Create a Home Altar

Practice of the Week
Create a Home Altar

Category: WORTH A TRY, or OCCASIONAL, or MIGHT BE YOUR THING. These practices are "worth a try" at least once, or, say, for one week. Beyond that, different people will relate in different ways to the practices in this category. Some of these practices you will find great for "every once in a while" -- either because they are responses to a particular need that may arise or because they are simply enriching occasional enhancements to the spiritual life. Among these practices you may find the one particular practice that becomes your main and central spiritual practice -- or a Key Supporting Practice.

Adapted from Johanna Nichols, "Creating an Altar," in Scott Alexander, Editor, Everyday Spiritual Practice: Simple Pathways for Enriching Your Life

When I moved from my home in Vermont to California to go to seminary, two white-veined, black rocks common to Lake Champlain traveled with me. There, I placed them on my windowsill facing the San Francisco Bay. A friend from home came to visit. After she left I discovered she had rear-ranged the rocks, placing the smaller of the two on the bigger one. They now looked like a seal perched on a rock. Suddenly, my whole perspective of leaving home changed: If my Vermont rocks could adapt to California, so could I. Today these two sacred black rocks sit upon my home altar.

I have always been a collector of sacred objects. For many years, my rocks and feathers and cherished photos sat in various corners of homes I've lived in — on my dresser, on a mantle, a book shelf, and windowsills.

I first discovered the powerful impact that comes from creating a more intentional center of spiritual focus when I participated in a program on women's spirituality called Cakes for the Queen of Heaven. Each week, the women in the group brought objects that held special meaning — gemstones, rocks, painted eggs, photos, jewelry, shells, candleholders, and glass and ceramic art — that we used to create an altar in the center of our worship circle.

After the program ended, we continued to meet once a month at my home to celebrate the cycle of the seasons and rites of passage. A round coffee table served as the base of our altar, on which we placed our sacred objects. With our altar as the central focus, we each brought a presence to the circle that was intentional, creative, harmonious, energizing, truthful, joyful, and powerful.

One day I walked with a friend along the Pacific Coast. We were looking for sand dollars to take to her new home in Utah. We spotted a sand shark washed up on the beach. Discovering it was alive, we found a piece of driftwood, slid it under the shark, and carried it between us knee deep into the ocean. We waited for the next wave, and released it. I felt exhilarated as it swam away. Continuing our search for sand dollars, my attention wandered to rocks. I picked up a gray rock with a strange bump on it and turned it over. In my hand lay a perfectly fossilized sand dollar. This 10,000-year-old stone now sits upon my home altar.

Altars hold a central place in the history of many cultures and religions. When an altar is used, it is regarded as a place of contact with the deity, set apart as holy. It might be as simple as a bowl on a stone or a mat. It might be a table made of clay or wood or elaborate bronze or gold.

The Greeks had numerous altars: one in the home for family use, a city altar on which fire continually burned, and a temple altar dedicated to a god. The Hopi constructed sand altars to resemble animals, each symbolizing certain sacred characteristics and relationships with the spirit. In Central America every home had its personal altar. In the evolution of Christianity, increasing ceremony surrounded the eucharistic table after the death of Christ and the altar was moved from the people into the sanctuary.

I spent ten days at a writing seminar at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico where the sky is an ocean of blue and the earth a blanket of red mountain dust. There is no mercy to this geography. To survive in the desert, you must pay attention. Sitting on a rock, I scooped up a handful of earth, mindful that this was once the floor of the ocean, mindful of the ancient feet that had once trod this way. Today, this handful of New Mexico earth sits upon my home altar.

I discovered that between the celebrations of my women's group I wanted to keep the altar intact. In fact, I wanted to create my own altar. I chose a quiet corner in my office as a gathering place for my own sacred objects. An oval coffee table offered a suitable base. A large, round, flat basket with handles, on which to place my objects, would make my altar portable.

I have long been fascinated with the medicine wheel, an ancient symbol used by almost all of the Native people of North and South America to represent the circle of life. The medicine wheel expresses relationships in sets of four: the four directions, races, elements, seasons, stages of life, and aspects of our nature. With the medicine wheel as a guide, I gathered my sacred objects and placed them on the basket to create a center of spiritual focus.

I placed a candle on a piece of quilted fabric in the center of my altar. This candle represents the center (according to the medicine wheel, the transcendent and immanent, Great Spirit and Mother Earth, the Goddess). In the direction of the east (the direction of spring, air, birth, and dawn) I put my collection of feathers in a straw basket and a yellow candle in a glass holder. In the direction of the south (summer, fire, youth, midday) I put the red New Mexico dirt in a clay pot and a red candle. In the direction of the west (autumn, water, adulthood, twilight) I put the fossilized sand dollar, a river rock in water in a small ceramic bowl made by my daughter, and a black candle. In the direction of the north (winter, earth, old age, midnight) I put my black Vermont rocks and a white candle.

Above the altar hang photographs and paintings of special places and handmade symbols of my spiritual journey. Below it, I keep my daily meditation book and my journal for the time I spend there in reflection. All the parts of my center of focus are moveable and changeable. As I continue on my spiritual journey, I add new objects that are sacred to me and give away others. I tend my altar.

In the direction of the south, I have added a photo of a friend far away who needs healing. In the north, I put photos of my wise grandmother Agnes and two of her sisters. Next to them sits a crystal belonging to my friend Sharon. When she died, her husband invited each of her women friends to take something from her personal altar. It was very hard to do, for the altar held a lot of power and integrity that was connected to her. But now her crystal is part of my altar.

My personal home altar is my place to pray, meditate, read, and write in a setting that connects me to the sacred. The world is so temporal that we have to intentionally make it more sacred. I know that I will be awake when I am in the presence of my altar. Its individual objects are sacred to me because of their natural beauty and form, and because of the meanings they hold, the parts of my spiritual journey they evoke. The rock with the fossilized sand dollar was made sacred by the feeling of synchronicity I had when I discovered it. I felt a connection to the shark and the sea and my friend that I experience again whenever I see or hold this rock.

My altar is a touchstone in my life. Though I try to bring awareness to every aspect of my life, from doing the dishes to attending worship, the presence of my personal home altar connects me to the sacredness of life. The sacred objects on my altar call forth the sacred in me that connects with the sacred in nature and with the sacred in worship. It beckons me to pause, to reflect and to regain my sense of balance and wholeness.

My altar can go anywhere with me — on a trip, to a new home, to the hospital or a nursing home. And if sustaining a home altar remains as a personal spiritual practice, when I die, it can be buried with me or dispersed to my family and friends.

Would creating and tending a home altar be a meaningful spiritual practice for you? Ask yourself this: am I a collector? Do I collect sea glass or shells, rocks or feathers? Driftwood? Are there objects that hold meaning for me, that reflect my connection with nature, relationships with other people, a connection to ancient traditions?

Do I like to celebrate? Do I decorate my home for different seasons and holidays? Do I like to keep photos or cards in a place where I can see them? Am I creative? Do I enjoy arranging flowers in a special vase or covering a table or bureau with a colorful cloth?

Do I have a quiet space where I enjoy sitting quietly some time during the day or evening — perhaps to sip a cup of tea, read a daily meditation, or simply just to sit? Do I sit at a table near a window, on a porch, or in a cozy chair where I can put up my feet?

Whether we do so intentionally or not, each of us creates an environment in our home that nurtures us through our senses — sight, sound, touch, taste, and scent. An altar can nurture you through your senses, add meaning and beauty to your life, remind you that the holy is present wherever we call home.

