In the first chapter of his 2016 book You Are What You Love, James K.A. Smith writes, “Discipleship is more a matter of hungering and thirsting than of knowing and believing. Jesus’s command to follow him is a command to align our loves and longings with his—to want what God wants, to desire what God desires, to hunger and thirst after God and crave a world where he is all in all—a vision encapsulated by the shorthand ‘the kingdom of God.’” Across varied Christian traditions, adherents of Jesus Christ are more-or-less encouraged to know about God—but pretty much always enjoined to love God. Jesus himself, in the Gospels that record his life, calls “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” “the first and greatest commandment.” The next one has to do with love, too: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

But what does that mean? And how does one go about doing it? These questions have been asked by Christians for hundreds of years, and in response to them have grown up the many variations of devotional practices—things that people do in order to become the sort of person who loves God. For this issue of Fare Forward, we want to explore what people do (and have done) externally in order to facilitate this kind of massive internal change.

We’re asking questions like these:

• What is the relationship between individual and corporate/group devotional practices?
• What effect have new technologies had on how people practice devotion? Is that for the good? No? Neutral?
• What traditional devotional practices do people still use today?
• What are unusual or unexpected devotional practices that have shaped your faith?
• Do devotional practices have to be purely “spiritual”? What role does the physical body and world play in the practice of devotion?
• What role does repetitive or ecstatic prayer (i.e., praying the rosary, or the Jesus Prayer) have in transforming the heart?
• Why do some extremely devout people experience was is called “the dark night of the soul”? What should we conclude when God doesn’t seem to answer us?
• Do you have any experience (positive or negative) with texts written for the purpose of daily devotion (i.e., My Utmost for His Highest, Jesus Calling, etc.)?
• What role does creativity play in the practice of devotion? (i.e., writing, reading creative works, singing in a choir or congregation, etc.?)

Please consider these examples a starting point, not a limit.

(Editorial Note: While Fare Forward is a Christian journal, we strive to practice “editorial hospitality,” by which we mean that anyone, of any or no faith background, can pick up a copy of our journal and feel that it is written for them. So don’t choose a topic that’s “intramural”—i.e., only of interest to other Christians. And as you write, don’t assume your reader is familiar with either Christianity as a whole or with any faith tradition in specific. That doesn’t mean you can’t talk about the specifics, just that you’ll need to briefly explain them so the intelligent reader can catch on.)