Our profound realisation at TCFC Tai Chi for Christians is that God’s Holy Spirit delights in Tai Chi’s slow-moving martial arts movements, breathing and stretching exercises.
We believe that everyone is made in the image of God and longs to be connected with the Father. We acknowledge that the only way to fully accomplish this connection is through faith in Jesus Christ.
However, modern churches are a far cry from the practices of the early church and especially from the lived experiences and teachings of those like St Anthony and the “desert fathers”. Our churches increasingly resemble some kind of bizarre mixture of a rock concert, magic trick show and personality cult all seemingly packaged and televised purely for profit and entertainment.
Many churches appear to be disinterested in helping others to develop deeper relationships with Christ and better relationships with themselves and those around them.
At TCFC Tai Chi, we’ve come to recognise that Christ wants to use our martial art for His own good purposes. Our goal is to share the art of Tai Chi in a way that helps others learn to listen to the voice of God, develop deeper relationships with themselves and others through Christ and to unleash their extraordinary potential for an abundant life.
Here are the four main reasons why we believe that when practised in a way that honours Christ, the gentle meditative movements inherent in Tai Chi pleases and delights God’s Holy Spirit.
Learning to listen
Whether in a park, somewhere in nature or inside a martial arts school, one of the common observations of practising TCFC Tai Chi forms is that it’s almost always done in silence. There is no music. There is no shouting fitness instructor. There are no theatrics.
As you concentrate on your breathing and the TCFC Tai Chi form you are practising, you also become aware of the birds singing nearby, or even the flow of traffic in the distance. Perhaps you will be blessed by being interrupted by a leaf on the wind, a butterfly going by or the smiling slobbering face of a dog that may pay you a visit.
You are no longer talking. Expressing your opinion. Delivering a sermon.
Finally, you have nothing more to say and so you are beginning to listen.
And so in this silence, you begin to hear God’s Holy Spirit speaking to you. It’s not that He hasn’t been speaking to you all along, it’s that you have been too big. Your views on things have been too important. Your presumptions about everything have been so dominant in your mind that you have been interrupting him while He has been speaking to you.
It’s when you are here in this place that you realise that while being so utterly powerful, the “still and quiet” voice of God is paradoxically so gentle and fragile. You realise that so much of what you have been doing and so much of what you have been saying is stomping around and frightening the beautiful things and the beautiful people around you.
It is in this quiet place that you are truly able to commune with God. And His Holy Spirit rejoices in it.
Removing your masks
We all have our masks and we wear them for different occasions. When at home, we have our family masks. For our father, we wear a mask that we think will please him and for our mother, another. Our children get the parent mask, and sadly, many of us never even get to meet the person behind the parent mask.
We have our work mask on for most of the week and if we attend church, that mask on goes religiously every Sunday. One learns that it’s best not to let that church mask slip, even slightly. The church mask is most firmly pressed against your face when conversing with a priest, pastor or another kind of church leader – which only serves for them to press their own mask even harder than yours.
Somehow, quietly practising TCFC Tai Chi does the opposite. As one spends time listening to what God’s Holy Spirit is saying, He’s also loosening the knots that fasten our masks. One by one we allow Him to gently lift them from our faces. These are the roles that we play. These are the false gods that we worship.
Simply by spending time with Him in silence, He is able to do His work in us. Falling ever deeper into Him and slowly building both the courage and the faith to allow Him to shine His light behind the masks. He goes before us into the dark parts of our hearts to bring His healing for all of the hurts and pains, bumps and scrapes that we have experienced in life. Once He has done His work, it’s time to look inside and see what you find.
It is the removal of our masks that allows God to heal our hearts. And His Holy Spirit rejoices in it.
Embrace yourself
The reason why we lack authenticity and cling to our masks is because we are afraid of what others will think of us if we allow ourselves to be who we truly are. The world told us long ago that we were not enough. That teacher said you were stupid. Those classmates rejected you. Or perhaps it was the opposite – you may just be exhausted from years of having to be at the top of your game. Masterfully juggling the balls of life in the air all at once.
If you have accepted the truth of Christ, have invited Him to live in your heart and have allowed Him to do His healing work inside of you, who do you think is living at the core of your being?
One of our greatest fears is looking into a mirror and finding a monster looking back. But the good news of Christ is that by accepting Him into your heart, no monster can live there. Only Him – right at your core.
Is this what it means to be “saved”? If so, saved from what? Saved from your own lack of love for yourself and others. Your own judgments of yourself and others. Your own criticisms of yourself and others. Your own condemnation of yourself and others.
Once all of your masks are removed by Christ, who are you in the shower? Who is that person looking back at you in the mirror? No, there is no monster living there. Rather, it is Christ looking back at you.
Obviously, you are not God. No, you are not the Christ. But since you invited Him in, He has taken up residence in your heart. You don’t need to do anything. You don’t need to be anything. Finally, you can be at peace, knowing that you are enough precisely the way you are. Exactly the way God made you is who He intends you to be.
Now that you are free to love yourself the same way that Christ loves you, it’s finally also possible to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and to “love your neighbour as yourself”.
Having the courage to allow Christ to shine His light right into the core of your being brings you face-to-face with yourself. And His Holy Spirit rejoices in it.
Loving the God of relationships
This process of being quiet, learning to listen, allowing God to remove your masks and embracing yourself is not finished just yet.
He has yet another gift to offer. It’s the realisation that none of this is about you. It’s about Him. Who He is and how His plans for you will always be bigger, better and more rewarding than anything you could imagine for yourself.
It’s about having enough faith to know that you can trust Him with everything. Not just on Sundays. Not a religious bargain about who gets to the five-star hotel and who gets the hovel in the afterlife. It’s about walking with Him in the garden in the cool of the afternoon today, just like He did with Adam and Eve.
And so, we begin to realise, sometimes begrudgingly, that Our God is a God of relationships. Our relationship with Him. Our relationship with ourselves. Our relationships with others – and especially with those who are close to us – are all extremely important to Him. The people around us, all of the people, really do matter. Nobody is expendable.
Because no matter how wide the orbit is, every planet in the solar system still circles the sun.
Recognising that our God is the God of relationships brings us closer to Him, closer to ourselves and helps us guard and respect our relationships with others. And his Holy Spirit rejoices in it.
So our lived experience at TCFC Tai Chi for Christians is that while Tai Chi was developed as a martial art, Christ wants to also use it for his own good purposes for His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.