Spiritual Development Archives - Page 2 of 2

April 20, 2018

My Spiritual Path: Part 1 | Discovering Wholeness

What was my path to get here—to a place of wholeness—today?

What a loaded question, right?

Beautifully so, I’d say.

A co-facilitator and I posed this question at the opening of our intergenerational, interfaith women’s group when we were facilitating a session about “Spirituality and You” last fall.

We meant to stir up a conversation of breadth and depth. And the answers about paths to get here ranged from the commute to the pub to one’s religious upbringing.

I went with the easy out, a brief summary about how my bandwidth had shifted in the previous few months allowing the opportunity to step up and lead the session. In truth, I wasn’t sure how long it would take to truly answer that question.

Definitely not a minute. Perhaps I can sum it up in five blog posts?

In this blog series, “Discovering Wholeness,” I’ll attempt to distill 15 years of searching, growing, becoming into five posts, including this one, about my spiritual path to get here today.

What was my spiritual path to get here today?

Here:

Where I deeply know my inherent dignity and worth.
Where I forgive and embrace my imperfections.
Where I eagerly spend time with myself and with what (not who) I know as God.
Where I also deeply know it’s not about me.
Where my purpose is first and foremost our purpose: to live in harmony with nature.
Where living each day to the fullest means being as true as possible, not doing as much as possible.
Where I bring loving attention to everything I do.
Where I can’t imagine going another day not living this way.

Do I have it all figured out? Oh heck no. Far from it.

Turning Inside Out

But I have it figured out. I have peeled back every layer of the onion until I got to the kernel of my core where my deepest fears and deepest desires reside. And I stayed there, getting to know them.

I turned myself inside out as I had the sense I needed to do. And then I started anew.

Technically the same person—the same fears, the same desires, the same weaknesses, the same strengths. But, with a totally different relationship to the world.

A relationship grounded in the sense of a personal spirituality “cultivated, nourished, and harvested” along the way.

Most simply, spirituality refers to direct experience of the sacred, said Dr. Roger Walsh, a longtime practitioner and professor of philosophy, anthropology and psychiatry who wrote Essential Spirituality in 1999 about seven common practices of the world’s great spiritual traditions for recognizing the sacred and divine that exist both within and around us.

He describes spiritual practices as those that help us experience the sacred —that which is most central and essential to our lives — for ourselves.

Another scientist, and renown atheist, Dr. Carl Sagan said, “Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined is surely spiritual.”

And as Michael Singer, author and devoted buddhist practitioner, says in The Untethered Soul:

“When you contemplate the nature of self [and soul], you are meditating…It is a return to the root of your being, the simple awareness of being aware…You woke up. That is spirituality. That is the nature of self. That is who you are.”

And so, personal spirituality, or “a religion of one’s own” as former monk Thomas Moore calls it, forms “the fundamental precepts by which we guide our life are cultivated, nourished, and harvested in time,” as poet Wendell Berry says.

Understanding, Accepting, Releasing

A year ago there was a series of events starting around the Spring Equinox, including a fateful retreat, moving to a new cottage home, and a blessing hosted by my spiritual communities around Beltane (a mid-spring celebration of abundance on May 1).

It was the beginning of the end. In the very best way possible.

I sensed that my journey over a decade plus years of active searching, growing, becoming was coming to a close.

Perhaps it culminated due to the position of Jupiter in transit?

As my astrologer friend tells me, that’s a rare element on a chart that represents a process of rebirth within one’s lifetime.

Perhaps the journey was part of my soul’s mission in order to get to the life’s work I’m really here to do?

For me, the path to get here today is a braid of spiritual, entrepreneurial and personal experiences. Intertwined, not separate.

The details and results of the experiences are extensive and unique to me. Tales for the next posts in this series.

While I do believe many lessons must be learned alongside others — partners, children, communities, students, teachers — ultimately our learning journeys are our own.

From our intuition and wisdom to deeper places within.

Perhaps that’s why sometimes it takes us many times to finally grasp a certain lesson?

Even as others provide sound guidance. Even as our inner teacher provides sound guidance.

Until it’s heard, understood, accepted and released, it remains unlearned. At least that’s been my experience.

Universal Lessons, Unique Path

The practices and tools I’ve discovered and absorbed into my “spiritual portfolio” as I like to call it are also extensive, so I’ll also save specifics on those for later posts.

But the process—the process of using these practices and tools throughout all these learning journeys along my spiritual path—isn’t that unique to me?

Me and the other millions of seekers and students and teachers in the world?

Well, I’ll leave that as a rhetorical question.

So, here’s the story of my journey to get here. Here’s my story of my journey. Which may or may not be the truth.

It’s the truth as I sense it, now, in my head, my heart and my gut, based on the information I currently have.

This is the first in a five-part series about my spiritual path and how I came to live from a place of wholeness into a space of sufficiency. Raised with New Age roots and inspired by world religions and native cultures alike, I have built a portfolio of interfaith spiritual practices that sustain me. I currently worship in nature and at a Unitarian Universalist church, find fellowship with the Sacred Fire Community and Bras, Bibles & Brews, and have active personal practices including Sabbath, yoga, prayer and seasonal retreats.

[To be continued]

March 26, 2018

Keeping Sacred Space

How much sacred space do we find in our lives these days?

For many, not much.

Especially if going to church or hanging out in libraries is not your thing.

Does that mean we can’t or don’t keep sacred space?

I think we can. And do.

What is Sacred Anymore?

Everything!

Sacred comes from the Latin word for holy.

Nowadays, we define sacred as connected with God (or the gods) or dedicated to a religious purpose and so deserving great respect.

For some, that comes with a lot of baggage.

