Hearts up!
It’s not just the Trexo slogan, it’s one of the first things Christians ever said in worship. It’s our daily orientation to God.
Also, if you just said it out loud (did you? There’s still time!) - it was your two second spiritual warmup.
’I don’t have time’. ‘I don’t want to make another commitment’. ‘I’m tired on Sundays’.
These are all things people say - and feel - about finding the time to do a physical workout. It’s also one reason lots of people don’t go to church.
It’s how Trexo was born.
Physical gyms and coaches exist to help motivate us to move our bodies to grow stronger and healthier. Spiritual gyms exist for the same reason! Except we’re stretching our souls.
This is not something I made up! (far from it).
The earliest Christians had the same questions - and hesitations! - as we do. Some walked out into the desert to leave distraction and busyness behind and devote themselves to God. We call them monastics. They devoted their whole lives to God - and discovered that the soul - like the body - was made to be trained. Stretched.
People came to them to learn simple practices that brought profound changes in their lives - they found more peace, contentment, joy, forgiveness. They grew closer to God.
You don’t have to go to the desert. You don’t have to give up your life - or even another slot on your calendar.
But you do have to do this:
Devote yourself to practice - in small, regular ways - until you discover that there is no part of your life that is not part of God’s.
Until your whole life is devotion.
For 40 years, I’ve been a runner. But for the first 20 or so, I didn’t feel like one. I was someone who ran. I didn’t think I was a very good runner. I didn’t think of myself as an athlete.
But gradually I paid attention. I kept running, but now I ate better - to help my running. I slept better - to help my running. I got closer in community with other runners.
One day I woke up, and I realized I was a runner.
The Trexo gym is where you wake up one day and realize you’re a Christian.
We cannot think our way into faith. Instead, we practice our way into deeper relationship with God.
Trexo is not another program. It’s not a ‘life hack’ or spiritual ‘self care’. We’re not doing ‘buff and shine’ at this gym.
It’s the same worship and prayer and practice that the earliest Christians took part in - the people who knew the people who knew Jesus.
It’s about rediscovering those practices and opening the corners of our souls - a little bit at a time - to actively participate in our life with God. In the same way those first Christians did. Especially those who were busy and distracted by regular life.
It’s not about the time you devote to it. It’s about the devotion you discover was there all the time.
Trexo (‘tray-co’) = ancient Christian practice for modern life. Hearts up!
How the Trexo gym works
The basic Trexo Practices are small, repeated actions that connect us with God all through our regular life.
It’s training.
For what?
For that moment when everything falls apart … and we know we’re surrounded and held by love.
For the moment everything comes together … and we know that our happiness rests in something even larger.
For a life bound in peace, love, meaning, and JOY.
For understanding the meaning of our lives: to love and be loved. To grow in faith. To trust God with our lives. To trust God is our lives.
Using the gym is easy:
Free Range Priest subscribers get the Trexo introduction (you’re reading it!), plus your weekly ‘Hearts up!’ moment (comes with Friday’s Good Stuff).
Paid and founding subscribers get
weekly Practice coaching as part of the Cage Free Ministry email (Tuesdays)
livestream coaching from ancient monastics (and me!) on most Wednesdays at 3:30pm Eastern (weeks 2-4 of each month)
(the livestream recording comes in next week’s coaching email).A Workout (Rule of Life) builder to keep track of your practice.
Just like the physical gym, it starts small - and simple. And it gets more challenging as you grow.
The most important part: PRACTICING.
Ignatius of Loyola - the sixteenth century founder of the Spiritual Exercises (and also of the Jesuit order in the Roman Catholic church) put it like this:
For as strolling, walking, and running are bodily exercises, so every way of preparing and disposing the soul … to seek and find the Divine Will … is called a Spiritual Exercise.
Or as another famous athletic organization once said:
Just do it.
The Trexo Practices
1. The Daily Anchor
Short, simple practices you can do every day, wherever you are.
Even if you’re practicing alone, you are still in community with all other Christians - including the first Christians.
1. Hearts up! : our orientation towards God.
the Sursum Corda (‘Lift up your hearts’; ‘we lift them to the Lord’).
Learn how to practice HERE.
2. the Jesus Prayer: constant conversation with God.
’Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner’.
Learn how to practice HERE.
3. Bodily Prayer: engaging God with our whole selves.
Kneeling, making the sign of the cross, orans (lifted hands), prostration .
Learn how to practice HERE.
2. The Weekly Rhythm
Practices that require community: already established congregations/communities, our friends and family, or informal gatherings of Trexo members.
The Eucharist
The breaking of bread and sharing of the cup in remembrance of Jesus. Strengthening our relationship with God. More soon, but the bottom line of this Practice is: Go to church. Find a community of people gathered around the table and join them (even if it’s the only thing you join them for).
Sabbath
A weekly day of gratitude, wonder, and rest from work.
Trusting God to be God - and resting in God’s will for us. Ditto: coming soon. In the meantime: Rest one whole day a week. I know you’re busy. God was busy. God rested.
3. Seasonal Intensives
Advent and Lent are times set aside for preparation since the earliest church. These Practices align us - personally and communally - with the ancient and eternal rhythm of God’s saving actions in the world - Incarnation (Christmas) and Resurrection (Easter).
Vigil
Not sleeping when our bodies want to - intentional discomfort for spiritual clarity.
Staying awake with God. Practice with Trexo online Sunday evenings during Advent.
Fasting
Voluntary abstinence from food for a spiritual purpose.
Demonstrating radical dependence upon God. Practice with Trexo online during Lent - with special Practices during Holy Week.
Your Coaches
At Trexo, we don’t Practice alone. We are part of the Christian church - all the billions of believers today, and all those who practiced the faith before us - all the way back to those who knew Jesus.
And we rely on coaches from the deepest history of the Church: desert mothers and fathers, monastics, bishops, mystics, and teachers who spent their lives practicing the faith and helping others do the same.
These include:
Ignatius of Antioch (c. 110), who called Christians ‘athletes of God’.
Amma Syncletica (4th century) A wealthy noblewoman who gave away everything to live in a desert tomb. Whose wisdom was so sought after that people traveled across the known world to find her.
John Cassian (5th century) who used detailed breakdowns of ancient Olympic wrestling techniques to train monks to battle their vices.
Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD), who famously said, ‘Lord, make me chaste - but not yet!’
Perpetua - a third century martyr, publicly executed in Rome for her faith - she was only 22 years old. They gave her and her companions the first ‘last meal’ before execution. They turned it into an Agape love feast.
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You can find wisdom from all of our Coaches in the ‘Coffee with Coaches’ archive. They have 1,800 years of experience. Find them HERE.
Three Wednesdays a month (skipping the first), we go live at 3:30 Eastern for ‘Coffee with Coaches’ where we ‘interview’ one of our spiritual trainers.
Gym members get the replay/training email the next day.
Trexo Practice is Pre-Denominational
These Practices existed before the divisions of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant. They unite all Christians because they’re foundational to all traditions.
No matter what denomination you belong to - or even if you don’t formally belong to any church or denomination - you are practicing with Christians of all kinds, over all ages.
Trexo Practices fit within the specifics of any particular congregation or denomination you belong to. They are the root from which all Christian traditions grow.
Your soul needs a workout. Now it’s got one. You can start right now. Hearts up!
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I love this, and while we've talked about it before somehow i needed to hear it again lately....