UnSpiritual Spiritual Disciplines 2.0

A little while ago, I posted 10 Unspiritual Spiritual Disciplines.  As I looked them over, it struck me that what I had written was a dead give away that I am no longer young.  I like what I said, but what I said speaks, I suspect, more to my older than my younger self.

So I set about to think on my younger self in a spiritual way, wondering what advice I might give to younger Me, the hipper, cooler gal I used to be (or thought I was).

Here’s what I came up with – 10 UnSpiritual Spiritual Disciplines 2.0 – the younger, cooler version of the original:

1. Text like God’s reading it.

2. If you’re texting or surfing, include the person beside you, whether friend or stranger, in the conversation.

3. Send an inspiring, encouraging text to someone today and every day.

4. Thank God with every sip, every taste of that beer.

5. While watching the game, offer silent or spoken blessings for the players, the refs, the crowd.  And wonder what kind of game God would invent – how would the scoring go?  Who would be chosen for the team?  What would the purpose of the game be?

6. When you’re out eating, share your food with each other.  As you eat, think of it as communion.  Notice what changes when you do.

7. Decide that just for today, every time your kid speaks to you, you’re going to understand that this is God speaking to you and give your child the same attention you would give as if it were God speaking to you.

8. When you have sex, enter the experience as a child of God who has been gifted by God with the ability to experience all the senses your body intertwined with the body of another has to give.

9. Bless every person, every situation, you encounter while doing your work today.  Be specific in your blessing.  Can’t think of anything?  Then try blessing them with the things you want in your own life – happy family, good job, joy in the work, rest, no debts, freedom from worry, meaning, purpose, fulfillment, safe children – you get the picture.

10. Practice patience with those around you who don’t get you – your look, your way, your tech savvy, your music, your you-ness.  Instead of returning judgment for judgment, try returning patience, humor and understanding for judgment – just as an experiment – see where it takes you.  Might be fun.  Might be a surprise.  You’ll sure feel better for it.  Promise.

10 Unspiritual Spiritual Disciplines

Here are some random ideas (probably none of them original to me) about combining prayer with physical

activity, to integrate prayer – for self, for others, for connecting with God ever more – into the molecules of our being.

Blessing is my favored form of intercessory prayer – the sending out of God’s beneficence to others, particularly the random passer-by, for I never know how, when or where these blessings land, but I imagine them, somehow, making a difference in a day.

These practices are not meditation.  They are not an effort to seek to distance ourselves from our bodies, for I firmly believe that we are our bodies, our bodies us.

There’s plenty of advice out there on the how to’s of silence and meditation, connecting to God by leaving self and world behind.

These are not those prayers, those disciplines.

The purpose here is not to seek God away from the world, but in it; not as separated from creation, but of it.  This is not about rising up, but about sinking into.  This is about meeting, not finding, God, in the day-to-day of life.

1. Take a walk – just about anywhere will do.  But do it as a spiritual walk.  That’s what I like about labyrinths – it’s an intentional walk of the spiritual kind that frees the mind from having to decide where to go next.  This kind of walking is about the noticing – so it’s heads up, offering ‘up’ kind of walking.  And almost any day is a beautiful day for it.

2. Pray-bless passers-by.  Whether walking or driving, with each passer-by, offer a silent blessing.  Start out simply by saying ‘God bless you’ and see where it takes you.  I did this as a discipline for some time with a small group I belong to.  I did it while driving.  And the strangest thing began to happen – I could not even see the folks speeding by in the other cars, but my blessings began to be very specific – usually one word – health . . . joy . . . peace . . . care . . . healing . . . safety . . . humor . . . the words were unbidden.  I do not know what blessings landed, but I do know they were Spirit-given and Spirit-driven.

3. Dance.  Dance your joys and sorrows to God.  Get the feet moving and somehow, the heart follows.

4. Begin your prayers as well as your day with a smile and see what a difference it makes.

5. Sing your prayers.  Put them to any tune you like but at least once, try to singing them to a song that makes you happy just to hear it.  Maybe you can then imagine God happy to hear from you.

6. Make a gratitude list about your body.  We are embodied creatures – we were made that way on purpose.  There is no me separate from my body.  Lips for kissing and arms for hugging can be a good place to begin.

7. The next time you have a meeting, go early, before anyone arrives, and walk the space putting your hands on the chairs assembled and ask blessings for all who will be sitting there and the work you will be doing (don’t forget yourself in the blessing).

8. Go back to childhood and make your cards for folks by hand, offering blessings as you do – for the one who will get the card, for the one making it, for those who made paper and crayons, markers and colored pencils so you could.  (It’s always a nice practice to remember to bless those who bring you the materials you’re working with.)

9. Try doing a set prayer you know (Lord’s Prayer, rosary, Now I lay me . . . ) over and over as you engage in physical activity or labor – to the rhythm of the saw as you cut the wood . . . to the washing of the dish . . . the turn of the wrench . . . you don’t have to think much to do a memorized prayer and the rhythm of the work sets the rhythm of the prayer and the rhythm of the prayer sets the rhythm of the work.

