Jana Riess discovered she’d been changed by her attempts to practice the classic spiritual disciplines such as fasting, service, and prayer when she received a phone call informing her that her father was dying. He’d abandoned the family while she was growing up. She hadn’t seen him in 26 years.
“Here’s what I learned from my father’s sudden reappearance and death: all of those unsuccessful practices, those attempts at sainthood that felt like dismal failures at the time, actually took hold somehow,” Riess writes in her new memoir, Flunking Sainthood: A Year of Breaking the Sabbath, Forgetting to Pray, and Still Loving My Neighbor (Paraclete). “They helped form me into the kind of person who could go to the bedside of someone who had harmed me and be able to say, ‘I forgive you, Dad. Go in peace.'”
The call came shortly after Riess—known best for her long-running Beliefnet blog (which just moved to Religion News Service) and Bible-tweeting project—had spent an entire year sampling spiritual disciplines, one per month, accompanied by her reading of appropriate companion spiritual classics. The result, Flunking Sainthood, made the 2011 Publisher’s Weekly Top Ten list in the religion category.
Riess writes with honesty and wit about auditioning these spiritual disciplines. During the month of October, for example, she elected to adopt a vegetarian diet, writing, “I’m going to spend a month avoiding my good friend, Mr. Porterhouse.” Though a concern for animal welfare sparked the decision, she decided to explore vegetarianism as a spiritual practice. She read Bonaventure’s bio of St. Francis, one of the most famous animal lovers of them all.
Riess learned that in spite of his animal-loving ways, Francis wasn’t exactly a vegetarian. She learned the same thing about herself:
After two weeks of semi-virtuous eating, I am seriously craving a burger … I don’t want any more waif food, no greens or granola …. I want fried chicken, and if I can’t have that, I’m going to have (the Golden Corral’s) macaroni and cheese along with green beans that were probably boiled with a nice chunk of ham for flavor. The specter of ham technically violates this month’s principles, but since it is only a suspicion, maybe I’m not morally responsible for the welfare of Wilbur, or whichever pig might be gracing my vegetables today.
Riess tackles Sabbath-keeping, hospitality, generosity, and more. Some practices root bits of themselves into her life as she moves through her year. Others, not so much. Her June experiment with Centering Prayer was an exercise only in frustration. Midway through the month, she writes, “Although I’ve failed to varying degrees at the five spiritual practices I’ve tried so far this year, I’ve never stopped cold turkey before. I am exhausted by the artificiality of trying to pray this way.”
Flunking Sainthood is a balm for Christians who’ve attempted various spiritual practices in hopes of becoming more like Jesus and discovered that transformation is neither quick nor convenient. Riess cheerfully admitted that a month’s trial wasn’t enough time for any of these disciplines to effect noticeable change, yet she was gratified to discover that change came anyway.
Riess’s experience shines a helpful light on the long-term commitment required to pursue spiritual transformation. I read Richard Foster’s classic Celebration of Discipline as a young believer, and sampled the various disciplines as if I were trying on clearance-rack shoes at an outlet mall. It didn’t take me long to figure out that there are no shortcuts to a disciplined life.
First-person accounts of the challenges and questions raised by a dedicated pursuit of spiritual transformation is an evergreen topic in books about the Christian life. Think Augustine’s Confessions, Henri Nouwen’s Genesee Diary: Report From A Trappist Monastery, or Lauren Winner’s Mudhouse Sabbath, to name a few. Accounts of re-forming our lives in order to re-shape our souls have been a teaching tool since Jesus first said, “Follow me” to a couple of pairs of fishermen.
Riess, who attended Princeton Theological Seminary, converted to Mormonism as an adult but knows the orthodox Christian landscape well. There are a couple of oblique references to LDS practices (such as not drinking caffeineated beverages), but her Mormon faith is not the focus of the volume. Instead, she emphasizes her desire to recapture the zing of a brand-new relationship with Christ, one that began during high school. She writes, “I just didn’t know then that it would be impossible to maintain the same passion for God I felt at that singular moment.” She came to her year of living Jesus-ly hoping she could somehow rekindle the flame.
Almost every major faith teaches practices designed to help adherents gain acceptance in the sight of God. Dallas Willard notes that for the Christian, however, the disciplines are simply a response to what God has already done for us:
“When we understand that grace (charis) is gift (charisma), we then see that to grow in grace is to grow in what is given to us of God and by God. The disciplines are then, in the clearest sense, a means to that grace and also to those gifts. Spiritual disciplines, ‘exercises unto godliness,’ are only activities undertaken to make us capable of receiving more of his life and power …”
The disciplines in themselves can not relight the fire. But they can re-form us so that when the phone rings and the crisis happens, we are able to access and release the charis of God. Flunking Sainthood is a valuable read for all of us who need a reminder that God’s mercy is bigger than even our most valiant efforts to honor him. Riess’s desire to reconnect with the Jesus she met in her youth is a prayer we in the church can affirm for her, even as we pursue Christ, failures and all.