Your home altar should reflect your personal spiritual story. It doesn't matter whether it consists of a candle, a bell, and a statue of Buddha on a piece of cloth, or a bowl of sea glass and a photo on linen crocheted by your grandmother. It doesn't matter if you pay attention to the directions or just gather your own precious objects and mementos.

What is important is who you are in the presence of your personal altar. For there, you have created a place where you are invited to recognize the sacredness of life, where you are invited to "wake up!" and be whole.

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Rev. Nichols is a Unitarian Universalist minister, retired since 2010. She served the First Universalist Church in Auburn, ME (1988-99), and the Champlain Valley UU Society in Middlebury, VT (1999-2010).

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PRACTICES INDEX

Social Justice

Practice of the Week
Justice Making

Category: Main Practice, or Key Supporting Practice

from Art McDonald, Deborah Holder, and Stephen Furrer,
"Social Justice," in Everyday Spiritual Practice, abridged and adapted.

The Civil Rights and anti-war movements in the 1960s and 1970s altered our understanding of “religious,” and “spiritual.” The sit-ins and the anti-war and anti-nuclear efforts were far more than skillful civil disobedience. They were a spiritual practice. These activists prayed before, during, and after each action. Liturgies often preceded their actions, during which they knelt in prayer in front of nuclear missiles only to be handcuffed and incarcerated. This was embodied spiritual practice. It was immersion in the world, and it aimed to enlist all of our spiritual power in the service of social, cultural, and political transformation.

Justice-making and spiritual wholeness go hand-in-hand, two sides of the same coin. Spiritual practice is engagement in the world, not withdrawal. Liberation theologians and practitioners in Asia, Latin America, and Africa have developed a spirituality that helps to overcome their oppressions, that grows their spirit by working to alleviate suffering. Ghanaian feminist theologian Mercy Amba Oduyoye defines spirituality as "the energy by which one lives and which links one's worldview to one's style of life.” Recognizing the systemic dimensions of oppression in modern life, one's religious life must begin in solidarity with the oppressed and must result in community. “Religion held with deep conviction leads to political involvement," said Oscar Romero, the slain Archbishop of El Salvador.

Latin American “base communities” come together and employ an action/reflection model in which experience and action, analysis and reflection, prayer and sharing of faith all flow in and out of one another as one practice. Adapting the base community model to a North American context has led us to involvement in a local interfaith group operating a multifaceted social service/advocacy agency that provides shelter for homeless men, a food pantry for local families and individuals, and a program of transitional housing for those trying to escape homelessness. We also do considerable advocacy around issues of hunger, homelessness, welfare reform, and economic injustice.

Suppose that in our community the issues of hunger and homelessness were our focus. First, we act: by, for instance, signing up to cook and serve meals to the men in the homeless shelter, which brings us “sacred encounters" with other human beings. To bridge the distance between our service and the residents, we talk and eat with them. From there, we begin organizing lobbying efforts within local congregations — for instance, letter writing and congressional visiting around welfare, food stamps, and related issues. We encourage ministers to preach on these issues, and help organize religious education programs about homelessness and hunger. We join with other local advocacy groups to hold marches to raise consciousness about hunger and homelessness, and we put pressure on politicians. We work with local activist groups addressing the issue.

Activities like these form the basis of our spiritual practice. They flow from our faith, our values, our reflection and analysis, and our prayers. As part of that process, we read and analyze to understand better why there is such need. We share our experiences and explore the roots of the problems. Why is there an ever-widening gap between our country's (and the world's) haves and have-nots? Why are food pantries and shelters under continually increasing pressure to provide more space and services? We want to understand just what is happening in our society, because we want our actions to be effective.

We are not just about service but also change: both societal, institutional change and the personal, psychological, spiritual change that comes from living and working in a community committed to justice-making. Today’s dominant commercialized and hypermobile monoculture increasingly celebrates manic individualism and overconsumption. Collective action and reflection provides a healing corrective and a powerful model of a justice-seeking community of resistance.

Learning about and practicing anti-oppressive behaviors while celebrating the Spirit means moving beyond unexamined and insight-limiting assumptions into more inclusive communities of trust and support – and presents us with sacred encounters. This work heals powerlessness and alienation. It puts us in direct relationship with the mystery at the center of our faith, where justice is forever newly revealed. It provides shared and confirming experiences of grace and discloses our belonging as a part of something larger than ourselves. In supporting one another through both the successes and the failures of this struggle and helping one another become more compassionate and fully human, we begin to recognize and feel our true identity in God.

Any spirituality must begin with a sense of deep solidarity with the oppressed – not with transcending the suffering of our dispossessed siblings across the globe. A sense of oneness with their struggle is the ground for all spiritual practice.

Religion without social action is idolatry. We must be clear about the truth, the reality that our world is full of injustice and inequality. This doesn't mean that spiritual practice is only about activism. Though justice is at the center of authentic spirituality, its realization requires a deep need to be quiet. Meditative practice is critical.

Social action without spiritual grounding is also idolatry. Activists are often tempted to overextend themselves, to fill days and nights with constant action. When this happens, our activity becomes less a spiritual practice and more one-dimensional, unsustainable, and self-undermining.

We are not always effective or successful. We tire out, or face opposition and find it too painful to carry on. At such times, we remember that we are not called to be successful, but to be faithful. Perseverance is a key part of our practice.

Social justice as spiritual practice heals and rebuilds the community, reconnects with the whole. Ultimately, this is a hopeful spiritual practice, filled with imagination and energy.

Our spiritual practice is ultimately about relationship -- with one another and with the whole. It is a spiritual practice about sacred encounters. By grappling with injustice and inequality as a starting point, we go beyond our own experience and into the world of others. This spiritual practice begins by being honest about social and political inequity and by calling together other people of faith. With action and reflection as two complementary aspects of one, unified existence, social justice as spiritual path becomes a natural rhythm of the life of faith.

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SPIRITUAL PRACTICE DIRECTORY

Sacred Reading

Practice of the Week
Sacred Reading

Category: Worth a Try, Occasional, or Might Be Your Thing. Give it a try. Maybe this will become an occasional practice for you. Or it might become your central daily spiritual practice. Or maybe it won't. Try it once and see.

from Susan Ritchie, "Sacred Reading," in Everyday Spiritual Practice, abridged and adapted.

For a somewhat different approach, see "Spiritual Reading"

In my mid-twenties, I completed a doctorate in English. I could plow my way through an impressive amount of material in a relatively short time. I prided myself on being able to move through texts of all sorts, quickly identifying the valuable nuggets and throwing all else to the side.

Eventually, I realized that I was not reading as much as strip mining. It took me a long time to recover a way of reading that enhanced rather than impoverished my sense of the wholeness and beauty not only of the text but also of everything within and beyond my own self.

The spiritual practice of sacred reading has been empowering. I have not become, I should say from the start, any less of a critical reader. Sacred reading is not anti-intellectual reading. And yet my approach is different than it was in my days of high-yield mining.

With sacred reading, the mindfulness given to the text is a reminder of the power and holistic character of the life within and beyond me. Something hitherto silent has been given voice within me.

Sacred reading – also called lectio divina -- has been an important mainstay of the Christian monastic tradition since the middle ages. The stages of the discipline have not changed.

1. Select a text. Scripture from one of the world's great religious traditions is one possibility. However you choose your passage—whether it be from scripture or from the bestseller list, whether it be by lectionary, inclination, or random chance—the only requirement is that you be prepared to be surprised.