10. Imagine that everything you do today is a form of prayer.  Reflect on what you prayed today by reflecting on what you did and said and thought.  Answer the questions that arise out loud.  Yes, God, I really did ask You to throw that person in the trash.  I really did want the gift of this day so I could watch people make asses of themselves on reality tv.  I did just ask the angel chorus of heaven to join me in screaming at that driver.  How cool is it that You and I got to help that little old lady?  I’m so glad I called her today – who knows when I might get another chance?  Whether your answers are laughter or shame, sorrow or joy, speak them aloud, so that you may hear with the ears God gave you what God has been listening to all day long.

Our lives actually are our prayers.

Maybe this list can help us remember.

The Hunger Games: Allow A Minister Who Can’t Help Herself to Kvetch

Some months ago, as a fan of the television series Grey’s Anatomy, I actually spent about half of a day trying (without success) to locate a way to communicate a programming idea to the producers.

The idea?  Simply to include a hospital chaplain as a (even if seldom) recurring character.

Most, if not all, hospitals of comparable size in the United States, actually have paid chaplains on staff.  The absence of such a character is, at least to me, a jarring absence, particularly when the drama engages matters of a spiritual nature.

Not even having dialogue that references the chaplain who just left is to literally erase such a figure and such a dimension from the real-time plane of existence for the characters.

It is an absence not unique to Grey’s Anatomy.

Having finished The Hunger Games trilogy of books (there are definite advantages to having an extended time off work – catching up on light reading is one of them), I find the same absence, the same lack.

In a tale of the upheaval of an entire society wrenched by violence and war, religion is notable for its absence.  Things spiritual simply aren’t there.  The rituals are the ceremonies of the soldier.  Gatherings are the collective of oppression.  Friendship is the cement, if any there be, of human relationships.

I struggle to name what troubles me.  After all, Susan Collins, the author of The Hunger Games books, the writers and producers of Grey’s Anatomy, as well as the myriad of writers of fiction for stage, screen and the printed page, are free to write whatever narrative strikes their fancy.  And I am free to view or read or not, as I choose.

But the vacuum, the dearth, of things spiritual in our fiction, argues for a problem that shakes me down to my soul: it isn’t that such things aren’t true or valuable; rather, the absence seems to suggest that in our common sphere of imagination, such things are simply irrelevant.

And that does more than make me sad; it makes me frightened – not wrath of God frightened – more that-which-has-no-name frightened – the fear that we are losing something so dear without even knowing it – the ability to imagine that even in the midst of our immediate concerns, something larger than ourselves looms ever present, calling out for our attention, calling out for us to be more than we are, better than we are.

It is the feeling that we who have so much are settling for so much less.


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No doubt, a better theologian than I is already hard at work on the next Gospel According To . . . tome, celebrating the deep spiritual meanings to be found in The Hunger Games trilogy.  To that author, I hope my ignorance is forgiven.  And please know that I did not overlook the benedictory language about odds, but allow me to call to mind Mark Twain’s much more eloquent and True (the capital ‘T’ is intentional) The War Prayer for finding spiritual challenge to the collective wisdom of the day when it comes to war and violence and the ‘odds’ of winning and losing in what has always been a fixed game.

Nowhere for a Fish to Live

When I was about 7 years old, my parents got me 2 gold fish, a gold fish bowl and some fish food.  I was set.  A few days later, the first fish died.  The other fish actually lived about 5 years, but it turns out that gold fish actually have an average life span measured in decades.

I most likely killed both fish with my ignorance.

Even more alarming in some ways is that my 1-inch long fishie stayed about that size all his (her?  I never knew for sure) life because he lived in a fish bowl.  Goldfish 101

Goldfish stay small because their environment is small . . . the fish bowl is nowhere for a fish to live.

I wonder what prison cells we build for ourselves, decorating them inside and out and calling them something else?

I wonder how our own growth is stunted by the small places of mind and body and heart into which we insert ourselves for safe keeping of one sort or another, only to find that we have accidentally made ourselves small?

Advent Reflection: Only God Can Make a Pie

Tomorrow is the first Sunday in Advent and we will celebrate with carols, candles and communion.

And the waiting will begin. . . waiting for Messiah to come again . . . waiting for Baby Jesus in the manger . . . waiting for the spark within each of us to be reignited into the very Spirit of God in our midst . . .

And in the meantime, we will go about our lives . . . busy with the day-to-day of existence with even the cracks of time and space filled with the joy or burden of "the holidays" . . .

Can't recommend the book
as I haven't read it,
but it's a great picture!

My own symbol this year of the waiting space is the perfect pie crust.

Pie making requires first and foremost a good crust.  I've been making pies since I was about 12 and only recently did I stumble on the great tip for the perfect flaky crust:  do not stir or over-work the dough -- rather, lightly fluff the water into the flour/lard mixture only until it is moistened:  crust does not like to be overworked.  The more gentle we are with it, the more flaky and wonderful-melting-in-the-mouth goodness it will yield.  As with so many things in life, less really is more.

That's a great lesson for Advent:  less is more.  Not only the less of consumer consumption, but also the less of trying so hard.  Advent is a time, if ever there were, to relax into God and God's good grace, to do our part gently and with patience and then step back to allow The Divine work to simply happen.

We might mix together some ingredients, but to borrow from poet Joyce Kilmer, only God can make a pie.

How to Be. . .

How to be peace rather than preach it to others?

How to be joyful rather than proclaim it at others?

How to be kind rather than describe it for others?

How to be giving rather than demand it from others?

These are my challenges of the day.

In the questions lie the answers.

Isn’t it often thus?