Sanctuary also comes from the Latin word for holy and means a sacred place. A place one is safe. A place of respect. A place to be.

Just as a sanctuary can be one’s home or favorite park, we can create sacred space and times and practices and rituals anywhere in our lives.

We set the intention, we eagerly express our love and pay close attention. Committed, respected, honored. Over and over and over again.

While these are integrated into our everyday, that does not make them secular.

In his TEDTalk and book about The Art of Stillness, Pico Iyer describes his evolving practice of a secular Sabbath.

Right now, this doesn’t make sense to me. Secular meaning “attitudes or activities that have no spiritual basis.”

For me, Sabbath and my other spiritual practices are absolutely about connecting with my spirit and the Spirit, the life force that runs through everything, and with my communities.

This divine connection is sacred and holy. And present every moment of my life.

Especially on Sabbath.

Sabbath Time

Iyer reminds us of how Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel called Sabbath “a cathedral in time rather than in space.” He further described it as the one day a week we take off becomes a vast empty space through which we can wander, without agenda, as through the light-filled passageways of Notre Dame. It’s like a retreat house that ensures we’ll have something bring and purposeful to carry back into the other six days.

“This is what the principle of the Sabbath enshrines,” Iyer said.

Sounds pretty sacred to me!

So how do we keep this time sacred?

We keep this time sacred by defining and refining what brings us closer to the Source.

“Often what seems necessary in the moment can often wait, making way for a day that is holy, set apart and different,” wrote Shelly Miller in Rhythms of Rest.

The day becomes celebratory and special, revered and desired.

And, so we set boundaries that help us and others to be in this sacred time – together or apart, as needed.

“Sabbath restrictions on work and activity actually create a space of great freedom; without these self-imposed restrictions, we may never be truly free,” said Wayne Muller in Sabbath.

Miller agrees that it’s not about specific rules, but rather boundaries that allow greater flexibility. She offers the reminder that with practice, over time, we achieve a Sabbath heart and resolve remains steadfast whatever the context.

When we can speak clearly and from the heart about why Sabbath time is sacred, is special and different, then others will understand, respect and support us in keeping sacred space.

And, if they don’t, that says a lot too!

What to Keep Out

The universal tradition in this break, this pause, this sacred time of being gone sabbathing looks different for everybody nowadays.

The main ways this time becomes holy, set apart, different is:

Not working, including paid work and informal work, domestic work, caregiving, volunteering
Being offline and disengaged from technologies like the internet, email, and often social media
Disengaging from measured time, schedules and planning

Easier said than done. Absolutely.

Especially if your spirit leads you along a spiritual path that is outside of one formal organization or community, like me.

While I have many spiritual communities, none observe Sabbath in the way that I do.

I have made this sacred time my own. As many others are doing as well.

In his book The Promise of a Pencil about his rapid and successful entrepreneurial journey to create schools in third world countries, Adam Braun talks about his own practice.

He doesn’t call it Sabbath, but given his Jewish roots, I have a feeling it is similarly inspired.

He described, instituting a personal policy of going off email from Friday night until Sunday morning. He used the weekends to rest, rejuvenate and reconnect with those he cherished most.

This was tough to do in the passion-driven and all consuming startup and nonprofit worlds Braun exists in. It required clear boundaries around work and online activity.

His email response to a colleague is a great template for explaining these boundaries to others:

“I just want to be open with you. I recently put a practice into place where I go off email from sundown Friday to Sunday morning, to make sure I stop working and spend quality time with my loved ones. I also find it makes me more energized for the next week ahead if I’m not on email over the weekend, and it help to avoid burnout.”

Now, what coworker wouldn’t understand that?

And, if they don’t, that says a lot too!

The key is to be forthright with others about when our sacred time is, what it looks like, and why it’s important, so that they can respect and honor it.

What to Keep In

Who knows, maybe they’ll want to join in?

For many, the invitation to rest and reset has never been offered or modeled.

Or there is a bad aftertaste from past experiences with organizations, rules and sacrifice. It is a sacrifice!

Sacrifice also comes from the Latin for holy. It is an act of giving up something valued for the sake of something else regarded as more important or worthy.

As Wayne Muller said in Sabbath, “It is too easy to talk of prohibition, but the point is the space and time created to say yes to sacred spirituality, sensuality, sexuality, prayer, rest, song, delight.”

The universal tradition in this break, this pause, this sacred time of being gone sabbathing looks different for everybody nowadays.

The main ways this time becomes holy, set apart, different is:

Being, celebrating, worshiping, rejoicing, feasting, playing, loving
Giving our undivided, loving attention to those in our lives and within touch, whether partner or child or cat or garden or self
Living in the moment, going with the flow, unbound by schedules and planning

Rituals, or a series of actions, help set this time apart just as intentionally as boundaries.

Just as Miller said, as continued, dedicated practice becomes rhythm becomes tradition, these rituals become less learned and more intuited.

For many, Sabbath includes ceremonies to enter and exit this sacred time.

As well as special candles, prayers, spices and/or foods. And special activities like bathing or making love.

Inspired by Muller’s book, Sabbath, which includes lots of ideas for rituals, using a Sabbath box is something that’s new to my practice in the last year.

This box holds matches, a candle and a poem to enter Sabbath. Index cards with my fundamental precepts of what matters most, poems, a pen and special pocket notebook for capturing divine musings during the day. A bag of spices, a tiny bowl and prayers to exit Sabbath. Often, I turn off my phone and put it away in the box for the day, as I would with a watch if I wore one.

And, my box can even travel with me when I’m away on Sabbath!

Sabbath Worthy

“When I ask myself if the activity is easy and if it makes me feel lighter, my answer determines how I choose to spend time on Sabbath,” wrote Miller.

