs and spirituality around the labor of our hands; our practices of eating and table fellowship; our traditions of hospitality; our disciplines of learning and study; our cultivation of skills for ministry such as preaching and spiritual direction; and the vast treasury of practices that enrich our personal prayer. We have focal practices for almost every aspect of life!
But we—like everyone in contemporary North American society—are just as susceptible to what our Rule calls “the din of noise and the whirl of preoccupation” that come with a technology-saturated culture.
During a stretch of bleak, gray weather in February when the sun hasn’t appeared for days; when I respond to the chapel bell with dogged obedience rather than light-footed joy; when the preaching of God’s word tastes uninspired and flavorless in my mouth; when I feel lonely or unloved, threadbare or tested by the vows I professed with such ardor; then it is easy to find me checking my email for the fifteenth time in a single day; watching a third or fourth or eighth consecutive YouTube video about the absolute best method to free-range chickens; wondering with needless anxiety why a friend hasn’t texted me; or slogging away at a spreadsheet on the Sabbath. Irritable, listless, estranged from my body, the moment of awareness creeps upon me: This is not Life.
It is then that the creator Spirit—through my focal practices—drives me out into the wilderness, or just the nearest city park or stretch of riverbank, to rediscover my human creaturehood in a world of things. I stare down my own inertia and acedia; I muster patient fidelity and love. I ask for help. I take up the arduous but Life-bestowing task. By the Spirit’s grace I engage again with Life. It’s not a magic recipe. I don’t always respond as swiftly or wholeheartedly as I ought. No matter—the God who gives Life far more than I desire it always stands at the ready with another opportunity to return.
Though I’m a monk, I am learning (like all of us) that if I am to be critically engaged with technology, I must hold its use in proportion alongside the focal practices by which God brings me back to Life.