2. Read it aloud. Over and over again. This might seem bizarre at first. But as one of the goals of sacred reading is precisely to restore a sense of bodied-ness to the reader, it is important to read the words out loud. This is to return to the medieval practice, where reading was done not with the eyes, but with the lips. Reading aloud allows the sounds to pull you from the safe confines of your head, back into your body, back into a fuller and fully sensual experience of the world and the text.

The mouth is the most important organ for this process, for what, finally, is sacred reading but a form of eating, an ingestion of other-than-earthly food? The spiritual literature of the middle ages referred often to reading as a form of ruminatio, or rumination -- a chewing of the cud. The words must be felt in the mouth. They must be masticated before they are thoroughly and wholly taken in.

The text is there to be taken apart and put back together a thousand times over. The holy lies in the activity and experience of the reader.

So speak the text out loud. Hear the sensuous combination of sounds: Hear them first not as mere vehicles of meaning, but as sounds. Feel how good it is to say them. Feel the mouth work its way around the vowels, feel the force of the consonants. Enjoy the very materiality of language. And repeat your passage over and over again. See if you cannot learn your text by heart.

3. Memorizing texts, unfortunately, has associations with a stale classroom. But to learn a text by heart, to know it, as we say, backwards and forwards—this is an important element of the spiritual discipline of reading. In learning a text by heart we truly remember it, and truly begin the work of taking those well chewed syllables and integrating them anew with each other and with our own selves. I have a friend, raised in no particular religious tradition, who when in a difficult or distressing situation finds himself mouthing under his breath a confused combination of the Twenty-Third Psalm and the Pledge of Allegiance. The result is both ludicrous and oddly comforting.

Perhaps it is not so strange that we should find such comfort from words repeated and remembered, for in the process words allow us to live for a while within their own music and their own rhythm. For a while we are embodied not only within our physical selves but also within time. Reading can extend the present moment and make it habitable. Those moments when we allow the text to animate us are a blissful relief from our usual sort of existence.

For a while I served as a chaplain on a hospital ward of Alzheimer patients, most of them quite advanced in their illness. Little would restore these patients to anything that we fully remembering adults charged with their care recognized as presence -- little, that is, but the Lord's Prayer, memorized by those folks as many as ninety years ago. Something sacred indeed was present when a roomful of desperate human beings, each lost in his or her own universe, would nonetheless come together, every last one of them, on "thy kingdom come, thy will be done, ..." only to have the brief light of presence flicker away at the end of the recitation.

4. Meditate on the remembered text. In the original understanding of meditation, in both rabbinic and monastic contexts, meditation on remembered texts was the only possible form of meditation. For them, meditation was a grappling with, a working of, the text by one's understanding and will.

Some practitioners of sacred reading recommend spending time imagining it. Recreate it, as well as you can, with sights, sounds, and smells, within your mind. Others suggest free associating on the text, bringing to mind events in your life that seem similar to the passage, and imagining the scene from the vantage point of different characters. Or you can try to feel the passage, deliberately using it to evoke and explore particular emotions. In time, you will find your own way of engaging the text.

The joy of sacred reading is that it is, finally, a way of giving voice within to something that was originally without.

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PRACTICES INDEX

Prayer with Beads

Practice of the Week
Prayer with Beads

Category: MIGHT BE YOUR THING: These practices are not for everyone -- but one of them may be just the thing for you! Any of these might also be, for you, in the "Occasional" category, but are listed here because they are good candidates for being a central practice.

from Erik Walker Wikstrom, "Prayer," in Everyday Spiritual Practice, abridged and adapted.

Several years ago, I began developing my own prayer practice, tied neither to a specific religious worldview nor to any one set of religious symbols. It’s a framework that can support a variety of religious beliefs without depending on any.

The practice I developed uses prayer beads, bringing a tactile involvement to prayer and providing focus and direction. I use a loop of twenty-eight beads: a large centering bead, four medium-sized beads, and twenty-three smaller beads.

Whatever else it might be – a conversation with the Divine, an internal dialog, a practice of calming and centering -- I think of prayer as a journey into and through the Mystery. The beads are strung in a circle, reminding us that our journey is neither linear nor a one-time-only event.

Any good bead or craft can provide the beads and teach you how to string them together. I encourage even the "craft challenged" to string their own. Make it yours. String the beads in this order:

• large bead (Centering),
• four small beads (warm-up),
• first medium bead (Naming),
• five small beads (breath prayer),
• second medium bead (Knowing),
• five small beads (breath prayer),
• third medium bead (Listening),
• five small beads (breath prayer),
• fourth medium bead (Loving), and
• four small beads (cool-down).

Connect the cord back to the original large bead, completing the circle.

Once you have assembled your bead circle, here is the process for practicing with them.

CENTERING: Start with the large bead, centering yourself for the journey. Breathe in and out several times, calming the body and quieting the mind. You might sit quietly with your breath, recite a "breathing gatha" or chant, or sing a favorite hymn ("Spirit of Life," "Voice Still and Small," and "Find a Stillness" all work well). When you feel ready, move on.

NAMING (Prayers of Praise and Thanksgiving): The first medium-sized bead is for Naming the Holy. Give voice to what you consider Holy or where you have felt the Divine in your life. You might use the names of gods and goddesses from the world's religions and you might make up your own. (For example: "Ancient and Ageless Spirit: known in many ways, by many names and by no name at all – Holy Sanctamataba, Mother and Father of All; Gods and Goddesses of old; all Buddhas throughout space and time; Spirits, Saints, and Sages; Wise Women and Men".) Alternatively, call up the attributes that you ascribe to the Sacred or name whatever feeds your soul. This is also the place for you to lift up all for which you are thankful at this moment, all the blessings and miracles in your life, all the joy in your living. Take your time.

KNOWING (Prayer of Confession): The second medium-sized bead is for Knowing yourself. Reflect on your life as it is today, identifying places that call for reconciliation, atonement, or self-correction. We are all a mixture of saint and sinner, and this stop on our journey is an opportunity to see and know yourself in all your subtle shadings.

LISTENING (Contemplative Prayer): The third medium­sized bead is for Listening, opening ourselves to what nondiscursive revelation may come. Be still and listen to the Divine spark, the Buddha-nature, that is inherent in us all. Gaze on an icon, statue, or mandala, or lower your eyes and follow your breath.

LOVING (Intercessory Prayer): The final medium-sized bead is for lifting up those we know (and those we don't) whose lives have pain and need. Hold them in your consciousness, bring them to your awareness. We don’t do this so that God will know about people's needs; we do it to make sure we know.

Four small beads separate the Centering and Naming beads. At this entry to the prayer journey, you can honor the four directions (one per bead), take the four Boddhisattva vows, or recite a four­line poem which moves you. At the end, four more small beads separate the Loving and Centering beads, mirroring the first four, as you open the circle, thank the directions, repeat your vows, and bring yourself gently back to the everyday world.

Five small beads separate the medium-sized beads. With each of these beads you may use a "breath prayer," a two-line phrase that is said in rhythm with the in- and out-breaths: for example,

"Breathing in I develop calm and equanimity;
Breathing out I find peace and joy"

Or

"Lord Jesus Christ
have mercy on me"

Or

"Great Mystery
I seek to know."

Many traditions extol the virtues of repetitive, set prayers over which the practitioner has no control; this kind of praying removes ego-involvement from the composition process, preventing you from getting caught up in eloquent or flowery phrases. Repetitive prayer has great power; try it and see.