I completely agree.

I find this applies to finding restorative “activities” and especially to who I spend time with on Sabbath.

Is this person easy? Do they make me feel lighter?

Here Anne Morrow Lindbergh is reflecting on life in general within her book, Gift from the Sea, though is especially true on Sabbath:

“I shall ask into my shell only those friends with whom I can be completely honest. I find I am shedding hypocrisy in relationships. What a rest that will be! The most exhausting thing in life I have discovered is being insincere. That is why so much of social life is exhausting, one is wearing a mask. I have shed my mask.”

This begs the question: if someone is not “Sabbath worthy,” then how (and why) are we fitting them into the rest of our life, or our “shell” as Lindbergh says?

My tolerance and interest for activities and people, feelings and habits that do not align with this rhythm of balance has changed dramatically.

Sabbath has shown me what to keep out and what to keep in during my sacred time set apart each week.

And, over the years, these lessons have seeped into the rest of my days, into the whole of my life.

Join others from around the country in the next Sabbath Course as we explore and practice together, inspired by an interfaith, personal approach to this universal tradition. This 7-week course includes fun weekly activities, weekly community gatherings online and your own practice. You’ll experience what students describe as a “positive and significant impact on my personal growth and spiritual exploration.”

March 17, 2018

Guest Post: Listening to The Whole

By Emily Light

While I was living in an ashram in Southern India, I spent much of my time sitting cross-legged: practicing pranayama, in meditation, listening to lectures on Indian Philosophy and to Swamiji’s talks, and eating meals.

When I wasn’t sitting I was practicing asana, hiking the mountains of upper Kodaikanal, or foraging for fruit, though the monkeys always seemed to get there before I did.

One day while coming down the mountain, I lowered my left foot to meet the earth and with no apparent misstep, twist, or torque, I felt an excruciating pain in my left knee.

I couldn’t bend it and was forced to hobble down the rest of the way with what felt like a pegleg.

I had to walk like that for days afterward.

Eventually the severity of the pain began to dissolve, but it never completely went away.

Living With Pain

When I returned to the states, I didn’t have health insurance, and when it became mandatory to get insurance, I had the catastrophic kind. Definitely not one with benefits to see a physical therapist.

I haven’t been able to hike with any amount of elevation gain because on the descent it was always trouble, and I’d be laid up not being able to walk properly for a couple of days or more.

Over the last few years, I’ve seen a handful of different types of practitioners: a chiropractor, a physical therapist, and an acupuncturist who specialized in sports medicine. I did all of my homework, trying this, trouble shooting that:

Was it my vastus medialis (one of the quadriceps muscles) not firing properly?
Was it weakness in my gluteus medius?
Tight tensor fascia latae?

At the end of an intense year, finally my physical therapist (whom I adore) recommended I get an MRI.

There I was a couple weeks later, laying as still as possible, getting my knee scanned.

If you’ve never gotten imaging like that, let me tell you, it’s really challenging to lay still, even for someone with a lot of mindfulness practice like myself!

When the results came back, everyone was surprised to see that I had fluid in my anterior tibia marrow. This can happen when there’s injury to the bone, but typically the body reabsorbs this fluid over the course of several months.

Why hadn’t mine?

Well, we weren’t sure.

The following months were spent doing lymph massage, elevation, castor oil and essential oils, with alternating hot and cold applications.

Every night, including almost every night while I was traveling and teaching in Thailand, I would spend a half hour or more with these therapies.

I also did fascia massages one to two times a day while my students were practicing savasana. Now you know what I was up to at the end of class!

After a couple of months, my knee had recovered.

I sat cross-legged for much of three days while I was in a yoga therapy training without pain.

While I need to condition my body to do big hikes, I’m now able to go down stairs and down hill without discomfort.

I’m over the moon!

Our Body Knows

The reason I’m writing isn’t to detail the history of my left knee, though I wanted you to know the significance of this injury in my life.

I’m writing because of something my physical therapist and I talked about, that helped me to shift my relationship with chronic injuries.

She told me that we all have our “spots” that flare up when there’s some sort of imbalance in the physical body, mentally or emotionally, and often these spots have been injured in the past.

But when they flare up, it doesn’t always equate with being re-injured.

It could be that when there’s emotional stress or upset, we’ll experience pain in that all too familiar area.

And what’s going on during these times is communication.

Our body is saying:

“Hey, there’s something important to pay attention to!”, or
“Something’s not quite right, it’s time to slow down and feel.”, or
“We’re doing all we can, but we got a cold, and sensation is more present right now.”

Rather than viewing the discomfort as an annoyance, we can learn to listen with appreciation for what our body’s trying to say to us.

I seem to learn this lesson over and over again.

Listening More

The inner voice that tells me to check in on a friend, only to learn that they’ve just gotten dumped.

That gut feeling to slow down as I’m approaching an intersection, right before a racing truck blows his stop sign, nearly hitting me.

The way that my heart feels when I just had a disagreement with my partner, which, I failed to navigate gracefully.

I know that my body and my heart are communicating with me all the time. And yours is as well.

I’m learning to listen more and more, and to allow myself to be guided by the wisdom that’s coursing throughout me.

The more I listen, the more clearly I can hear.

Emily Light is an active yogi and nutritionist in Portland, Ore., leading wellness retreats and workshops around the world and teaching classes at many local studios including Yoga Refuge, Yoga Bhoga and Yoga Space (that’s how Jules knows her). You can find her on Facebook and on Instagram.

