Acknowledgment, Resolution, Pursuance and Psalm….Those were Coltrane’s stations. We could take them on as our own and seek to move through each stage ourselves; however, a jazz-shaped spirituality is not about merely copying other people’s walk with God but being inspired by them to create and discover the Spirit’s song for ourselves. 

     Do you find yourself cycling through stages in your relationship with the Lord?  Have you listened to them…owned them?  I think that Coltrane discovered the universal beginning and ending point…A Love Supreme.  Any Christian spirituality must being loved and loving as it's core (John 13).  What would it look like for you to begin with the desire for a Love Supreme and then discover the seasons of life that would lead you to that? Like Coltrane, it may take seven years and what God leads you to may even annoy other’s but wouldn’t it be worth it?

            To do what Coltrane did is to cooperate with how God is growing you spiritually and then committing to displaying it in everday life. (Galatians 5.6)  Everyday life for for a musician is music and so Coltrane captures his stages with an album for us it will be different depending on whether we are work at home moms or a bankers.  The test as to whether or not it is God’s work in our lives is how well our spirituality survives in the midst of the minute and mundane tasks of life.  It must be able to be lived in the midst of diapers and dishpans… leg lifts and laptops…love making and grocery shopping.  When we imbed our spirituality that deep into our lives so that it can exist not only when we are doing “spiritual things” but in the midst of our vocations and avocations then we have discovered a jazz-based spirituality.

            Find yourself a quiet place…Pray Jeremiah 33.3…Listen to the Holy Spirit…Discover the groove.

Many saints throughout the centuries have organized their lives around stages…very personal movements that corresponded with the work of the Holy Spirit’s breathing in their life.  Teresa of Avila and of the Cross would be good examples of those who have sought to understand the reoccurring stages that the Spirit is leading them through.