People are somehow convinced that nothing ought to be difficult, take any time or worst of all be boring. You can't even get them to take on exercise regimes or work on cataloguing documents for longer than it takes to turn your back. The idea of setting a goal and following through is an alien to the Short Attention Span Theatre Generation. We need more churches that remind us of the need for a Spiritual Personal Trainer to keep us focused and remind us that nobody said it would be easy, entertaining and instantaneously gratifying.
I must be strange...I like cataloging!
And I like the idea and experience of how spiritual life ought to be described by the word growth.
"We need more churches that remind us of the need for a Spiritual Personal Trainer to keep us focused and remind us that nobody said it would be easy, entertaining and instantaneously gratifying."
In Orthodoxy the use of "Spiritual Fathers" has increased dramatically over the past 30 years or so. This was previously something which one ran across only in monasteries and among the clergy but with the rise of the Zoe movement in Greece, it became widespread among the laity there and eventually here. Our converts seem particularly drawn to this. The image of a "trainer" is a good one and consistent with the Eastern habit of referring to monastics as "spiritual athletes" and particularly holy ones as "spiritual Olympians".