What is your favourite quote that best describes your idea of spiritual formation?

I do not have a favourite quote, but I do have two favourite stories I use to describe my idea of spiritual formation. These are not original stories, but are nevertheless reflective of certain fundamental dimensions of spiritual formation.

Also, these stories are true of how learning actually used to take place in pre-industrialised societies and reflect a missing dimension of our Christian heritage that we have lost in discipleship and formation.

a. The Violin Maker
Stradivarius was a legendary violin maker from Italy in the 18th century. He made violins like no other man in existence. His violins produced sounds which flickered, constantly trembled, and moved like candlelight. There are about 600 Stradivarius violins in the world today, and one can fetch a price of as high as a USD 200,000. And despite the way in which technology has grown by leaps and bounds, nobody has truly figured out what makes Stradivarius violins sound the way they do.

How did a master violin maker like Stradivarius or any other violin maker teach an apprentice to make violins? Did he conduct classes twice a week for two hours each session? Or did he offer a certificate programme for this? It’s simple. He would bring the apprentice to live with him, day and night watching him make violins.

Apparently, a great violin that produces the best music can only be made from certain kinds of wood. These woods are from trees that have survived a cold season at a certain time period. So the master violin maker would take the apprentice up to the mountains of Switzerland to find wood there. The master violin maker would test the wood by touching, feeling and smelling the wood, to judge whether the wood would be suitable for the construction of a good violin. His apprentice would just be following him and observing him for many years. One day, on one such trip, the master violin maker would pass the wood, piece by piece, to the apprentice to ask the apprentice to gauge if it was good or bad wood. The apprentice would begin by guessing wrongly, for he does not truly know what constitutes a piece of good or bad wood – and neither does the master have the words to describe the criteria!

But the apprentice just keeps imitating the master’s actions – touching, feeling and smelling the wood. Some years later, he’s able to do what his master does, and he knows what is good wood and what is bad wood – without necessarily having the words to describe the criteria! But he has mastered the art by slowly imitating the master and is able to eventually construct high quality violins instinctively, which even highly technologised machines cannot do.

Editor's Note: The second story will be posted up in the next post.