Discovering Spiritual Practices in our Day

 

Every morning as I make the bed, I pause at the window that looks out into our backyard. I look to see if it is raining or in the winter if we had any more snow during the night. Is the trio of squirrels we call "the boys" busy with their morning exercise program--scampering across the garage roof? I check the color code in the garden--from the neon zinnias to the richness of red roses or the innocence of the peach and white roses and the variety and diversity of greens. 

I smile in deep gratitude for the beauty I see everyday--no matter the weather, the season, the temperature. I give thanks for my husband the gardener. I give thanks for the precious life we have. 

Later, when I head up the stairs to the garret, I pause once again, this time on the landing, and I enjoy another view of the backyard, but I can also see a corner of our neighbors' backyard. Our new neighbors. 

Sunday morning I saw one of the boys, the 6 year old, I think, watering the flowers. He sort of swooshed the watering can in the direction of the flower bed and then, apparently done, dropped the can on the grass, shrugging his shoulders, as if to say, "Glad that's done." His mother was standing nearby, and I saw her point to the watering can, an unspoken "Put it away, please." He did. 

I smiled and then sent a blessing. "Welcome to the block. May you find contentment and love in your new home. May we be good neighbors for each other."

Morning pauses. My first expressions of spiritual practice in the new day. 

One of my spiritual directees commented recently that her usual spiritual practice of morning meditation time wasn't having the effect it had in the past. Something was missing or wrong or whatever. She was concerned she had lost that spiritual practice.

I asked her to tell me about the rest of her day, and she told me about walking her dog several times a day and how she loved seeing the river and being outside and seeing the changes in nature around her. She told me about the group she has organized to read and discuss a book about racial disparities. 

All I needed to do was smile and say, "Sounds to me like those are spiritual practices."

Just like standing at a window and awakening to what is front of my eyes and sending out blessings, consciously or even consciously are forms of spiritual practice. 

I like what Jane Vennard says in her book, Fully Awake and Truly Alive, Spiritual Practices to Nurture Your Soul, "...spiritual practices are those ways of seeing and being in the world that help us wake up and become fully, truly alive." Some of those practices may be formal or "on cushion" like meditating for 20 minutes every morning or less formal or "off cushion," like chopping vegetables and thanking the farmers for growing the fresh produce we eat or listening, really listening, in the conversation with a friend or acquaintance. 

This is a time in our history that the way we have practiced in the past may not feel life-enhancing or may not seem to be an opening to the movement of God in our lives. Perhaps this is a time in our life when we are having more than normal trouble listening to Spirit's whispers or nudges. 

It may be time to try a different practice or it may be time to broaden your definition of spiritual practice. What in the course of your day is an opportunity to become more aware of God and the person you were created to be? What reminders can you find throughout the day that we are all creations of God, and all are invited to grow and give and be grateful. 

A spiritual practice need not be complicated, but may be simplicity itself.

I leave you today with a simple practice based on an exercise in Jan Richardson's new book, Sparrow, A Book of Life and Death and Life. 

Turn your left hand palm down in the desire to release all God wants you to release.

Turn your right hand palm up as an invitation to receive all God wants you to receive.

Place your left hand, palm down, over your right hand, palm up, and feel the energy and the blessing and the love you hold. 

May you discover the possibilities for spiritual practice, spiritual connection, as you move through the day.

An Invitation                                                                                            Are you aware of the need for a different kind of spiritual practice in your life right now? What are you doing that you realize is actually a spiritual practice? What is life-enriching now? I would love to know.

Thursday's Reflection: Always Time for Spiritual Practice.

One of my first tasks of the day is to open the shades in the entry and dining room, just as one of the last tasks of the day is to close the shades. If I am aware, that simple homey gesture becomes a time of prayer --morning and night time prayers, bookending the day.

       Thank you for a restful night's sleep 
       and for the grace
       of a new day. May I move through it
       in openness and with love and
      compassion.
                                             

       Thank you for the gift of the day now ending.  I am
       grateful for the many riches I have received today. 
       Forgive me for the ways I have been more closed than 
       open. May the rest I receive tonight lead me to be present 
       to the light that flows within and around me.  

