Behold. Practice. Become

Erin Doom

Sep 13

6 min read

Updated: Sep 22

The three words at the heart of Podvig

Forefeast of the Exaltation of the Venerable and Life-Giving Cross

Anno Domini 2026, September 13

We become what we repeatedly behold and practice. That conviction stands behind nearly everything I am trying to build with Podvig. It is there in the books and people gathered in the Commonplace. It is there in the habits of the Gymnasium. It is there in the silence, prayer, and struggle of the Desert.

Three words hold these paths together:

Behold. Practice. Become.

They may sound like three successive steps: first we behold, then we practice, and finally we become. That is true, but it is not the whole truth. Formation is less like a straight road than an ascending path. We behold, practice, and become—and as we become, we learn to behold more truly.

Beholding is both the beginning and the end.

Behold

Every act of formation begins with a vision. Before we can become, we must encounter something—or someone—worthy of becoming. We behold an icon, a saint, a teacher, an athlete, a craftsman, a faithful marriage, a beautiful book, a courageous act. We catch sight of strength, wisdom, holiness, beauty, or love embodied in a human life.

Something within us responds: I want to become like that.

This is one reason the people and things surrounding us matter so much. What we repeatedly place before our eyes shapes our desires, often before we have consciously chosen anything. We learn what to love by looking. We become accustomed to certain images of success, happiness, beauty, strength, and the good life.

The question is not whether we will behold. We are always beholding something. The question is whether what we behold is worthy of our attention—and worthy of our imitation.

Theologically, beholding is the end—the telos—of the Christian life: the vision of God, participation in the divine life, the creature transfigured by the uncreated light. “We shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2).

But that final beholding begins now, in ordinary acts of attention. We learn to behold Christ in an icon. We learn to behold Him in the Scriptures and the lives of the saints. We learn to behold the image of God in the person standing before us. We learn to see our own lives truthfully: our gifts and wounds, our strengths and weaknesses, our callings and avoidances.

To behold is more than to glance at something. It is to attend, to remain, to contemplate, to ponder. And then to receive. We must look long enough for what is before us to begin working upon us.

Practice

But beholding alone is not enough. We can admire courage without ever becoming courageous. We can read about prayer without praying. We can celebrate strength while remaining physically weak. We can fill shelves with books about virtue while our habits remain untouched.

Beholding without practice becomes admiration. The vision must be embodied—it must take flesh.

Practice is the repeated embodiment of what we have learned to love. It is the small act performed again and again until it begins to form the person performing it. We actually pray the Jesus Prayer, instead of just reading about it. We actually go to the gym and lift the weights, instead of merely creating an ideal routine on a notepad. We pick up the phone and make the call when the reminder goes off, instead of putting it off until later. In other words, we take one more step.

Practice is rarely dramatic. Most formation occurs in ordinary choices too small to impress anyone. We become patient by practicing patience in particular moments. We become strong through one ordinary training session after another. We become truthful by telling the truth when a lie would be easier. We become attentive by returning our wandering attention to the person, task, or prayer before us.

This is why Podvig means struggle, effort, and ascetic labor. The struggle is not punishment, and difficulty is not valuable merely because it hurts. We choose hard because resistance exposes us and trains us. It brings our desires, excuses, fears, and habits into the open. Then it gives us somewhere concrete to practice becoming free.

Yet practice has its own danger. Detached from a true vision of the good, practice can become mere technique: efficient, disciplined, and pointed in the wrong direction.

Practice must remain ordered toward sight. In the Divine Liturgy, just before the Anaphora, the deacon summons us: “Let us stand aright.” In Greek: Stōmen kalōs—let us stand well, rightly, beautifully. We do not practice merely to become more productive or impressive. We practice so that we may learn to see and love what is true—and ultimately to behold God rightly...and beautifully.

Become

What we repeatedly practice slowly becomes part of us. At first, we perform the action with effort. Eventually, the action begins to disclose the person we are becoming.

A man tells the truth once. Then he tells it again when it costs him. Over time, he becomes truthful. A woman chooses to remain present in prayer despite distraction. She returns again tomorrow and the day after that. Over time, she becomes prayerful. A salesman practices asking better questions, listening carefully, and responding courageously to objections. Eventually, he does not merely perform the techniques of a good salesman. He becomes more attentive, truthful, courageous, and humane. That is one reason I want to write about the salesman: not merely how to make a sale, but how the work itself can form—or deform—the man who does it.

This is why results cannot be the only measure of our work. Results matter, but they are often beyond our control—and our emotional attachment to them can keep us from seeing what the work is producing within us.

A lost sale may still become an occasion for formation. A failed attempt may reveal the precise weakness that needs practice. A short workout may strengthen the identity of someone who no longer quits simply because the ideal workout is impossible. A distracted prayer, faithfully completed, may train a deeper fidelity than an easy moment of consolation.

The question beneath every task is not only, What did I accomplish? But also, Who am I becoming through the way I am doing this?

Podvig is a workshop for that becoming.

Three Paths

The Commonplace teaches us what to behold. Here we gather the books, words, persons, images, music, and traditions that disclose lives worth living. But the Commonplace is not merely a library or archive. It is a school of attention. It preserves what deserves to be seen, remembered, contemplated, and handed on.

The Gymnasium trains us to behold reality through the body. We learn to see the body we actually possess: its strength, weakness, limits, appetites, excuses, and possibilities. We behold the athlete, the craftsman, the disciplined worker, the elder who has retained strength. Then we practice to become what we have beheld.

Training changes our sight. The practiced runner sees a hill differently from the person who has never climbed one. The practiced lifter recognizes weakness and progress invisible to the untrained eye. Discipline teaches us to notice the small decisions through which strength is either built or surrendered.

The Desert purifies the one who beholds. Silence, fasting, prayer, repentance, solitude, and attention expose the noise within us. They teach us to see ourselves without disguise, our neighbor without using him, and God without reducing Him to an idea.

The Desert makes explicit what is present throughout Podvig: the final purpose of formation is not self-improvement but communion.

The Commonplace gives us worthy things to behold.
The Gymnasium gives us practices through which vision enters the body.
The Desert cleanses the eyes of the heart.

All three ask the same question: Who are you becoming?

Beholding Again

I recently realized that for most of my life, I have been training myself to behold, and to do it fairly well. I have learned to recognize good books, beautiful ideas, ancient traditions, faithful lives, and words worth handing on. I have spent years putting those things into other people’s hands.

But there is a difference between recognizing a beautiful life and living one. What once lived primarily in books and ideas must take flesh—in habits, in the body, in prayer, in work, in relationships, and in difficulties freely chosen and faithfully endured.

In that sense, Eighth Day taught me to behold. Podvig is teaching me to practice and become.

But Podvig is not leaving beholding behind. It is returning to it by another path. Practice changes the practitioner. And as the practitioner changes, he becomes capable of seeing what he could not see before.

The person who practices listening learns to behold the human being across the table. The person who practices strength begins to behold the body as gift and vocation. The person who practices silence begins to hear what noise had concealed. The person who practices prayer begins—however faintly—to behold God everywhere.

And so the three words turn back upon themselves: Behold. Practice. Become. Behold again.

Beholding without practice becomes admiration. Practice without beholding becomes technique. Becoming is what happens when a true vision is embodied through faithful repetition. And as we become, we are given new eyes.

Behold. Practice. Become.

That is the invitation.

Choose Hard. Practice. Behold.

This is the way.