Emily completed her first teacher training in 2008 and after a few years of teaching, was called to the motherland of yoga. It was there that she met one of her teachers, Swami Tureyananda. Emily spent a couple months immersed in deep practice, living at an ashram in Southern India, and studying yoga therapy with Swamiji. In May of 2015 she graduated from a two year yoga therapy training under Sarahjoy Marsh, completing her 500-hour certification through Yoga Alliance (E-RYT 500), and is certified through the International Association of Yoga Therapists (C-IAYT). Complementing her guidance in the art of yoga, Emily is a practicing Holistic Nutritionist, offering full spectrum support in finding a life of balance and harmony on all levels. She received her Bachelor’s of Science in Holistic Nutrition with a concentration in Herbal Medicine in 2006 and spent a growing season apprenticing with the herbalist, author and teacher, Matthew Wood.

March 11, 2018April 12, 2022

The Art of Being, Not Doing

When I look back on the year, my favorite days were usually the ones when I was doing nothing.

I was just being.

Not just as in “barely or by a little.”

The way it seems just gets used or referenced most of the time nowadays.

Just as in “simply, only, no more than.”

But for a long time, I thought this way of being was a luxury, something only accessible on vacation.

Actually before that, I forgot that this was my favorite way of being.

And before that I forgot this was a way of being at all.

Busy Beings

But how could this be? How could one forget that we are human be-ings?

Because nowadays we feel more like human do-ings.

In Overwhelmed, Brigid Shulte interviewed a researcher who studies Christmas Holiday cards who discovered, “My God, people are competing about being busy. It’s about showing status. That if you’re busy, you’re important. You’re leading a full and worthy life.”

We have slipped into the cult of busy. I know I did.

I spent the better part of my teens and 20s being an active member.

Too many commitments and expectations, I lived back-to-back and double-booked with a ton of worry and anxiety gluing it all together.

I thought I was “living life to the fullest.” I wasn’t.

My life wasn’t full, it was just compulsively busy.

Busy doing, not full of being.

Loved for Doing

“The difficulty of always feeling that you ought to be doing something is that you tend to undervalue the times when you’re apparently doing nothing, and those are very important times. It’s the equivalent of the dream time, in your daily life, times when things get sorted out and reshuffled. If you’re constantly awake work-wise you don’t allow that to happen,” said musician and producer Brian Eno within Scott McDowell’s essay in Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus & Sharpen Your Creative Mind.

“Most of our current work and life structures have been devised to emphasize production and how much we can accomplish rather than the nurturing of the soul,” wrote Tami Lynn Kent in Wild Creative.

“Because of the general emphasis on production, achievement and building a career, we typically learn to create by becoming self-sufficient and actively doing whatever needs to be done.”

Our culture models and celebrates self-sufficiency, doing everything for ourselves instead of relying on help from others, which makes a lot more work or doing for us.

It’s a slippery slope to always doing as Brian Eno describes, and/or to over-doing.

Economist Juliet Schor argues that with the introduction of the clock in the thirteenth century and the rise of manufacturing time became money, as Schulte shared in Overwhelmed.

Add productivity and competition to self-sufficiency and independence and you quickly get a value for achievement.

More, faster, better, best.

This state of achievement celebrates us for what we do, not who we are.

It’s a pretty easy detour to mis-interpret this as the recipe for worthiness and love:

“As long as we are working hard, using our gifts to serve others, experiencing joy in our work along with the toil, we are always in danger…” wrote Lynne Baab.

In danger of believing we are loved for what we do, not who we are.

Loved for Being

Baab said that only in stopping, really stopping, do we teach our hearts and souls that we are loved apart from what we do.

For me, as soon as I was paying attention to the rest of the world in high school, I picked up on this message: doing = love.

I longed for love. Always had.

And always had it. But, I didn’t realize that back then.

I just sensed that I was different and misunderstood. By others and by myself.

In looking for models of love in my life, I saw the celebration of achievement – on the news, at school, at home – and I took that to heart.

Along the way, I lost track of my favorite way of being: my true nature.

Reconnecting with my being and shedding layers of achievement accumulated over the decades has been transformative. Relearning that I am loved —always— and especially for who I am has been one of the biggest life lessons for me.

I believe we all still inherently know how to be. Just as we are all loved for being. But, we are often too distracted to notice or remember.

So, first we have to stop.

Easier said than done.

Being

“The popular assumption is that no skills are involved in enjoying free time, and that anybody can do it. Yet the evidence suggests the opposite: free time is more difficult to enjoy than work. Having leisure at one’s disposal does not improve the quality of life unless one knows how to use it effectively, and it is by no means something one learns automatically,” said Mihaly Csikszentmihali.

As one of the leading researchers of flow, or that ultimate state of being, he should know.

Point taken: just being can feel lonely, boring, and/or uncomfortable when infrequent because of too much doing.

Or when one does not first feel connected and loved for being.

In her research about overwork, Schulte also explored leisure which often creates flow when practiced frequently.

“In the purest sense, leisure is not being slothful, idle or frivolous. It is, in the words of leisure researcher Ben Hunnicutt, simply being open to the wonder and marvel of the present. ‘The miracle of now,’ he calls it, to choose to do something with no other aim than that it refreshes the soul, or to choose to do nothing at all. To just be and feel fully alive.

“…a time not just for play, recreation and connection with others but also for meditation, reflection, and deep thought…Throughout the course of history, in this leisure time away from toil, elite men…came up with some of the most brilliant innovations, enduring art, and soaring discoveries humanity has ever known,” wrote Schulte.

Oh, the irony: in not doing, we find our greatest achievements.

Once upon a time, a third of the year was dedicated to days off, eg: festivals, Saint’s days, milestones like births, deaths and marriages, Sabbath and other official rest days.

Further back in Roman times, almost half the year were public festivals—days of being, not doing.

