One measure of
mastery in almost every creative human discipline is speed. Speed measures our
progress in athletics, in music and performing arts, in martial arts, and in
most traditional and contemporary spiritual practices. One of the areas we work
to improve, whether we are athletes or rabbis, is how fast we can do something.
Consider athletics. Nearly anyone who possesses even the most rudimentary
basketball technique can dribble the ball a few paces, look at the basket, and
shoot a lay-up. As you learn to play basketball at a higher and more advanced
level, the pace at which you practice and regularly play increases accordingly.
In practice, when you are running drills to pass, shoot, or dribble, one
measure of your progress is how much faster you can successfully run the drill.
The same is true in marksmanship. Consider the archer in an Olympic target
contest. The contest is not untimed. Nearly anyone with the basic equipment and
sufficient eyesight can deliver one arrow to a nearby target given enough time.
The training undergone by most marksmen is designed to increase the speed at
which the athlete can deliver the ballistic package to the target.
There is a
steady and relentless effort to break speed records. There is always social
pressure in religious communities among the regulars, to speed up the service.
Ironically, these same people, who check their watches during prayer, to try
and shave some time off the record, would be among the strongest resisters to
any significant change that reduced the regularly practiced liturgy in favor of
a shorter liturgy that was prayed more slowly and methodically. These people
would not be distance runners or distance target shooters. Instead they are
always running sprints and shooting contact distance targets.
All of this
being true, speed is not always the best measure of mastery. This is because
though speed can measure accomplishment and demonstrate ability, speed also
blurs and hides the imperfections of our technique.
Speed works
best for short-term goals. A sprinter has to be fast throughout the entire
race, but a marathoner, whose goal is further away, must consciously slow down
and set a more disciplined pace in order to succeed.
When the
target is close, it is significantly easier to draw, aim, and deliver the arrow
to the target. Here is the perfect example of how speed blurs a flawed
technique and forgives our more fundamental errors in training. To deliver five
shots to the target at five yards does indeed require a lot of practice, but it
is relative easy compared to delivering those same shots at a great distance.
Even the most accomplished marksman needs to go much slower when the target is
far away. When the goal is close, or easy, or short term, our mistakes matter
less. For the marksman this is a matter of simple physics and geometry. At 5
yards a small error in aiming or intention, a small change of heart rate or
breathing, a rush of nerves or adrenaline, none of these translate to a
significant difference in where the arrow hits. If you are just a little off,
the distance of the target is more forgiving when the goal is close and short
term.
At 25 yards,
or at 100 yards, such a fractional miscalculation grows as the distance between
the two lines of the angle gets wider and wider apart. Now, when targeting a
distant goal, a small error of technique becomes a significant miss.
So too in any
spiritual exercise. If our goal is short term, then our practice can be more
forgiving of fundamental errors. In tefillah, a fundamental error is one that
affects the level of meaning and self-discovery which are the vital goals
beyond the level of simple recitation. If your goal is a short one, to master
the recitation of the Hebrew, it certainly takes a lot of practice, repetition,
focus and attention to accomplish this goal. But it can be done relatively
quickly, and within 6 months the average person could, if they came to a
traditional minyan everyday for shacharit services, become a capable short
distance davener. They would become able to lead a morning service – to hit the
target – at a speed that the regular daily daveners would consider slow, but
which would, with time, continue to develop up to the standard pace for that
community. Within a year such a person could become a capable tefillah “marksman”
at 5 yds. I do not mean to say that this, all by itself, is not a worthy goal.
Developing techniques in nearly any creative endeavor is incredibly valuable,
and in a very real way contributes to the development and deepening of every
endeavor we have.
But this cannot
remain our only, or long-term goal. To become great daveners, we must see our
practice as a marathon more than a sprint, as a life-long journey of
self-discovery, not as a one-off obligation for today. We must take aim at a
longer-range target – meaning and significance beyond our words – and we must
work through our flaws and rudimentary techniques to refine and center our
focus on deeper aspirations.
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