What we make … makes us.
The things we make have a real effect of making us; from laws to malls, from social media to societal structures. The realities we as humans have made begin to mediate the ways in which we interact with and even imagine the world around us. Habits and regular practices shape and reshape our loves and our longings.
Liturgies, whether religious or secular, “shape and constitute our identities by forming our fundamental desires and our most basic attunement to the world. In short, liturgies make us certain kinds of people, and what defines us is what we love.” James K.A. Smith
*(Smith uses the term ‘liturgy’ to mean habit-forming rituals or cultural practices.)
“One of the hardest spiritual tasks is to live without prejudices. Sometimes we aren’t even aware how deeply rooted our prejudices are. We may think that we relate to people who are different from us in colour, religion, sexual orientation, or lifestyle as equals, but in concrete circumstances our spontaneous thoughts, uncensored words, and knee-jerk reactions often reveal that our prejudices are still there.
Strangers, people different than we are, stir up fear, discomfort, suspicion, and hostility. They make us lose our sense of security just by being ‘other.’ Only when we fully claim that God loves us in an unconditional way and look at ‘those other persons’ as equally loved can we begin to discover that the great variety in being human is an expression of the immense richness of God’s heart. Then the need to prejudge people can gradually disappear.”
— Henri Nouwen, The Spiritual Life
Doing whatever feels right is not freedom, it is slavery to one’s own feelings. Yet, spiritual formation and spiritual maturity are not developed by the rejection of feelings for thinking. Nor are they developed by the rejection of thought for action.
A life formed by the spirit must encompass the practice of thinking, feeling, and acting like Christ.