Week 9: Chapter 8 — The Discipline of the Secret

1.Read Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18. Jesus repeatedly tells his disciples to do their most important spiritual practices 'in secret' — not for an audience. What does this teach us about the difference between religion as performance and faith as relationship?

2.Manning describes what he calls 'the discipline of the secret' — the cultivation of an inner life that is authentic before God precisely because it has no audience. What spiritual practices in your own life are most vulnerable to becoming performances?

3.He draws on the mystical tradition of the church — writers like Thomas Merton and the Desert Fathers — to describe the soul's movement toward God in silence and hiddenness. What is your experience of silence and solitude as spiritual practices? Do they feel threatening or welcoming?