My Student Tyler & the Tao Teh Ching

Because Tyler is soon moving back to Chicago to be close to family there, I took the opportunity to sit down with this very interesting person as a farewell to us and an invitation to T’ai Chi Chih (TCC) teachers in Chicago where he hopes to continue using what he calls “this valuable tool to maintain balance, concentration and peace of mind.”

A few high points of Tyler’s life’s trajectory: Early on he developed interests in foreign cultures and languages, extending to his college years where he majored in humanities and Scandinavian languages, in fact spending his junior year in Sweden. After college he followed a vocation to ministry and was ordained a priest in the Episcopal church.

His career took him all over the world: besides parishes in Illinois, Wisconsin and California, he served churches in Germany, Russia, Finland and the Philippines, learning their languages along the way, making him a true polyglot. (“No, I’m a Taurus,” he jokes.) He later decided to take ordination as a Catholic priest of the Byzantine Rite, after which he served parishes in New York and Albuquerque. Adding to all this has been his continued interests and studies in Asian culture, bringing him to TCC as a natural choice after moving as a retired priest to Albuquerque.

It was three years ago that Tyler first joined the class, and he has been a three-times-a-week regular ever since. It was fascinating listening to him with this esoteric core he brought with him.

“Eastern Orthodox tradition involves the body more: we stand, we sit, we prostrate — a physical outward manifestation of the spirit, the body leading the soul, giving order to what could otherwise lead to confusion in the devotee,” Tyler says. “TCC with its movements can be considered a vehicle. The practice creates a spiritual space for Holy Spirit to come in. It wouldn’t happen unless the body is engaged.” This corresponds to words we often heard from Justin, that first you learn T’ai Chi, then you do T’ai Chi, and then T’ai Chi does you. Tyler calls it an expression of interior spirituality.

Some time ago Tyler gave me a book called Christ, the Eternal Tao, by Hieromonk Damascene, which links the mystics of the ancient Christian East to the Tao through the eyes of Lao Tzu. Tyler has studied the Tao Teh Ching and recognizes a deep affinity between eastern spirituality and Christian mysticism. This requires an understanding of Christianity that most modern-day Christians would find baffling. “The depth of the Tao and discussions that come from the Tao — the Way — have to be serious,” Tyler says. “You can’t do it without a sense of yin and yang, which connects you to your spirituality.” Tyler attributes this balance of positive and negative with the accuracy of who you are.

Tyler is a nonfan of what we often hear these days: “I’m spiritual but not religious.” He is firm in his belief that you need both. He maintains that religion (in its generic sense) is the order that you bring to spirituality. “Religion keeps the spiritualist from going off the deep end,” he says, whether into cultism, confusion, craziness, egotism, delusion, disappointment, or imagined enlightenment. Spirituality needs order, and religion can provide that.

Justin always maintained that TCC is a spiritual practice. In my classes, which take place at a gym, people understandably join for health reasons, and happily they report many physical rewards. I usually don’t go beyond these benefits in my teaching, allowing students to ease into the spiritual as they progress, and encouraging them if they do.

It’s been quite an experience having a student coming to his first class already understanding TCC’s spiritual dimension, and practicing it as such, all the while being this normal guy telling jokes, heartily laughing, helping others, chatting in German or Spanish to those speakers, asking the questions he knew others were wanting to ask. We will miss him. We expect him to find a similar cohort in Chicago, God willing!