Centering, Naming, Knowing, Listening, and Loving. This is a journey of taking the time to find a quiet place in your life, setting in the front of your awareness the Holy and Sacred miracle of life, seeing your self within that reality as full and whole, tuning your sense to hear inner wisdom, and then turning your loving attention to the needs within and around you.

This entire prayer bead practice can take anywhere from thirty to sixty minutes. Shorten or lengthen it depending on available time and your own sense of need. I carry my beads with me wherever I go and often find myself fingering them in meetings or in line.

Sometimes I spread out the practice through the day, using the medium-sized beads as break points, picking up later where I'd left off. At least once a week I journey the full circuit in one sitting. The discipline of regularity over a long period serves us well when times of grief and loss come -- as they inevitably do.

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PRACTICES INDEX

Everyday Relationships

Practice of the Week
Everyday Relationships

Category: MIGHT BE YOUR THING: These practices are not for everyone -- but one of them may be just the thing for you! Any of these might also be, for you, in the "Occasional" category, but are listed here because they are good candidates for being a central practice.

from Jane Ellen Mauldin, "Everyday Relationships," in Everyday Spiritual Practice, abridged and adapted.

It's easy to see the sacred in the stars at night or in the emotion of a great Sunday service. But how about in your most damp and oozy moments of parenting toddlers? Or in your angriest moments of conflict with a partner? There. Right there is the sacred. Our everyday relationships are not automatically a spiritual practice -- but we can make them be a spiritual practice.

In college, I came to picture the spiritual path as involving extensive stillness, quiet, and meditation. My route to enlightenment, however, took a big detour into family responsibilities. I am so busy making school lunches, doing laundry, driving to boy scouts and dance lessons – and working full time outside the home -- that my longed-for hour of daily meditation is still just a pipe dream.

With much trial and error, I've developed a spiritual practice of everyday relationships, to satisfy my hunger for spiritual growth in the relationships to which I'm deeply committed. My method has four parts.

1. AWARENESS

It's easy to gulp down the coffee in the morning with a quick look at the newspaper and an almost peremptory "howdy" to your partner or spouse across the table. This doesn't qualify as awareness! Take a long look at your sweetie, at least once before you or they run out the door. Do the same for the other people you care for -- your parent, or child, or even yourself. Really look at these people. Know that they are there. Know that you are near them.

If we are lucky, we might sometimes get our loved one's awareness, too. I was barreling down the highway in my minivan not long ago, five minutes late as always. Suddenly, my twelve-year-old beside me stopped humming along to the radio and burst out: “Look, mom!” He pointed to the sky above us. The setting sun, behind a cloud, was streaming radiant pink, blue, and gold rays of light in every direction. The color filled the sky as if the sun, behind the cloud, had intensified its usual brilliance tenfold. "Oh, mom," said my awed son, "I don't think I will ever forget this!" His awareness focused mine. I don't think that I will ever forget it, either.

2. APPRECIATION

Appreciate the present moment. Anyone who has ever lived with a baby knows that they are very good at calling us to live in the present moment. Anyone who has cared for an ill family member, or a parent fading with Alzheimer's, knows that the present moment is very precious and is truly the only reality we have. Now. Here.

Appreciation requires slowing down. If we rush through the task of wiping, feeding, assisting, then we miss the moment and we miss being alive during that time.

Treating everyday relationships as a spiritual practice requires seeing the holy in those relationships right in the middle of the busy-ness and messiness. Not long ago during a rainy winter morning at the doctor's office, with the ancient magazines and a blaring TV, my young children begged to read books and chew on them, respectively. They coughed enticingly into my face. I was overstimulated and anxious and impatient with waiting. Then I realized/remembered that living in the moment means THIS moment. I didn’t like being in that moment, on the vinyl waiting room chair, sneezing and wiping runny noses, but there was holiness there, whether I liked it or not. The spiritual task is to notice the holy in every moment.

“Jesus said, ‘Split the wood and you shall find me. Lift the stone and there I am.’ (Gospel of Thomas 77)

3. NONATTACHMENT

A spiritual practice of everyday relationships, as spiritual practices generally do, helps us wean ourselves from attachments.

For example, I am very attached to my expert idea of what kind of person I want my husband to be. He ought to think like me, act like me, and always come to the same logical conclusions that I do. I am, of course, often disappointed. When I expect my husband to live up to my ideal of him, I get a pretty good understanding of how attachment is the source of suffering. If we keep hoping that reality and real people will fit our idealized standards, we will always be disappointed. If I can let go of my attachment to what I want my husband to be and do, I move toward unconditional love. And unconditional love -- compassion, without expectations or attachment -- is, many teachers say, both source and result of spiritual growth.

4. COMMITMENT

Every spiritual path entails challenges and difficulties. We will not grow, deepen, and achieve greater knowledge and understanding unless we are committed to sticking with our practice. For the spiritual practice of everyday relationship, that means a commitment to the relationships, and to approaching them with awareness, appreciation, and nonattachment.

Commitment makes possible a depth, wholeness, and peace that we cannot otherwise achieve. I’m not suggesting committing yourself to an abusive situation. If that’s where you are, I hope you’ll take steps to get out. But if a relationship is worth keeping, it’s worth full commitment. Reminding myself several times a day of my commitment is a key component of my spiritual practice of everyday relationships.

Commitment is a practice that can continue even long after the one to whom we have committed has died. Commitment creates an opportunity to practice awareness, appreciation, and nonattachment.

Sometimes I catch myself thinking of parenting and partnering as duties that take me away from a more spiritual time. When I slow down and pay attention, though, another truth becomes clear: The wiping, listening, cleaning, hugging, holding, forgiving, helping with homework, and driving to Little League are all activities within which we can find connection and renewal, if done with awareness, appreciation, nonattachment, and commitment.

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PRACTICES INDEX

Create Sacred Moments

Practice of the Week
Create Sacred Moments

Category: Slogans to Live By. Carry these reminders at all times. These practices don't require setting aside a separate substantial chunk of time -- but they will slow you down a bit (and that's a good thing.) Resolve to get stronger at living by these maxims, day by day. Sometimes make one of them the focus of your daily journaling.

from Edwin Lynn, "The Sacred Moment" in Everyday Spiritual Practice, abridged and adapted.

Life is precious. Every day is blessed, and I want to live that day fully. I can’t be fully focused on the present moment every waking moment, so I can create sacred moments. At these moments the preciousness of immediate experience and living-in-the-now unite. For example, I make a sacred moment each morning, when I stop at a small pond on my way to the office.

To better remember each phase of these “S moments,” try using six words that begin with S.

1. SIGHT: Look around. Note what's in view: trees, grass, the color of buildings, or of the dirt. If you're stopping in a spot where you've stopped before, try to notice new discoveries and be aware of subtle daily changes in the blossoms, leaves, shadows, and colors. If you're by a pond, for instance, you'll notice the water changes moment by moment, depending upon the wind and sun. Water is especially sensitive to light, and the breeze creates a ballet of changing reflections.

Don’t just look. Let the sights sink in. Let them integrate in awareness with your other senses.

2. SKY: Often, we see only what is at eye level, without being aware of the sky. Whether it is cloudy or bright, you'll find that when you are aware of the sky, you are more aware of the day. The sky gives context to the day and reminds us of our physical and spiritual presence in the world.