It is possible for most anything we do to become a spiritual practice, especially "If you approach it in the right way--with intentionality, humility, receptivity, hope. And of course with an attentive eye on the activity of the divine." (The Sacred Year, Michael Yankoski, p. 12) http://www.michaelyankoski.com/#sthash.YQXNbcQ3.dpbs 

I can be intentional about being present to activities I enjoy and welcome doing, no matter how ordinary. For example, I enjoy most aspects of home tending, even cleaning bathrooms and kitchens.  I start dinner in the evening and as I chop and stir and simmer I can give thanks for this daily sustenance, and I pray for all those who go hungry. I can sweep the front steps and breathe in the glories of the sun or the crispness of the air. At the ironing board I can smooth the creases in my husband's shirts and be grateful for the love we share. I can put away the books and papers accumulated in my office over the days and feel such gratitude for the freedom I have to read and write for hours on end. I can and do pray my way through the day--as long as it goes smoothly, and I am doing something I enjoy doing.

What happens, however, when I am doing something that I don't enjoy doing? I don't like to vacuum or lug bags of groceries in from the car and then unpack them. I am not crazy about folding the laundry or changing the bed. I get frustrated when I am doing errands and I get stuck in traffic or when I am not able to find what I need in the grocery store. Viewing those times as an opportunity for spiritual practice usually doesn't occur to me. However, I know that by filling my life with intentional spiritual practices which simply put are "ways of seeing and being in the world that help us wake up and become fully, truly alive." (Fully Awake and Truly Alive, Spiritual Practices to Nurture Your Soul, Rev. Jane Vennard, p. xviii) http://www.sdiworld.org/resources/educational-videos/reverend-jane-e-vennard I am more likely to ground myself in light and love when hit with times of stress, fear, grief and loss. 

Father Thomas Keating who teaches the spiritual practice of centering prayer http://www.centeringprayer.com says, "The only way to judge your practice is by its long-range fruits: whether in daily life you enjoy greater peace, humility and charity." Who doesn't want to live a more loving and compassionate life? 

Examples of Spiritual Practices
When considering spiritual practices, most people think about reading the Bible or praying at certain times of the day. Or meditating. I write in my journal, and that is one of my main spiritual practices, but I also walk a labyrinth when I can and in the past one of my main spiritual practices was doing Tai Chi. Meeting with a spiritual director is a spiritual practice, as is going on retreats or a pilgrimage. 

But what about making music, baking bread, pulling weeds, cleaning your house, driving a parent to a doctor's appointment, volunteering at your grandchild's school, sitting with a friend who is recovering from surgery, attending a yoga class, reading or writing poetry, walking along the river every morning? 

Barbara Brown Taylor http://www.barbarabrowntaylor.com wrote a wonderful book called An Altar in the World, A Geography of Faith says, "No one's spiritual practice is exactly like anyone else's. Life meets each of us where we need to be met, leading us to the doors with our names on them." 

If what you do at any moment opens you to the fullness of life and fills your heart with love and compassion and gratitude and a new awareness of our own essence, you are in the midst of a spiritual practice. How exciting is that? 

Vennard writes about on-cushion and off-cushion practices, (p.  xx) using Buddhist language. On-cushion practices are the more structured and formal practices and in the Buddhist tradition that would be meditation time. Off-cushion practices are spontaneous and informal and can happen and be available to us at any time, for in any moment there is the opportunity to be mindful. I think, as does Vennard, that a combination of both off and on-cushion practices are necessary to live a fully awakened life, and one leads to the other which leads back to the other and so on. A wonderful circular  energy.  

Barbara Brown Taylor adds further illumination about on-cushion and off-cushion spiritual practices, although she doesn't use those words. She writes about practices of walking the earth, getting lost, encountering others, living with purpose, feeling pain, and other ways of living fully. This is what she says about living her life as a spiritual practice.

          My life depends on engaging the most ordinary physical
          activities with the most exquisite attention I can give
          them. My life depends on ignoring all touted distinctions
          between the secular and the sacred, the physical and the
          spiritual, the body and the soul. What is saving my life
          now is becoming more fully human, trusting that there
          is no way to God apart from real life in the real world. 
                                                                         p. xv 

Yes and Amen. 

An Invitation
What on-cushion spiritual practices are part of your life? What do you do in your ongoing day-to day existence that with greater focus and intention could become off-cushion practices? In what ways can you fill your life with spiritual practices? I would love to know. 
         

Tuesday's Reflection: Choosing the Next Book to Read

Sunday morning before getting up and ready for the day I finished reading our current book club selection, Only the Dead by Norwegian author Vidar Sundstol. I has happy to finish the book, for it had not been particularly satisfying, especially since it is the second part of a trilogy, and there are many questions yet to be answered. We will discuss this book and the first in the series, The Land of Dreams, at our next gathering. As always, I look forward to being with our book group because I know I will understand and probably appreciate more about the books than I currently do. Those lively discussions broaden my perspective and encourage me to read more carefully and critically, and that increases my reading pleasure. 

