Tag Archives: Spiritual Practice

May 2009 Soul and Solace

Creativity/Spirituality, , , ,

What Works?

I recently completed a job for which I was wholly unsuited—­we’re talking round peg stuffed into a square hole! Many people these days are doing the same thing—“you gotta do what you gotta do!” So what solace can we offer our souls while making our way through a tough work situation? I found the practices below helpful and would love to hear others you might offer.

  • Laugh: Finding a way to look at my workspace with a twinkle in my eye provided balance;
  • Visualize: I imagined what good my work would do, both for the world (I was providing a needed service) and for those closest to me (I imagined my daughter wearing the Senior Ring my salary would provide);
  • Survival Treats: Planning simple treats to delight my soul helped. Possibilities? Check out a film from the library, walk somewhere beautiful, visit a gallery or museum, phone a friend, create something, enjoy comfort food.

Do you have other suggestions?

April 2009 Soul and Solace

Creativity/Spirituality, ,

God Sightings

What does God look like, after all? Many world spiritualities reply, “Just look around.” This month consider a practice of “God Sighting.” Choose five persons with whom you share at least part of your vulnerable soul. What about them allows you that level of trust? Begin noticing those characteristics in others around you—maybe in a person; maybe in an animal; maybe in a rock, or a lake, or a sandwich—maybe in yourself.

What do you see? We’d like to know!

January 2009 Soul and Solace

Creativity/Spirituality, , ,

Okay, I admit it—I LOVE Christmas music. I’ve been known to play it in the middle of July, just because I required a fix. And I’ve been grieving because, several years ago, the bell tower on César Cheváz played holiday songs that I reveled in as I walked, but, after that year, I never heard them again.

This holiday season both my husband and I were searching for “pay the rent” jobs and looking toward a new year filled with large question marks. One day as we walked, the bell tower chimed the hour, and then—delight!—began to chime Christmas music. After that, we timed our walks so we would be near the tower when the music began. The throb of the music pulsed through our walking feet and the bell’s vibrations pulsed in our ears until it seemed our hearts pumped in rhythm to their insistent best. In a season of perplexity, the bells rang out beauty, clarity, and harmony.

What music nourishes you? This month, gift yourself with its listening. Find a time free of distractions, choose a comfortable position (on a squishy couch, a firm mattress, or yoga-style on the grass) and give yourself up to the music. Listen again and again, if you like. The time is well spent.

October Soul and Solace

Creativity/Spirituality, , ,

I read and hear a great deal about keeping up spiritual practice in our hectic lives. These past few months, however, another question has intrigued me: what spiritual practices help us wait? Waiting requires intense endurance, especially in a society addicted to busyness. Do any of the following “waiting places” resonate with your experience?

Having emailed countless job applications, you now sit at the computer, awaiting a response from some potential employer somewhere. Having stamped and mailed your “reach school” application, you visit the mailbox each day to discover whether or not they find you worthy. Your medical tests sit in a lab somewhere while you wonder whether or not you can bear what they may disclose. You are mending from an illness or injury; you wonder when life will get back to “normal.” You took a risk in a relationship and now wait, wondering how—or if—the other person will respond.

Waiting season have a timeless quality to them: we itch to DO SOMETHING when the something we are called to do is well . . . wait. Waiting is a marathon we do not run; waiting is an endurance marathon.

I hope some of the practices will supply stamina power for your waiting season.

  • Go deep. Waiting provides us space for reflection. Consider the following books as reflection aids: The Artists Way and The Vein of Gold by Julia Cameron, Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, and Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Edward and Tarcher.
  • Play. If you have ever wanted to mess around with clay or write a limerick or take a walk to nowhere in particular, now is the time!
  • Serve. Waiting can leave us feeling powerless. Yet we always have the power to do the world good. Write someone a letter of encouragement . . . look the cashier in the eye and say “thanks” . . . bake a loaf of bread and give it away.
  • Find a metaphor. It helps me to imagine waiting as the transition phase of birth labor. Because I am in transition, I feel nothing but pain, yet I know that labor ends in birth. Imaging waiting as transition helps me hope—and hope helps me endure.

August Soul and Solace

Creativity/Spirituality, ,

It’s there—right beside Austin’s Long Center in a park filled with gentle curves. I nearly passed it by, but then I stopped and studied the pattern of white and red bricks: could it be what I thought it was? Yes, the city of Austin had built a labyrinth into its newest park, near the Barton Springs Road side. This one’s not the only labyrinth in Austin, however. You can find them both outside and inside several area churches. In fact, labyrinths are increasingly popular across the country: in hospital courtyards, in city parks, at retreat centers, and in prisons.

A labyrinth is a walking maze, but it is impossible to get lost within its circle. The labyrinth path takes the walker on a circuitous route toward the center, where its traveler can then sit or stand. When ready, the walker retraces his or her steps out of the maze.

So what’s the big deal about labyrinths? Studies show that walking a labyrinth reduces stress. I find it to be more than that: for me, labyrinth walking is prayer. As my feet move along its path, I feel the solidity of God’s creation bearing me up, and the natural rhythm of my gait joins the music of the universe. The path is deceptive: when it appears that I am almost to the center, the path suddenly turns back on itself and heads me in the other direction. How often have I experienced that! The labyrinth’s hairpin bends slow me down and challenge me to find my center of balance. The labyrinth grounds me—literally. When I walk the labyrinth with another person, the path draws us so near that one of us must pause and allow the other to move forward. How often in daily living do we speed along, isolated in our horse-powered tins cans, passing other tins cans without any real consciousness of their occupants? On a labyrinth I make room for the other and the other does the same for me. At last, the labyrinth welcomes me into its center, into its very heart, and lets me simply be. On a hot summer morning I can sit and feel the stone’s refreshing chill or, on a winter’s day, I can stand at the center, watching my breath go up like a prayer before me. When I am ready, I am lead, gently but firmly, outward to its entrance. It feels like being birthed.

The labyrinth is grace-filled. It accepts my walking feet no matter what I am wearing. It blesses my steps whether I take its path slowly and contemplatively or whether I dance along it, laughing as I go. I can come to it alone or in the company of others. It is always there; if I haven’t the time or inclination one day, it patiently awaits my feet the next. How does that sound to you?

Sometime during the coming month, find a labyrinth near you and gift yourself by walking it. Don’t feel you have to come with any kind of “attitude” other than to stay on the path, to pause at the center, and return as you entered.