This is what I find in my Sabbath time each week.

Time to put all the doing aside with lots of space for relating, dreaming, being.

And being inspired. Some of my most original ideas have been showing up on Sabbath even as I’m trying not to think or do.

Ways of Being

When I’m just being, life is full of:

Mindfulness
Intention
Attention
Clarity

I discard what’s distracting or disintegrating me from the world.

I reconnect with what matters most and with my true nature:

Being outside or at the beach.
Reading inspiring poems and books.
Napping and dreaming.
Sitting by the fire and telling stories.
Savoring beautiful works of art.

My true nature really likes being with myself. I get recharged in solitude. I also enjoy solitude in community. And groups of people I know well.

For others, it’s different. There are many ways to access our own being.

“Sabbath time offers the gift of deep balance; in Sabbath time, we are valued not for what we have done or accomplished, but simply because we have received the gentle blessing of being miraculously alive,” said Wayne Muller in Sabbath.

Being Today

As Baab reminds us in her book Sabbath Keeping, “what we choose to do on the Sabbath needs to bring us rest and life over time. The challenge is discernment, experimenting to find what works for us and the people we love, what helps us catch our breath and remember who we are.” (italics added for emphasis)

Remembering the Sabbath each week has been an important part of reconnecting with myself over the years.

As rich as those days are, they’re only a fraction of my year. The other days contain a lot of doing.

Schulte asked and I often wonder as well:

What, when you really come down to the quotidian details, does it look like every day to have time to do good work, to spend quality time with your family and friends and to refresh your soul?

To be in flow throughout life and not only one day a week, I imagine life needs to look differently. A lot less doing, I bet.

And also probably a different kind of doing: less effort and more energy.

More of the art of being—in our true nature, a state of integrity—everyday.

March 9, 2018August 21, 2018

What Matters Most

This was the moment when I really felt it: this.

“This is bliss.”

“This is what matters most.”

Why?

Because it was a combination of what’s important to me and how my soul glows.

These moments used to be fewer and farther in between. Accidental connections to my truest nature. I wanted more.

Nowadays, I have found the words to define my personal guidelines for living a whole life. Living wholly and soulfully. Not accidental, but intentional.

That doesn’t mean life is perfect. Far from it.

I am always practicing and I have a light to guide the way: my personal guidelines for the day-to-day and my inner guide for when things get really tricky.

Everyone has this light, though not everyone has the words.

How does one learn what matters most?

By preparing for the answers: keeping sacred space, knowing your inner guide and asking the big questions, and then, living into them.

Start with Perspective

In one of my favorite movies, About Time, the lead character can time travel.

He doesn’t need a machine like Bill & Ted. He can just close his eyes, focus on a moment, and go there.

The most powerful thing he discovers? He has do-overs.

He can go back and re-do every day, savoring the moments:

Acknowledging the clerk at the market with a smile.
Noticing the beautiful windows as he’s running to catch his train.
Greeting his crying, messy child after work.

Eventually, he stops time traveling and literally only lives in the present.

Feel free to stop reading and go stream it (it’s so good).

Then, you can come back to this post and learn about how to live this way.

Why isn’t life only about what really matters?

According to the movie, life is only about these precious moments—what really matters—it’s just about our perspective on it.

Yes, and, you might be thinking.

There’s actually a lot in our lives that doesn’t matter. More so for some people than others.

How do we know what does and doesn’t matter?

“To discern what is truly essential we need space to think, time to look and listen, permission to play, wisdom to sleep, and the discipline to apply highly selective criteria to the choices we make. Ironically in [our] culture these things—space, listening, playing, sleeping and selecting—can be seen as trivial distractions,” wrote Greg McKweon in Essentialism about the disciplined pursuit of less.

How do we find space and time and permission and wisdom?

We practice.

Keeping Sacred Space

I find the best time for me to practice creating sacred space is when I’m backpacking, when I’m on retreat and when I observe Sabbath, my “weekly retreat.”

In his book, Sabbath, Muller writes, “Sabbath is an incubator for wisdom. When we allow the rush and pressure of our days to fall away, even for a short period of time, we are able to discern the essential truth of what lies before us.”

Poet Wendell Berry, who has a longstanding practice of Sabbath, wrote:

During the Buddhist Sabbath, lay people and monks gather to recite the precepts that govern their practice. There are hundreds of these precepts for monks, concerning everything from how you meditate to how you eat your food and how you wash your bowl.

But more than the specific precepts, it is a time to reiterate what is ultimately important, sacred. Whether the Eightfold Path of Buddhism, the Five Pillars of Islam, or the Ten Commandments, most religions consider certain precepts to be guiding lights to help us find our way through darker times.

Berry often writes poetry about what’s ultimately important, sacred, on the Sabbath. There is a sense of divine inspiration in his observations of the world and its interconnectedness.

“Sabbath is a time when we retreat from the illusion of our own indispensability. We are important in that we are part of something larger,” adds Muller.

Something larger that’s often hard to comprehend without some guidance.

Knowing Your Inner Guide

“Whether we choose spirituality or religion, we need a system of experiences and beliefs that is true to our own experience. We must once again look at our own lives and discover what we already know,” says Cecile Andrews, author of The Circle of Simplicity: The Return to the Good Life.

Anthropology Professor Roger Walsh wrote:

“We know more than we know we know. The inner source has been called by many names: for example, the Hindu’s “inner guru,” the Tibetan Buddhist’s “personal diety,” the Christian Quaker’s “still small voice within,” or the psychologist’s “higher self.” Whatever the name, the implications are the same. We have within us remarkable wisdom that will guide and help us if we learn how to recognize and draw on it.”

