on the small way

I'm not much of a church guy these days but some of the best leadership lessons of my life came from my youth group days and our youth pastor's embodiment of two scriptural ideas:

1. that to be trusted with big things, you need to prove you can be trusted with small things first, and
2. the first shall be last and the last shall be first

If someone wanted a leadership position in the youth group, they had to start by serving. With setting up and tearing down for worship. With lining fold-up metal chairs in perfectly straight rows. With welcoming visitors at the door.

These days, this message of simplicity and servitude and lastness seems to find me regularly.  

Perhaps that's why I've become a bit hyper-fixated in recent years with St. Therese of Lisieux, also known as The Little Flower. Regarded as "the greatest saint of modern times" by Pope Pius X, Therese's small and simple approach to religion was also called "the little way."

Her approach was the basically final act of "Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade," where the true Holy Grail is the dingiest, dustiest, most-beat-up chalice in the place, writ large:

I will seek out a means of getting to Heaven by a little way – very short and very straight little way that is wholly new. We live in an age of inventions; nowadays the rich need not trouble to climb the stairs, they have lifts instead. Well, I mean to try and find a lift by which I may be raised unto God, for I am too tiny to climb the steep stairway of perfection. […] Thine Arms, then, O Jesus, are the lift which must raise me up even unto Heaven. To get there I need not grow. On the contrary, I must remain little, I must become still less.
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The "small way" comes up in other ways, too. A year or two ago I read a few books on micro-habits and have seen the power of the small way infiltrate work spheres.

Others have caught on, too. Recently I stumbled upon Tom Critchlow's "small b blogging" 2018 post, and I've long loved Austin Kleon's newsletter and blog for its similarly "small" approach. Here's Austin with a post titled, "Something Small, Every Day." 

And then of course, there's my other recent hyper-fixation, Brian Eno, and his "Lowest Common Denominator Check" for creative projects (which I also adore):

• Single beat
• Single note
• Single riff

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In what ways have you embraced smallness to your own benefit? Let's keep this web growing.