Present Over Perfect

ancient practices. He was reading voraciously, and spent
hours walking up and down the sidewalk in front of our
house, on phone call after phone call with friends around
the country feeling their hearts and minds ignited by similar
themes.
And then two years ago, our church invited him to bring
those dreams and ideas to life. He left behind almost twenty
years of leading worship in huge rooms, and he drew
together a small team of likeminded friends to start the
Practice. I’ve never seen him happier, never seen him more
connected to his own passion or vocation.
We began meeting on Sunday nights in our church’s
chapel, a beautiful, sacred space. At the center of the room
is the Eucharist table—loaves of bread, slender bottles of
dark juice, waiting to be poured into bowls. A grand piano,
sometimes a cello.
We begin in silence, and Aaron leads us through an
opening liturgy. We pray and sing; we practice confession
and assurance. We learn from rabbis and Jesuits and
Pentecostals and spiritual directors. We learn from men and
women, old and young, from right within our community,
and from San Francisco and Tulsa and New York City.
We sit in the round, and the rest of the building is dark
and hushed. Sometimes we have potlucks in the basement,
and on the day of the first one, I was elated—my first
church-basement potluck! There must have been a full
dozen crockpots, and I was in my glory.
At dinner a few nights ago, a friend I don’t see often