“When our action is dictated by factors external to our souls, we do not live active lives but reactive lives.”
Parker Palmer, The Active Life
I have always loved working with young horses, in part because of the wideness between what is, and what can be, when it comes to them. On one hand, they are flight risks who, in the absence of human intervention, will spend most of their day eating and running away from things. Here we find a horse who is beautiful, but also deeply anxious and afraid. But there is a flip side to the horse, where, through sound training and the building of trust, they can be transformed into creatures who are able to navigate difficult obstacles with a stunning display of courage and strength. And the difference between these two different kinds of horses is so stark that if you lined them up beside one another, you might think they required two distinctly different names.
The pivot point in this transition from ambivalence and anxious action, to purpose and power, is a mental and physical state called “collection.” Once collected, the horse is able to move forward and approach obstacles using all of himself in an integrated and balanced effort that is sustained by the shaping influence of the rider’s hands. Here the horse’s focus is sharpened, every part of his body begins to work in unison, and his once scattered and combustible energy is captured, contained, and then put towards a breathtaking display of power, rhythm, agility, and grace. To be collected means that the horse has learned to access a mode of being and a version of himself, that is only available through communion with his rider.
But the path towards collection is long, cyclical, and never really ends, even for those who are at the top of their game. Collection isn’t so much a milestone reached on a linear progression of training, as it is a place that the horse learns to return to in his mind, body, and spirit, again and again. When it comes to collection, it is not so much a question of either or, but how far? How far, at any given moment, is that horse from integration? How deeply has he given himself into his rider’s hands? Or to what degree is he moving in union with his rider, and therefore also in union with all of the parts of himself?
The path that will one day yield collection begins with a trainer standing in the center of a circle, the young, unbroken horse moving forward around them, over and over, again and again. Depending on their nature and previous handling, the horse might balk, buck, rear, or bolt, because his flight instinct insists that the trainer is a threat to be fled from and resisted. And so, the work here is to wait, with a firm, though gentle, presence that moves the horse forward, encouraging him to work through his resistance, rather than go around or away from it.
Because this can take a while, some trainers get impatient and attempt to force submission and create an illusion of collection by tying the horse’s head down, using severe bits, or sedating them, but in their haste to engineer an outward display of control, they just dull the horse’s spirit and make it impossible for them to ever access the true breadth of power, lightness, and courage that can be born on their behalf through a relationship that is founded on and maintained through trust. These horses will forever move from a place of fear and without a sense of direction. And even though they might appear to be obedient, beneath the surface they remain anxious, afraid, reactive, and are often dangerous.
But if you stick with it, in time, the horse will eventually express his trust by dropping his head in submission, which is a physical shift indicating that his mind and body are now open and ready to be shaped. Prior to this, it’s as if there is a door between the horse and trainer, and also within the horse himself, that blocks communication and inhibits access to the potential and power that is trapped on the other side. Its only after this wall comes down that the trainer becomes able to move in from the center of the circle and climb up on the horses back, where they will then continue their training, together.
After the rider gets on the young horse, they return to the same work on that same circle, the rider waiting once again for the horse to drop his head and open to more, and deeper forms of communication. As they wait, the rider urges the horse forward with the gentle resolve that continues to build trust, and the horse might again respond by balking, bucking, bolting, and rearing. Here the rider’s role is to maintain firm though fluid contact through the reins. If the horse chooses to act out, the reins provide a boundary for their outbursts, but it also ensures that those same hands will be there to catch the horses head when it drops. And what the horse finds in the rider’s hands when this happens is comfort, connection, and direction. Now the same tension that the horse once fled and resisted early on, becomes a conduit of conversation moving forward. The firm and unchanged hands of the rider that set boundaries against their youthful rebellion, now provide balance, form, and courage. As the horse matures, delight builds as he develops the ability to convert the once scattered, disorganized, and disintegrated energy that is innate to his being, into a beautiful and purposeful display of strength and agility.
This cycle continues for the life of the horse. It’s a daily discipline of remembering where to go, physically and mentally, in order to find softness, lightness, power, and direction. In time, the circle becomes the support beneath every shift to increased complexity or difficulty. As my childhood trainer would say, “you are only as good as your circles.” Which wasn’t something that I always found appealing; circles can get kind of monotonous after a while. And at different times I was prone to setting them aside for the excitement of galloping through the woods or over complex courses with big jumps at high rates of speed, and because of that I have had my fair share of crashes and falls. Which leads me to the other thing that trainer used to say, “you can always go back to your circle.”
What she meant by that was that no matter where you were or how out of control things had become, you could be in middle of the woods, in the midst of a day’s training, or half-way through a competition, if things got chaotic, or scattered, out of balance, or off rhythm, all that you have to do is go back to the circle. And if you had built that foundation, if that horse understood that the circle provided a safe place to go, you would be able to bring order and beauty and grace and strength back to whatever it was that you were doing.
This is also true with human beings.
There is a wideness between what is, and what can be, in every human life, and Christian spiritual formation is what happens when we put Christ in the center of our lives, enter into discipleship, which his training program, and begin working together on our circles. Following the way of Jesus transforms our entire being into a more balanced, integrated, empowered, purpose-driven, courageous versions of ourselves. And in time, the difference in what we once did and how we once responded, and what we now do and how we now do it, becomes so stark that we need a new name.
Like horses, we all have innate ways of responding to the threats and obstacles of the world based on our unique predispositions and prior histories. These are what Dallas Willard would call our “automatic” responses, such as flight or fight, they represent how we respond or react to our environments in an equation when the door between us and God is closed. And in both horse training and Christian formation we learn to gradually override those instincts as we grow in trust, which then opens our mind, will, and body to the shaping influence of His hands. When this happens, God rewires and reforms those responses and reshapes the way we move in the world.
I think my favorite thing about this comparison between horse training and spiritual formation is that we never outgrow the need to return to the circle in either one. Instead, what we find in both is a path of transformation that is long, cyclical, and never really ends, even for those who have been at it for a lifetime. Neither are governed by milestones to be reached on a linear progression of training, they are more about learning to come back to a particular place in mind, body, and spirit, again and again. Which means that the questions we ask are not so much either/or, but how far? How far are we from a place where Jesus is at the center of our movement? How far are we from opening our whole being up to the shaping influence of God’s hands? And to what degree are we moving in union with Him?
And as the complexity of the demands and the difficulty of the obstacles that we face increases, we are reminded over and over again that our outer or external way of going depends on the quality of these circles. The slow and sometimes monotonous work of daily discipleship that transforms us from ambivalence or anxious and reactive action, to people of purpose and power.
What is the shape of your own circle? What are the practices and prayers that bring you back to Jesus moment by moment, again and again?
May we "collect" ourselves and be collected time and time again. Yes, please. Always a return to the circle and the center and those strong & gentle hands. Thank you, Karen!