Just that simple.

Ultimately, yes, and…

From my experience the learning how to recognize [and listen] and draw on it, is a lifelong quest for the monks and us lay people alike.

Over the years, I’ve come to know and listen to this.

My inner guide is the filter for what is true to me, at any given time, on my path.

As I’ve quieted and settled what Walsh describes as “the outer self” of surface emotions, habits and personality, and then “the inner self” of secret hopes and fears, self-image and beliefs, the listening grew easier, the voice grew louder and clearer.

This so-called voice lies within our “deep self,” or soul.

For some this conversation comes through deep, committed practices with meditation or yoga.

For me this conversation comes mainly through intentional practices of:

Going on a personal retreat almost every season from 2007-2017, as well as solo backpacking trips since 2015.
Digesting and listening each week on Sabbath since 2015. In the absence of work, of plans, of internet, of emotions and habit, and of self-image, I hang out with my soul.

It is in these sacred spaces and times when I’ve become acquainted with my inner guide, my deep self, my still small voice within.

It’s always been there, I just hadn’t asked or hadn’t really listened before.

Asking the Big Questions

Listening starts with asking. The curiosity to receive whatever shows up.

Questions like:

What inspires me?
What is it like when I’m “in my element”?
What is love?
What do I believe?
What do I fear?
What’s always been important to me?
What connects me to Source?
When do I feel whole?

I’ve been amazed at how often it’s in the most minuscule moment of awe, perhaps examining a worm slithering through the soil, that my inner guide reveals my deepest knowing, the answers to these questions.

“Sabbath honors this quality of not knowing, an open receptivity of mind essential for allowing things to speak to us from where they are,” wrote Muller.

It is a lifelong conversation to recognize our own wisdom.

There is a difference between knowledge and wisdom.

In Essential Spirituality, Dr. Walsh said:

Knowledge informs us, wisdom transforms us.
Knowledge is something we have, wisdom is something we must become.
Knowledge is expressed in words, wisdom in our lives.
Knowledge empowers, wisdom empowers and enlightens.

Wisdom is our deepest knowing.

As such, often our most heartfelt questions are more of a feeling than a thought.

They don’t always formulate into neat, little sentences.

Because it’s not about figuring things out. That’s knowledge.

This is about feeling things out as our being connects the dots and then the answer emerges.

Wisdom.

The wisdom, courage, and clarity we need are already embedded in creation—in nature, in the world, in our lives. The solution is already alive in the problem. Thus, our work is not always to push and strive and struggle. Often we have only to be still, and we will know, wrote Muller.

The Tao Te Ching asks us:

Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?

In other words, until the right answer arises by itself?

Moments Matter Most

Once you start having the conversation, you can discern what is truly essential, what matters most, as McKweon describes.

You’ll know what is important to you and how your soul glows.

You’ll know what this feels like and you’ll be able to start putting the words together to define your personal guidelines for living a whole life.

Once you name it, you can live it even more intentionally. Remembering and practicing these fundamental precepts each week, they become your every day.

“When I am fully aware of clouds moving, birds trilling, insects buzzing and downy feathers floating on the still lake, I lean into the portal from this moment, beyond next week, and into the grand scale of things, weighing the collection of meaningful moments holding my life together,” wrote Shelly Miller.

This is living life to the fullest.

February 19, 2018September 21, 2020

The Unseen Wheel

While the days march by in a line across our calendar, they are actually cycling through the seasons.

The unseen wheel is always turning while we grind away on the day to day.

This is so easy to forget.

And such a relief to remember.

Reality Bites

I got home last night after visiting a friend for a long weekend.

I had already done my usual Sunday chores and then some, including stopping at my post office box, before I left so the reentry was quite smooth with few steps.

I stopped at the grocery store on the way home, then unpacked, heated up some dinner and opened up the pile of mail.

At the bottom of the stack was a reality check.

I wish that meant it was a check with earnings for recent time spent living in the present, going with the flow, seeing things as they truly are, instead of how I want them to be.

Nope. It was the opposite.

It was one of my business credit card statements.

The long list of purchases had been necessary investments over the last year of getting my new business off the ground. Or seemed necessary in order to manifest the business.

Perhaps that was just the way I wanted things to be because I believe so much in it?

This was not actually the reality check.

It was the total amount of the credit card statement.

Reality Check

Given the pangs in my gut each time I used the card recently, I knew it was getting up there.

Expenses out without much income in is discouraging. And when you’re starting something new discouragement doesn’t help. At all.

And so, I had been focused on making progress, moving forward, being into each day one at a time without getting bogged down in the details.

What I hadn’t been paying attention to was how up there.

And it had crossed my imaginary tipping point of what seemed safe and doable. Now, it was at the level that seemed risky and scary.

That made my whole gut clench like a fist and yet also hollow out. Like a black hole imploding into itself.

I could instantly feel the hole, perhaps a hole that had been slowly growing over the last year, but that denial had been filling?

I did not feel whole.

Like gusts of cold breeze through an open window, many emotions passed through me as I sank down into my 45-year-old armchair.

Hurt by this consequence of past decisions that seemed right at the time,
Mourning for past successes not just breaking even, but saving ahead,
Anger at well-intentioned but broken systems,
Overwhelmed by the task of repairing the imbalance,
Scared by the possibility of not closing the hole.

And yet, I knew there was nothing I could do in that moment.

I could eat my dinner and watch a DVD from the library. And make some tea.

When the electric kettle whistled, I went over to the window sill where it’s plugged in. Something outside caught my eye. Something white.

With freezing temperatures across the state, I had driven home that day in rain, sleet and snow. But, arriving home the streets were bare.