3. STANCE: As you look out at your surroundings and the sky, become aware of your stance on the ground, your rootedness and connectedness with the earth. Feel this relationship through your legs and feet. Notice the ways you are centered and grounded.

4. SMELL: Smell is the most fundamental of our senses, strongly associated with deep memories. If you've had the experience of returning to a place after being away for some years, you may have noticed the distinctive smells, rather than the landscape, are what you most vividly remember. A delicate sniff can catch the subtle aromas of a pond’s misty moisture of natural flowers or of local vegetation. Attention to aroma heightens the reality of the moment.

5. SKIN: Bring attention to what you're feeling on your skin: the temperature, the movement of air. We usually pay little attention to the wind unless it's very brisk. Most of the time, though, there is at least a slight breeze -- which you'll notice if you train yourself to. Maybe you can feel the breeze differently on different parts of your face? How warm or cold is it? The feeling of warmth from the sun or the damp chill of penetrating cold is also a part of the moment about which your skin can tell you.

6. SOUND: Sound is the crucial focus of a sacred moment: listening is its theme and its essence. Listening keeps us in the moment so our minds don’t wander. The sacred moment intensifies and lengthens our time of seeing into a time of being. To reach a sacred moment, look relatively straight ahead and don't allow yourself to be distracted by any moving sights. Listen to the wind, the leaves, the water, and the birds. With these outer sounds, the chatter of inner thoughts is kept from intruding upon the moment. If you are not listening, you know you are not in the experience, but still trapped in your head, thinking of the past or the future.

See the landscape and sky, feel the ground and the breeze, smell the water. And in particular: listen.

My day includes other times for sacred moments. In the morning while showering, I don’t just get clean, but use the time to create a sacred moment. The sights are obviously limited, and I cannot see the sky, but stance, sense, and smell are particularly acute. Listening to the water as it splashes on my body throughout the shower is the key. It makes the shower more enjoyable. It also connects me to the larger waters of the pond, the ocean, and the skies.

To make breakfast another sacred moment, I avoid watching television or reading the newspaper; I have time for those connections later. In the morning, I want to let my heightened awareness engage the glory of the day. I leave for the office a few minutes early to stop at the pond. The difficult part is allowing the extra time. It is very easy to rationalize that I don’t have the time. But I do stop, and I’m always glad I have.

At the end of the day, I take the time to go for a walk. This is not just a walk for exercise, with the usual daydreaming; I apply the principles of the sacred moment to create a walking meditation. The sights and sounds are richer, though the distractions are more plentiful. I am especially aware of the sky and of the variation in smells from place to place—even of the wind changing direction along the way. Again: listening is key to staying in the moment.

The preciousness of the day is enhanced in direct proportion to its number of sacred moments. Through sacred moments, we can quiet our mind’s inner chatter, and transform our experience of merely seeing into one of being.

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PRACTICES INDEX

Exercise

Practice of the Week
Exercise

Category: Supporting Practices: Observances that support and expand developing spirituality. They aren't "slogans to live by": they require setting aside some dedicated time. They aren't "occasional," but call for regular application. Nor are they merely "worth a try," since their value doesn't depend on whether you happen to have a taste for them.

from Scott Alexander, "Exercise," in Everyday Spiritual Practice, abridged and adapted.

Everyone knows that regular, vigorous exercise offers a wide constellation of health benefits, as well as a general enhancement of personal well-being and enjoyment of life. But what makes it a spiritual practice?

A spiritual practice is any regular, intentional activity that serves to significantly deepen the quality and content of your relationship with the miracle of life. For me, running is a spiritual practice that connects me in deep, satisfying, and enriching ways with myself, other people, my world, and the day.

The spiritual aspects of exercise are twofold. First, exercise has meditative and reflective dimensions. Many who exercise regularly report that their physical discipline helps them to achieve a state of mindful and meditative peace and calm. If I relax while running – focus my mind on the regular rhythms of both my breathing and body movements, and let go of the distractions and complexities of my day – I often move into a spiritual state of being fully alive to the rich miracle of life both within and around me. I feel in soul-satisfying harmony with all that is: my body, the natural world, other people, even what I call God. While running does not always bring me to this calming, meditative place, regular exercise can often be a time to meditate, to become more aware of and grateful for life.

Second, the regular practice of exercise establishes an overall spiritual “right relation” with myself, my world, and other beings who share it with me. If I care for the body that houses and holds me, I will be more inclined and more able to care for other lives around me.

So taking responsible care of your own bodily temple can properly be seen as a primary spiritual practice of care and connection to all the infinite intricacies of reality. Any form of regular, vigorous exercise can be a discipline of spiritual self-care that naturally leads to spiritual other-care, and thus to right relation with all you encounter and touch.

For many of us, regular exercise is easier said than done. Only about 20 percent of Americans regularly exercise enough to achieve any cardiovascular benefit. The legacy of mind-body dualism permeating Western thought encourages us to devalue and neglect things we deem merely physical – including our bodies and the earth itself.

Human wholeness and health are impossible if we separate the spiritual from the physical in our lives. It is sometimes helpful to have words like “spirit” and “body,” but we must be careful not to let our language lead us to think that these are different things. There is just one reality. Though we occasionally look at it through different lenses – attend to its differing functionalities – we shouldn’t forget the oneness, for this is what connects us to all life and to the holistic mystery that is being itself.

My friend Edward Frost writes,

“Having survived a heart attack and a quadruple bypass, I decided I’d like to go on living. I began to exercise regularly, three times a week at the club. I hated every minute of it. My mind dragged my body to the club. Now, however, my exercising is an everyday, deeply spiritual whole-person experience – not something I do simply to stay alive, but a profoundly satisfying part of my life.”

The fitness of the body is a fundamental necessity for being healthy, whole, and fully alive.

Getting started

First, refuse to allow yourself not to do it. The most frequently used excuse is, “I just don’t have time,” but we must make time, disciplining ourselves to set it aside on a regular, faithful basis. Your aim, after all, is not just physical fitness but spiritual wholeness itself.

Second, begin slowly and appropriately given your physical condition, age, body type, and personal preferences. Making grand (and unrealistic) resolutions is only likely to lead you quit (in frustration and shame) within a week. Build up your exercise routine gradually, allowing both your body and your personal schedule to adjust to these new demands (and delights!) Be sensible and patient – and stick with it!

Third, do check with your physician to ensure that your body is ready for the rigors – even if slowly built up to – that you are planning.

Every day, almost without exception, I take an hour to tend my relationship with my oldest and most intimate friend – my body, or, rather, my self – for body is self. Noon is my favorite time to lace up a pair of running shoes, do a little stretching and step outside – regardless of weather – for a good, swift run. The daily run is almost always the most enjoyable part of my day. I love the expansive freedom, love noticing the pleasing intricacies and healing grace of the natural and the human worlds: sunlight kissing a passing cloud, a cormorant gracefully diving for a fish, children playing in sand. I love the experience of being so present and alive. And I love the feeling when I have finished – that glow of accomplishment and invigoration – that returns me to my day refreshed, reawakened, and rejuvenated. I am ready and able to meet the duties and demands of my day relaxed, focused, alert, patient, and eager. My regular exercise routine helps me stay in healthy right relation – with myself, nature, other persons, indeed all of existence itself – and allows me to feel truly at home in my body and in the world.

