As all my friends know, because I can’t not talk about it, my youngest son and I have been studying a form of Japanese swordsmanship for a little over a year and a half now. Well, we were finally invited to do our first testing this summer, and we both passed. My son did so somewhat more respectably than I. To mix metaphors (well, to mix sports), I hit a single just inside the baseline, while my son hit a double off the wall. Regardless, we’re now both “first rank” (in the U.S., not the Japanese, association), though that’s not something you’d ever actually mention — which is one reason this whole sword thing is so cool.

The predominant lesson is one I’ve ruminated about before: the “way” of submission I’ve seen in my Scottish-bred, Key West-born sensei. He doesn’t cut corners. He has given himself in humility to learn what his Japanese sensei wants him to know. He has no patience with “know it alls” and self-promoters. He’s learned a power of greatness that comes from taking the lowly path. For my son and me, what we learned from testing is something we already knew: testing isn’t the deal — making progress in the art of the sword is.

A second lesson has to do with the cumulative power of little acts of obedience when combined with a master teacher’s powers of observation and timely guidance. It has only been since the spring that the sword thing has become enjoyable. That’s because there have been several “breakthroughs” for me recently — that is, finally “getting it” about certain mechanics of the discipline.
What it’s taken to finally understand things I’d merely heard for months was a combination of my doing the best I could over and over and over again even though I was doing things wrong, and my sensei’s sensing the timely moment when an individualized word could be heard — that is, his recognizing “teachable moments”:

“Throw the tip of the sword as though you were casting a fishing rod, like this….”

“Keep the pad of your left palm on the sword all the time, like this ….”

“On the left-to-right side cut, keep the right wrist cocked, like this….”

At long last, when I do my forms, I don’t feel like a klutz, and when I approach a tatami to cut it, I expect to cut it cleanly and with an angle that’s at least close. I’ve had to do mongo-numerific repetitions, but sensei had to offer timely corrections, otherwise I’d still just be doing things wrong.

By my daily practice, I put myself in the line of fire for illumination. By his attentiveness, my sensei metes out his best instruction when it can be heard. The whole dynamic is, for me, a window into the way God relates to those he’s adopted into his family through Jesus.

Lectionary Devotions. Not unrelated to the above has been my use of the lectionary for personal devotions. For years I’ve done Bible reading on a “read through” basis, trying to get through the whole Bible in English every year and through the Greek NT once a year too. The latter’s been fairly consistent, the former pretty spotty.

A few months ago I changed over to following the Presbyterian Church (USA) lectionary, where the typical daily pattern is: a psalm or two, an Old Testament passage, a paragraph or so from a New Testament epistle, and a Gospel pericope. In recent years, I’ve picked up more friends from a liturgical tradition, and I’ve been intrigued, first, by how much more actual reading of Scripture there is in their Sunday worship services (a topic for another day!), and, second, by what an oddly satisfying thing it seems to be to them to be reading Scripture daily in concert with a vast number of fellow believers around the world. They seem to have a keener sense than I of being caught up in a shared story with a worldwide, heaven-and-earth-transcending communion.

At any rate, I’m giving myself to the daily lectionary readings for now. To facilitate that for myself and anybody else who cares to join in, I’ve posted an RSS link to the daily lectionary from my website (in the left hand column of this page).

A few observations.

Every day I have at least one psalm to meditate on (I usually use the chants from the Book of Common Worship). The psalms — especially as sung — sort of force a more personal engagement, and remind me that Scripture promotes doxology and authenticity. Lex canendi, lex credendi. Sing praise. Understanding will follow.

Old Testament stories come in smaller bits. Following the lectionary, I’ll read about half a chapter a day instead of, like, three chapters in the annual “read through” track. That means the stories unfold a bit more leisurely, suspense building from day to day. Tracking Samson’s sorry tale over the course of several days, for instance, is quite a different matter than running through it in a day. You come back to him each morning waiting for him to wake up from his spiritual stupor and ethical torpor — but he doesn’t, until his days on this earth are spent. You see yourself in a mirror, and you cry out, “Lord, have mercy!” The Old Testament has suddenly become more like what it actually is, the poignantly dramatic unfolding of God’s story of his reclamation of this out-of-control planet he nonetheless loves.

No matter what, in the lectionary you always end with a gospel reading — that means (like any good children’s sermon) you always end up with Jesus. In the Protestant tradition that has shaped me, we prize the epistles (especially Paul’s), where the implications of Jesus’s coming — his death, his resurrection, and his guidance via the Holy Spirit — are spelled out. But the actual person — the one Martin Kaehler liked to refer to as the “historic Christ” of the gospel accounts — can go relatively unattended in our tradition.

It takes far more intuition and imagination on your part and far more illumining work from the Holy Spirit’s side, to go daily to the gospel accounts and get your bearings from Jesus. Today, for instance, I was reminded that it isn’t in Scripture as such that “eternal life” resides (we’re a religion “of the book,” so to speak — but the book isn’t the religion); rather, “it is they (the Scriptures) that bear witness to me. And you aren’t willing to come to me to get that life” (John 5:39-40). I realize the gospel writers are no less mediators of the “actual Jesus” than are the epistle writers. Nonetheless, through them I’m being reminded more directly my Jesus’s meddlesomeness, not to mention his refusal to be refashioned in my likeness.