Several hours later, in the dark as I was watching a movie and sitting with my feelings and this reality check, snow had quietly begun falling outside.

I looked closer, surprised.

Yes, the yard was in fact dusted with the powdered sugar snow.

Just as the credit card statement had snapped me into the moment, the snow snapped me into the bigger picture.

Reality Check

Of the seasons, the unseen wheel constantly turning. Always in motion.

Of which, gives us our days, weeks, months.

Of a system constantly harmonizing to realign with what’s showing up.

Of which, I am a small part.

And in which I am whole.

And when I consider the whole — of my life, of the natural world, of a mysterious force — I can once again find trust.

That things will work out, somehow.

And perspective. That things work themselves out over time and space, sometimes lots.

And peace.

And so, I find my way back to the natural rhythm as I continue to focus on making progress, moving forward, being into each day one at a time.

Without getting bogged down as I grind away on the day-to-day.

January 17, 2018

The Cult of Busy

I was a full-fledged member of the cult of busy. We all are.

I don’t recall when, but it probably began before I started using a planner in high school (that I designed for optimal homework, goal and activity tracking).

Or was voted “Most Involved” in the yearbook our Senior year.

And it just got worse from there: overcommitted, overachieving, overwhelmed for the next 15 years. Welcome to “adulthood”!

A vicious cycle of apps to optimize my time and practices to mitigate my stress.

Constantly acknowledged with awe and trepidation by others: “I don’t know how you do it all!”

I had become the epitome of a busy body filling in my life with busy work.

But as Henry David Thoreau asked in the 1850s, “it is not enough to be busy (the ants are busy), we must ask: what are we busy about?”

Why was I so busy?

Compulsive Busyness

“…much of the busyness that we see around us everyday is compulsive busyness. Somebody is avoiding something…[The busyness] can involve us in the most worthy of good works only to distract us from entheos and deny us the privilege of being really useful,” wrote Robert Greenleaf back in the 1970s.

That’s a mouthful, but it is exactly how I was living before I started this blog. How?

I was “compulsively busy” – constantly doing to be doing.

Multiple service and leadership commitments, multiple client projects, running a business, spending time with my family and so many friends – all over the country, traveling all the time, personal growth projects and groups, extensive spiritual practices, hyper-organized home, baking from scratch, driving friends to the airport and the list goes on somehow.

Still “Most Involved” in seemingly the most worthy of good works.

Living life to the fullest, right?

Then, what was I avoiding?

Entheos, the Greek word for the God within, the way the divine creative energy moves through us toward what the world really needs.

In other words, my personal mission: I am in the world to change the world with my creativity.

And as Greenleaf says: the privilege of being really useful.

Everything is Work

What does really useful look like?

My sense is it has little to do with time or effort or money. The resources we measure our lives in.

I think it has to do with our other main resource: our energy.

Or as Julian Gresser describes as our “creative emotion or vitality” when speaking to the relative value of these four resources in Piloting Through Chaos (time, effort, money, energy).

In his TEDTalk and book about The Art of Stillness, Pico Iyer shares that after a 30-year study of time diaries, two socioligists found that Americans were actually working fewer hours than we were in the 1960’s, but we feel as if we are working more (underlining added for emphasis).

Perhaps because everything is “work” nowadays.

And/or we approach everything with the attitude that it is work, that it is labor – taking time, requiring effort, costing money. And draining energy.

In preparation for a session about work and spirituality I was leading in 2015, I audited my own work.

All of it. Paid work, unpaid service, leadership and pro bono work, domestic work (including caregiving and housekeeping) and informal work (including favors). Pretty much anything that didn’t feel like play or leisure.

I was shocked.

Adding in caregiving, housework, volunteering, commuting, grooming etc. and it seemed like 80 percent of my life was “work.”

For some, sleep is the only time they’re not “working.”

No wonder I constantly felt depleted, my energy in frequent flux of high highs and low lows, and completely burning out every few months.

Why did everything feel like work – so effortful, instead of effortless? Or simply neutral?

I was drawing my energy from an empty well.

Like one researcher who studies Christmas Holiday Cards discovered and shared in an interview with Brigid Shulte for Overwhelmed,

“My God, people are competing about being busy. It’s about showing status. That if you’re busy, you’re important. You’re leading a full and worthy life.”

Taking a Break

“Without time to reflect, to live fully present in the moment and face what is transcendent about our lives, we are doomed to live in purposeless and banal busyness…It creates this ‘unquiet heart,’ as Saint Augustine said, that is ever desperate for fulfillment,” said another researcher in an interview with Shulte.

It was a few years ago when I was asked, “But, when do you rest?”

In a quick, instantaneous audit of my life, I could only think of one example.

Going away on retreats every few months.

Cherished times of being, of following the divine energy, of feeling full, of feeling whole.

I saw these times as an exception, not accessible in “real life,” on a weekly or a daily basis.

So deep in the belief that busyness was the way that I was being really useful.

I needed more time to reflect, to live fully present in the moment, to face what is transcendent about life.

I needed a break.

And on a regular basis.

As I started to peel away the worthy distractions and set aside time for not doing each week, it became more clear how I was called to be. How I have always been called.

But, had also come to most fear: creating, writing, designing, teaching.

Resting the Whole, Resting the Soul

“In the 1950s, some prominent thinkers predicted that the post-World War II boom in productivity and the ever-rising incomes and standards of living for Americans and the industrialized world could only mean that we were entering a new age of unprecedented leisure,” describes Shulte.

“All our basic needs would be met. Free from toil, we could begin to savor its fruits. True to the Greek ideal of the good life, we would spend our time cultivating the mind and the soul.”