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PRACTICES INDEX

Vegetarianism

Practice of the Week
Vegetarianism

Category: Might Be Your Thing. The practices here are not for everyone -- but one of them may be just the thing for you! Any of these might also be, for you, in the "Occasional" category, but are listed here because they are good candidates for regular, central practices.

from Helena P. Chapin, "Vegetarianism," in Everyday Spiritual Practice, adapted.

The seeds for vegetarianism, my spiritual practice, were planted when I was young. I spent a great deal of time on my horse, in fields and woods, with few neighbors around. By the time I was ten, I had my own wildflower garden, full of carefully transplanted gems from the surrounding countryside. My father loved dogs, so we raised Golden Retriever puppies, while helping to deliver I don’t know how many litters of kittens. As an adult, raising a family became my focus, but, gradually over the years, without realizing it, I have returned to my life of connection with animals and the earth.

When I was searching for a house four years ago, I found one with a spruce tree in front and a large cherry in back and a bare backyard in which to plan a Native American perennial flower garden. As the nursery workers promised, butterflies and birds are now my companions as I work among the flowers. This type of gardening requires composting, of course, and my vegan diet means I can use all the waste from my eating in an earth-enhancing way.

But this is getting ahead of myself. In 1991, while attending a conference, I came upon John Robbins’ Diet for a New America. Reading that book brought back my sense of closeness to nature and animals and convinced me to begin eating a plant-based – vegan – diet as a daily reminder of this connection. I was horrified by Robbins’s descriptions of the cruel and violent human behavior in our present-day food factories. Today, with few exceptions, chickens, pigs, and cows are considered to be here on earth only for human use and convenience, which often means that they endure terrible torture in the name of efficiency. There is no longer any sense of these animals being fellow creatures of this earth, no sense that the violence toward them is violence toward all life.

There are other compelling reasons to eat a plant-based diet. The raising of livestock contributes to environmental damage and resource depletion. The grain and land devoted to producing beef and other meats are not available for raising plants, which could feed the world’s neediest people. Finally, a low-fat plant-based diet is healthy for the human body, having been shown to prevent or to aid in healing many diseases. I have noticed that my diet is very similar to those prescribed for heart patients.

Eating a plant-based diet may make good sense, but it is not easy. In particular, food is a very emotional issue. People are fiercely protective of their eating habits and sometimes resent those who make different choices. Even organizations like Greenpeace refrain from discussing food choices as important to the protection of the environment because people will not contribute funds to a cause that asks them to change their diets. “EARTHSAVE, Healthy People, Healthy Planet,” founded by John Robbins, is the only environmental organization that links our food choices to the destruction of the earth.

Still, eating a vegan diet has become part of a satisfying spiritual practice for me. Part of this lifestyle is an attempt to live more according to the rhythms of nature. On a good morning, I rise with the sun, walk my dog, and begin to prepare my meals for the day. If I were cooking meals for a family, the additional time spent in meal preparation might not feel so life enhancing, but I live alone and find chopping and cooking healthy plant food to be a quieting experience, connecting me to the life forces of the natural environment. Also, recycling b composting means that my flowers and I share the same nourishment. Especially when I follow the meal preparation with slow dining in a favorite setting, there comes a mood of contemplation, of pondering life’s gifts, of being grateful to be alive. Thomas Moore writes,

“all eating is communion, feeding the soul as well as the body. Our cultural habit of eating ‘fast food’ reflects our current belief that all we need to take into ourselves, both literally and figuratively, is plain food, not food of real substance, and not the imagination of real dining.” (Care of the Soul)

In a later work, Moore says,

“it’s no accident that in our disenchanted times we have found hundreds of ways to short-circuit the production, preparation, and eating of food, and so it makes sense that to re-enchant our ordinary lives we could approach the supermarket, the kitchen, and the dining room differently, realizing that the extra time real food demands of us is not wasted but serves the soul.” (The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life)

I have found this to be so.

How does one begin the spiritual practice of eating a vegan diet? It depends on your personality. Once I made the decision, I did it immediately. Others with whom I have talked did it gradually – giving up beef first, then all red meats (pork, mutton), then chicken, then fish, then eggs and dairy – and some stopped after giving up only beef. Any reduction of meat eating will be a plus for your health, the environment, world hunger, and the treatment of animals.

What is important, in the end, is that each of us find some way to live with a depth of appreciation for our gift of life. To better serve the natural world – and therefore, the human world – is my daily effort. Even though it is often unpopular, the spiritual practice of vegetarianism has brought me peace of mind, better health, and a sense of interdependence with our earth and its creatures.

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Resources:
The Vegetarian Resource Group
No Meat Athlete
Nutrition.gov on Eating Vegetarian
Vegetarian Society: Resources
Vegetarian Times

For list of all weekly practices: "Practices of the Week Index"

Sewing/Needlework

Practice of the Week
Sewing/Needlework

Category: Might Be Your Thing. The practices here are not for everyone -- but one of them may be just the thing for you! Any of these might also be, for you, in the "Occasional" category, but are listed here because they are good candidates for regular, central practices.

from L. Annie Foerster, "Meditation by Hand," in Everyday Spiritual Practice, adapted, abridged.

Needlepointing, the drawing of pictures in wool on a canvass ground, has been, for me, a spiritual practice not unlike meditation. The cadence of the needle entering and exiting the canvas is a soothing heartbeat, releasing me from my own body. The wool yarn is a tactile reflection, rough and strong, tying me to the physical world. The sensuous colors are as healing as a rainbow, weaving in and out of the mesh, evoking the spiritual dimension. The varied patterns and pictures that emerge are silent witnesses to the act of co-creation. The discipline of needlepointing, like the practice of staring at a candle or counting breaths, focuses the mind, making it more preceptive, less scattered.

I have discovered that working a segment of needlepoint at meetings helps me be more attentive, les likely to interrupt another speaker, more thoughtful in my own responses. The steady rhythm of the work kept my mind steady as well, kept me from jumpint to conclusions or misunderstanding another point of view.

Through needlepoint meditation, my life was emerging day by day as smooth and rhythmical as the needlepointing itself. Then I was tripped by a temporary crisis. Just when I might have needed their comfort most, my needle and yarns were difficult to take up, no longer soothed me, didn’t focus my thoughts or give me pleasure.

I put my needlepointing away. At meetings, my restless fingers tapped on the table. My empty hands massaged each other, attempting to console one another, to no avail. My restless and fidgety body reflected the feverish activity of my brain, which was seeking a solution to my problems, turning over impossible resolutions, never at rest.

My silent meditation practice, twice a day, continued, helping me have courage to plough through the storms of crisis and mudslides of everyday life. But I missed the additional spiritual grounding the needlework had given me.

One day, with a block of free time, I felt an unfamiliar urge to begin a quilt. I began cutting and arranging pieces of cloth. The fragments reflected my disjointed thinking; the mess I made flinging cottons about the sewing table matched the messiness of my life.

The project became an obsession. Every free moment I could find was spent in the sewing room, cutting and piecing, laying out designs and fitting them together. Twenty-seven different fabrics and hundred of tiny pieces were sewn into an emerging pattern. My frenzy of fabric and threads allowed no negative thoughts, no despair, no doubts, no judgments.

On the day I held up the completed garment, I felt a familiar sense of peace. I was as calm as I had been when was needlepointing, as whole as when my life was not burdened by conflict. I understood bodily that I can make order out of chaos – in my life as well as in my sewing.

In the three years of disruptive predicaments, I made eight pieced jackets. Always as I stitched, I had an intuitive feeling that, though chaos exists, it need not define my life. Outside the sewing room, the twitching and fretting subsided.

