What is a spiritual practice and why should we care?

Hi all,

Thank you so much for answering the surveys from last week. They were very helpful and I am hopeful to both write more about and provide offerings that align with your desires and needs. Thanks for being here with me.

I’m writing this newsletter today to have a foundation for future newsletters. If this is not your jam, and you’d rather read about specific spiritual practices, or skip spiritual practices altogether, go for it. We’ll be back with specifics and more in July.

Seven years ago, the church Ben and I were a part of at the time fell apart in a dramatic fashion. I felt unmoored in a way I had never experienced before. I questioned all kinds of things. If pastors were capable of great harm and evil, then what was a church? What was the point of a church? And if the only reason to go to a church was to sit and listen to a pastor talk about their beliefs about God, when they weren’t doing…any of it, then did any of it matter?

What was it even? I was having a hard time defining what it even was. It was not my faith - that has never wavered as much as it has evolved and changed and grown. I realized, over months and years of soul searching, that it was spiritual practices.

Wikipedia defines spiritual practices as:

A spiritual practice or spiritual discipline (often including spiritual exercises) is the regular or full-time performance of actions and activities undertaken for the purpose of inducing spiritual experiences and cultivating spiritual development. A common metaphor used in the spiritual traditions of the world's great religions is that of walking a path.[1]

In ancient Judaism, young men would frequently spend time under the tutelage of a local Rabbi to help them grow in their understanding of the Torah. This is one path of spiritual discipline.

In Christianity, we have Jesus who walked on Earth for 3 years with His disciples, teaching them. This is another form or path of spiritual discipline, often emulated in churches today, though on a different scale and with a different look, especially in western, American churches.

All major world religions have a version of this, but what is often neglected is the “path.” To what end are we doing all these spiritual practices?

That end, I think, is different for everyone. For me, it looks and sounds like attempting to answer the question, Who am I becoming? Am I becoming kinder? Less anxious? More generous? More patient? More understanding and empathetic? More wise? More loving?

I don’t ask myself these questions on the daily, but I do try to check in with them on a regular basis, usually quarterly, and see if I am making slow but gradual progress in my “path” toward these virtues. If the answer is no, I ask myself what about my life (my disciplines, my choices, how I spend my time) needs to change to move me in this direction.

Your question might look different, or maybe you’ve never really thought about it. But, as Emily P. Freeman says, “your daily decisions are making your life.” Your decisions about what practices you adopt, how frequently (or not) you do them, and what they are moving you toward all lead to who you are becoming, honestly more than any other choice you make in your life. More than your job, more than who your partner is, more than where you live. How you spend your days makes your life which makes up who you are.

I was having a conversation with Ron, my spiritual director, recently. Toward the end of our session, Ron said something like, “You’re a gift. So decide how much you want to give away.” [queue tears I held back because I was about to walk into an acupuncture appointment] This path that we’re on leads us more into being the gift we were made to be, so that we can give it away to others.

Regardless of whether you want to be or not, you are on some kind of path of becoming. You are becoming more of something or less of something, or both at the same time. Spiritual practices help that become intentional.

Maybe your goal is to be less attached to the material world, and so you pick up Contemplative Prayer.

Or maybe you are in survival mode, so you just need a breath prayer right now.

Or maybe you need more silence in your life.

Or maybe you need more rest, which means we rely less on ourselves and more on Divine Providence.

Or maybe you need to create more as a path to greater connection with the Creator that reminds you that it’s not all up to you.

Or maybe you need to connect more with nature, which reminds you how connected you are to the world and others, as a part of something bigger.

Or maybe you need to simply take a deep breath as a part of a break during the day, to reconnect with your soul and the eternal instead of the constant “go go go” pressure of your day job.

Whatever the practice is, the practice is ultimately helping you in your formation of who you are becoming. We are not static, up and to the right creatures. We change, move, grow, become. This, ultimately, is the truth of who we are. The world would have you believe you are a production unit, but all humans have inherent worth outside of production. Spiritual practices help you anchor into the Divine that gives you that inherent worth.

So. As we start to dive into aligning ourselves to spiritual practices, creativity and rest as spiritual practices, how to align your job to who you are, how your job supports you in this formation (or doesn’t!), may you hold the question, Who am I becoming?

Who am I becoming and how does this new practice support me in who I am becoming?