As I finished the last page of the book that morning, I realized I didn't know what I was going to read next. That is not normal for me and was a bit unsettling. True, I am in the midst of reading other books, but they fulfill other functions. I am reading a couple books as part of my meditation time and a book while I am on the exercycle and a book about writing as part of my writing routine, and I am reading Azar Nafisi's The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books on a here and there basis, but what novel will I pick up next? What book will I read when I put my feet up on the ottoman in the room we call the snuggery and what book will I carry with me to bed to read before lights out? What book will I eagerly turn to when I need a break from the day's list? 

I recently read two engrossing books, The Paying Guests by Sarah Walters and Florence Gordon by Brian Morton, and sometimes after such absorption, it is hard to make a transition into the next book. Of course, it is not as if I didn't have choices in front of me. I have piles of books waiting to be read and a long list of books on my iPhone I want to read. Just the other day I requested a few titles from the library, but there are other people ahead of me in the queue for each title. I didn't have them in my hands. 

What to do? First, I gathered a stack of possible books and sat with each one. I read the back cover and the inside flap and I read the first page or two or three. Yes, there were good possibilities, but nothing grabbed me solidly. It was time for a step back. A deep breath. I entered a time of discernment.

 Now I know choosing the next book to read is not on the same level as making decisions about when or where to retire and what to do when retirement is a reality. This is not in the category of life-changing decisions we made earlier in our lives--whether or not to have children, for example, or which career path to follow, but more and more I realize that even the small decisions in my life offer opportunities to listen, to pay attention, to receive guidance from the movement of Spirit.

I have been reading about discernment for a writing project, making me aware of how the process of discernment lives in my life. The word "discernment" comes from the Latin word discernerer: dis meaning "to separate" and cerenere, "to sift." On a minor level that's what we do when we choose the next book to read, but when the decision has greater import, such as whether or not to say yes to a volunteer opportunity or to put your house on the market and downsize into a condo, the process of discernment has more relevance. 

As part of my research about discernment I read an article called "Seek Your Calling and Your Calling Will Seek You: Exploring Discernment as a Way of Life  (Presence, An International Journal of Spiritual Direction Volume 18, no. 1, March, 2012) in which Monika Ellis, OSD,  says one can develop a skill set for discernment by creating space to be with oneself, making time to center and connect to our inner depths, and being quiet in order to listen. When one does that, 
       Discernment eventually becomes a way of living, a way
       of walking with one's heart, ears and eyes wide open, all
       in readiness for receiving God… p. 41

As I intentionally develop the skills  and context for discernment, I  hope I will become more aware of what is going on inside, and how to uncover what to accept and when to create change. How to move forward and what  to release. JaneVennard http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/teachers/teachers.php?id=307 in her book Fully Awake and Truly Alive, Spiritual Practices to Nurture Your Soul says, 

          I used to think that discernment was problem solving
          with a spiritual dimension. I thought we were simply 
          to include God in the process of rational decision 
          making. We might consult others and gather as much
          information as possible and then pray for clarity. Or we 
          could list everything in favor of one possibility, list
          everything against it, and then pray for guidance. I 
          have discovered that discernment is much more than
          learning to make wise decisions.
              The practice of discernment is the willingness to 
          listen deeply, engaging the body, mind, and feelings
          to help us pay attention to the possibilities and choices
          before us. It is more about being receptive than about
          taking action. Spiritual writer Wendy Wright imagines
          discernment as the movement of the sunflower turning
          to the sun… or like being grasped in the spirit's arms 
          and led in the rhythms of an unknown dance.  p.132  

Perhaps discernment is another word for mindfulness. I don't know, but it seems to me that when I attend to the process of discernment, I move closer to the person I was created to be. May it be so. 

An Invitation
When have you invited the process of discernment into your life? Are you making room in your life for quiet, for time and space to be alone and connect with yourself? What are the fruits of doing that for you? Are you considering a decision, a potential change, or call in your life? If so, how are you approaching it and what spiritual practices are you using to lighten and enlighten you? I would love to know.

Oh, and by the way, Sunday afternoon my husband and I spent time at Birchbark Books, http://birchbarkbooks.com a wonderful independent bookstore in Minneapolis owned by the acclaimed author Louise Erdrich, and I spotted a book I had purchased a month or so ago, but had not read yet. In that moment The Children Act by Ian McEwan moved to the top of the pile, a most worthy selection. Needless to say, we didn't leave the store without additional books for our existing piles. Happy reading!