Any creative activity, practiced with intentionality and without concern for outcome or gain, evokes the spirit. Whether it be poetry, handcrafts, or music-making, there is a creative activity that speaks to every soul and has the power to heal and strengthen.

Needlepointing had been a social meditation, one I could do in company, one that would help me listen attentively, but not get in the way of my participation. During my crisis, I needed solitude. Cutting and sewing requires a dedicated space and more room than a lap, so it forced me to be alone and allowed me to turn inward.

Some recommendations:

Try not to be concerned with how much you have accomplished or how much there is to be done. Stay in the moment of creation – let it fill you and feed. You. Let yourself feel the colors, hear the sounds, discover the meanings of your medium. Allow your creation to be part of yourself and yourself to be part of your creation.

Be as good as you can be, but do not judge the outcome. This is not easy: we tend to equate our own worth with false comparisons or become disgusted with our mistakes. Let the ripping out of inaccuracies – the erasing of words or the remolding of clay – be as creative as the rest of the process. There is joy in this re-creating if you let go of impatience.

When your medium is not right for a particular moment, allow yourself to choose a new one – or let a new medium choose you. Be willing to put away an unfinished project to start a new one. One day it will be right to return to it.

Your creation will let you know when it is finished if you listen with your heart. When completion occurs, celebrate it: display it, share it, give it away. Celebration is part of the spiritual practice – a way to honor your creative spirit without arrogance or judgment.

Creativity requires imagination, and the faith that what can be imagined can be made. In creativity we are most alive.

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For list of all weekly practices: "Practices of the Week Index"

Mindfulness

Practice of the Week
Mindfulness

Category: Supporting Practices: observances that support and expand developing spirituality.

Adapted from James Austin, "Mindfulness," in Everyday Spiritual Practice

The experience of being mindful is not new to any of us. We may not have used the word mindfulness to describe our experience, but each waking moment requires some degree of this quality of awareness. We could not function in the world without knowing our experience from moment to moment.

Mindfulness, in this sense, is allowing our experience to be accepted into consciousness, letting us know what we are doing, providing the feedback to permit taking an action, performing a skill, or learning something new. Of course we always know on some level what we are experiencing, where we are, and what we are doing at any given time. It is also true that the degree to which we are really present in our experience varies a great deal throughout the day. There are many moments when the mind seems to be somewhere else completely!

Imagine carrying a full cup of hot tea from one room to another. You would pay attention to the cup, being aware of whether or not the tea was about to spill. You might slow down your walking speed or use two hands. The feedback of knowing what you are doing and the effect on the tea in the cup can all happen because you are present and focused in that moment.

There are also some moments when we are usually not very mindful. These moments are likely to occur when we think that what we are doing is not very interesting, or seems automatic because we have done this a thousand times before. So we let the mid drift off while we wash the dishes. “I could have done that in my sleep,” we say – and sometimes we did.

Mindfulness is a kind of remembering, remembering to be here, to be present to pay attention to this moment of life. When w bring awareness to this moment we know what we are doing and we know we are alive. It’s not so much that our fantasies, daydreams, and desires are not a natural part of life, rather it’s that we are so unaware of how much time we spend preoccupied with these thoughts.

Our mind has a mind of its own and easily wanders off into some fantasy of the future or some evaluation, judgement, or remembrance of the past. All this time, we sacrifice what is right in front of us: this present moment. If we do this repeatedly, our minds become a very busy place to live, running back and forth from past to future, while our experience of the present moment becomes shallow and unfulfilling.

We are often compulsive thinkers, never giving ourselves a rest from a constant inner conversation. In addition to our internal chatter, we receive a stream of language, read or heard. It becomes very easy to unconsciously assume that experience begins when we begin verbally describing it.

When the quality of mindfulness is stronger, we are more likely to see the process of thinking itself. In our more mindful moments we see the train of thought and its power for pulling us away from present experience. We begin to value drinking in sensory experience in a nonverbal way.

When there is too much thinking going on, it is hard to remain open and accepting of our experience. Both the outer world and our inner landscape is more lush when we are more aware. We have a more spacious mind, one which is less dismissive of nonverbal experience.

Unpleasant Experiences

Some experiences are unpleasant: intense grief, for example. When we try to avoid being with an emotion, by distracting ourselves or blotting out the experience with alcohol, we only lengthen the time it takes to work through the difficult emotion. Anger and fear have the power to take us over, to consume us. Being more mindful in this situation means we are more able to know what we are doing. We are able to step back a bit and really know that we are angry. This knowing creates a bit of space that can protect us from acting unwisely. When we are able to be with anger or fear, to hold it with our awareness even though it is unpleasant, it has less power over us.

Pain

Mindfulness practice is used in stress reduction and chronic pain clinics around the world because it has been shown that people can often lessen their suffering dramatically by becoming aware of and letting go of their resistance to the unpleasant sensations in their bodies. The automatic response to discomfort is for muscles to tense up, to want to push away the painful sensations. But tension and resistance only create more suffering. If we then add to that a mental script that supports our personal sense of suffering (thoughts of self-pity, for example), we have moved even farther away from easing our situation, by adding mental tension.

By becoming aware of these automatic responses, people can learn to relax and let go of some physical and emotional resistance to their situation. Patients report that they are surprised at how much of their suffering was caused by their resistance. When all the extras that are added on to a painful situation are stripped away, so that only the actual physical sensations are left, there can be less suffering.

Boredom

When we are patient enough to be even with our experience of boredom, we find it often transforms. We may find that the boredom was acting as a cover for some other more subtle unpleasant emotion that we did not want to experience. There may be something new to learn about ourselves if we choose not to immediately reach for a distraction, not to immediately run from the unpleasantness of boredom.

How

How do you get more mindful? See the Practices of the Week titled "Be Mindful"and "Cultivate Mindfulness."

There's also a helpful introduction to getting started with mindfulness practice: HERE.

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For list of all weekly practices: "Practices of the Week Index"

Mealtime Practice

Practice of the Week
Mealtime Practice

Category: Supporting Practices: observances that support and expand developing spirituality.

“Be there when you eat. Achieve the fullest experience of your food. Taste it. Savor it. Pay attention to it. Rejoice in it.” (Marc David)

Adapted from Aaron R. Payson, "Mealtime," in Everyday Spiritual Practice

Slowing Down, Being Together

I, too, became a part of the rushing crowd. As a student, I had grown accustomed to eating pizza at midnight as I studied for exams or grabbing a sandwich between classes. During the first year or so of my ministry and my marriage, I operated in much the same way. Meals were a grab-them-when-you-can, if-you-can prospect. Sitting down to eat was a novelty.

Many families struggle to juggle competing work schedules, school activities, and community commitments. It is nearly impossible to find time to sit down to share a meal together. Yet taking time to eat together can be one of the most important activities that families do.

Mealtime is a spiritual discipline: an activity through which those gathered may discover depth and meaning in their lives.

The speed with which we attempt to complete our lives and complete our meals ultimately hampers our experience of eating itself. That’s what was happening to me. Then one day as I was yet again eating what would pass for dinner alone at my desk in my office, I decided to put a stop to all the eating on the fly. It wouldn’t be easy, but I had the advantage of lessons learned as a child with my family around the dinner table.

Saying Grace

Eating is a sacred act, which is why, in most religious traditions, mealtime is made distinct from other activities by beginning with a time of grace of blessing so that those gathered to partake of the sustenance before them might be mindful of their connection to each other, to the environment, and to that which is holy around and within them.

“This food is the gift of the whole universe: the earth, the sky and much hard work. May we live in a way that makes us worthy to receive it. May we transform our own unskilled states of mind and eat with moderation. May we take only foods that nourish us and prevent illness. We accept this food so that we may realize the path of understanding and love.” (Zen mealtime sutra, Thich Nhat Hanh)

“The Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord for giving me the things I need – the sun and the rain and the apple seed. The Lord is good to me.” (attributed to Johnny Appleseed)

Mealtime grace is, for those who practice it, a key aspect of gratitude practice. Grace at mealtime is a ritual awakening to the reality of our relationship of gratitude for all that sustains us. Slowing down for gratitude also slows us down to more fully appreciate our food.

At one Thanksgiving meal in my childhood, we arrived at the dining room to discover five single kernels of corn on each person’s plate. We sat down, and Mother began, “It is said that when the pilgrims gathered at the first Thanksgiving table, each person was given just five kernels of corn, for that is all that they had to share. So now we take this opportunity to share with each other five things for which we are thankful this year.” I remember scrambling when my turn came. I expressed thanks for a new bike, roller skates, my new friend Jimmy, and even my little brother. The next year, and the next, and the one after that, became more important. As I grew, this ritual began to take on significance.

“I am thankful for the health of my family, for the opportunity to be together in the spirit of love, and for the gift of food.”

Setting a Place for One More

During Pesach, or Passover, families and communities celebrate their journey out of bondage to the promised land. As the table is set with the elements of the ritual Seder meal, a place is set for the prophet Elijah, who, during the course of the meal, is welcomed into the room and invited to the table, where a glass of wine is poured for him. My mother set an extra place at the table each night. Some nights, it went unused, and we thought about those whom we missed at our table. Many nights, however, the place got filled by an unexpected friend my brother or I brought home, or by a person who just stopped by for a moment to chat with my father, who was a minister.

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The ingestion of food is only a minuscule portion of what it means to take in sustenance. Reclaiming mealtime is a spiritual discipline when we remember the depth of our own connections to others, to the earth and the elements that help us to grow, and to the divine spark within each of us that ignites around good company and is aflame through the presence of love that is also the substance of grace.

I realized that if I just slowed down, breathed a little, I was already ahead of the game. Saying grace wasn’t so hard. I was and am grateful for many things.

A healthy spirituality grew our latest New Year’s dinner from an intimate gathering of six to an even more intimate fifteen. With the places all set, we delightedly took our time, getting to know each other, passing around the potatoes, and enjoying ourselves. We said grace. We talked of new things we had learned over the past year. We were too full to have dessert right away, which gave us an excuse to linger over coffee as our bodies and heart found the room.

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List of all weekly practices: "Practices of the Week Index"

Sitting Zen

Practice of the Week
Sitting Zen

Category: Might Be Your Thing (This practice is not for everyone -- but may be just the thing for you!)

Adapted from James Ishmael Ford, "Sitting Zen," in Everyday Spiritual Practice

"One day some people came to the master and asked, 'How can you be happy in a world of such impermanence, where you cannot protect your loved ones from harm, illness, and death?' The master held up a glass and said, 'Someone gave me this glass, and I really like this glass. It holds my water admirably and it glistens in the sunlight. I touch it and it rings! One day the wind may blow it off the shelf, or my elbow may knock it from the table. I know this glass is already broken, so I enjoy it incredibly." (Achaan Chah Subato, Theravadan meditation master)

I've been a student of Zen for thirty years now. Zen meditation is my core spiritual practice. I do it because of that broken glass. My life, like so many of our lives, has been marked by death and suffering. I look around and I see our existence rising and falling, and I feel pushed into a serious and sustained exploration of the essential nature of it all.

For me this has come down to doing two things: shikantaza and koans. Shikantaza, or "just sitting," is the primary meditation practice of Zen. But this “just sitting” is not passive. Rather, in sitting, one tries hard simply to be aware. And in so doing a dynamic process rises where the various things of our lives, out in the environment and from deep within our bodies, is each revealed.

As a complement to shikantaza, I study koans, from the Chinese Kung-an, or "public case," as in a public document. Koans are stories and brief statements that become objects of meditation and present the opportunity for brief and deeply intimate conversations with a spiritual director. To engage a koan is to allow the possibility of awakening to the real nature of things.

So, each in their own way, shikantaza and koan study help me to understand the actual nature of this "already broken" that marks all things. It is a lesson that is eternal and, in some ways, must constantly be relearned. There is part of us that recoils at transience and wishes things were permanent.

Zen meditation is a medicine against this illness of clinging to the passing as if it were permanent. Now, while I meditate regularly and go on intensive retreats frequently, the proof of this practice comes out in daily life. Zen really is about living our lives each moment by that moment, each day by that day.

Seasons have come when members of my family have been quite ill, close friends diagnosed with cancer or suffering setbacks in their lives. And too many people die -- sometimes without warning, as an accident or blindingly quick illness; sometimes marked with feelings of bitterness and regret that will never be addressed with any satisfaction.

How precious and precarious all things are. This is true of glasses, and of pets, spouses, parents, children, siblings, and friends. It can be very hard to just enjoy it incredibly.

Even though sitting zen is physically demanding -- traditionally one sits in a lotus or half-lotus position on a cushion on the ground, for half-an-hour at a time -- I've found it worth experiencing the difficulties. It's important to emphasize the difficulties, both physical and mental, for difficulties are the path of spiritual discipline.

To attempt to sit silently and be aware is to become aware. And what we become aware of is a jumble mush of dancing monkeys. Our minds are filled with thoughts and emotions racing and raging. When we actually sit and notice, we discover much about ourselves, and a fair amount of it isn't particularly pleasant.

But as the mind quiets a bit, other things are also revealed. We begin, perhaps, to notice the many springs of our lives. Not only are there difficulties and endings, but there are also beginnings. This slowing down and noticing is an opportunity. And this opportunity is a chance to notice the passingness of things, the precious fragility of everything – a single blade of grass, a much loved coffee mug, a fading photograph, a quick kiss.

When we really attend, we may find all moments speak of the wonder and the transitoriness of life and death within the interdependent web. I've found that, as hard as it can be to face, there is beauty and wonder in this existence. The simple truth is that this very moment is the only place we will find joy and love and meaning.

Whenever I'm reminded of this, I realize how grateful I am for my practice and my spiritual guides. My Zen practices are the truest of the many reminders I've ever had.

Perhaps we all need such reminding. Certainly, as we notice the breath, we find a new season, a new beginning. With each breath, with each moment noticed, we find hope is within us. And, this hope may reign so long as our blood pounds through our bodies.

Because of our clinging to what is passing as if it were permanent, we miss what is actually going on. We need to wake up from the drowsiness of clinging. Zen is all about waking up.

Zen practice is about noticing the luminous quality of the ordinary. I sit still and notice. I engage a koan and notice. I notice how everything is already broken and there to be enjoyed incredibly: including glasses -- and you and me.

The great play of the cosmos, our rising and falling, is the precious web of existence. When we take up a practice like Zen, we can come to know this as liberating, as freeing, as our true heritage. We so easily get caught up in the mix of things. We need to pause and remember the glass really is already broken.

This pause is important, because it awakens us. However we do it -- in sitting Zen or some other practice -- I hope we will completely engage that pause, that invitation to enjoy incredibly!

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For list of all weekly practices: "Practices of the Week"