It was just over a year ago on a Circle of Trust retreat facilitated by The Center for Courage & Renewal when I was asked, “What in your life needs a pause? A break? A rest?”

I had been giving my life a break each week, a whole day of stepping out of the busyness, for several years by then.

The question seemed familiar and yet a completely fresh perspective.

But, this question seemed bigger, broader.

Taking a day off per week away from routine and schedules had started giving time a break. And I had been taking a break from money for almost a year by then. And I had started to step back from commitments and focus my efforts.

So, what in my life needed a break?

My soul. My life force. My energy.

Not a break from being (not sure that’s possible), but a chance to simply be without all the resistance.

I am paying especially close attention to my energy. Devoted to being in the sweet spot.

There is still some resistance, and thus tensions, but now it’s to the rest of the world’s busyness, not my own.

Things are feeling more effortless, including doing my “work.” The other work is still work, though I have way less interest in it, so there’s a lot less of it and now feels more neutral.

Not a one time fix. Now, I commit to this intention everyday.

As Naomi Shihab Nye writes in her poem, Red Brocade, from 1952:

No, I was not busy when you came!
I was not preparing to be busy.
That’s the armor everyone put on
to pretend they had a purpose
in the world.

January 16, 2018September 6, 2018

Releasing My Mom, Finding Myself

Authors Note: Originally written/posted in Sept. 2008

Eighteen hundred miles into the roadtrip, I was lost for the first time.

The drive to Grand Junction, Colorado, was my first night ride and exiting the highway I found myself in the middle of strip mall no man’s land. Of course, I was nervous – the last week and a half had been leading up to tonight.

I would come to find out that the last six months had likely been leading up to tonight.

Or even the last five and half years.

Or just maybe, my whole life.

The scent of destiny has been trailing me like sweet perfume this whole trip. Even the frustration of getting lost seemed somehow symbolic in order to disorient any expectations of control of what was to come.

I had set out to Colorado to find closure with my Mother.

While my adolescence with my Mom was tumultuous at best, something finally started to click between us when I took leave from college at 19 and moved home.

Coming Home

Everybody had always said we were carbon copies of each other, not just because we were both “chatty Cathy’s,” but our similar looks with fine, toffee-colored hair, hazel eyes, button noses and barely-able-to-ride-the-ferris-wheel height.

Over the course of my semester off I came to see that we actually processed the world in very different ways, which actually created most of the conflict and challenges between us.

Right before the Christmas during my junior year of college, our family friends gathered together to celebrate the holidays.

We sat in the living room, the 12 kids and four sets of parents snuggled onto couches, chairs and the carpet, and shared what we were grateful for and what we were looking forward to in the coming year.

Through tears and sniffles, I sputtered out that I was grateful for my time off the previous spring and summer, allowing me to get to know my parents as adults, and very much looked forward to having a better relationship with my Mom.

Afterwards, I hugged her tiny, 5 foot frame and whispered, “I love you,” in her ear. This would be the last time I would ever hug her.

Sudden Loss

Three weeks later, she lay in the Intensive Care Unit, barely filling up half the twin hospital bed.

I had dropped her off for a routine outpatient surgery to remove a tiny (annoying, but benign) growth on her reproductive system that morning, expecting to have dinner with her and my family later that evening.

She was in a coma for three days, caused by an unexplained post-surgical respiratory arrest, until our family decided to let her go.

After being without air for several minutes while she lay in the recovery room, her brain was all but dysfunctional and recovery was impossible.

I have openly published my experiences with my mom’s unexpected death in the past as I firmly believe that death and grief are not accepted enough in our society and need to be talked about.

So many of us live with grief, just as we live with other conditions, for instance, allergies for me. It is not a weakness, simply a fact of life. Mostly dormant, but sometimes flares up.

For some reason death and grief are cast to the shadows with the negative stigma of a lurking grim reaper nowadays.

Whereas most societies around the world have joyful and/or sorrowful rituals and ceremonies that recognize, grieve and let go of their loved ones, America as a culture does not.

And so, it becomes fairly easy to cry a lot and think you’ve grieved, but really have just pushed the feelings way deep inside.

Which is what I did from 20- to 25-years-old, until the development of eczema led me in search of a more holistic solution.

Deeper Healing

And so, a series of events led me on a roadtrip to sit with a Marakame (or “shaman”) in Grand Junction, Colorado, who practices healing arts and ceremonies of the native Mexican tribe, the Huichol, amongst other callings.

I left home by myself on my 26th birthday, set to return to Oregon nearly three weeks later.

This Marakame, Deanna, who’d been practicing for a dozen years, was not going to make my skin issues go away, but address the possible source of the stress – grief.

The death ritual she’d perform was meant to help both me and my Mom come to resolution with her traumatic death.

I was surprised by how “normal” Deanna was, tall and lean with curly salt and pepper hair and glasses, wearing a fleece pull-over, jeans and clogs.

We went out into the backyard of her ranch-style home and she made a fire underneath a tree already starting to shed its leaves for the fall.

We sat in camping chairs with a wheelbarrow loaded up with seasoned, dry wood between us.

This was nothing like the scene from one of my favorite movies and books, The Power of One, where a barely clothed shaman dances around a chicken to cure the little boy from his “night terrors,” i.e.: wetting the bed.

But then, that was in the South African bush, and we were in suburban Colorado, so it made sense we were dressed.

Many Crossroads

In appreciation for the sitting, I gave her some fine chocolate, Alder wood from Oregon, and the cigar from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, along with payment for her healing services.

For the most part we just sat and talked around her fire pit in the backyard until it was time for her to do her work around 10 p.m.

We discussed my road trip thus far and my journey since college, including the cross roads I felt I was at in my budding career: to go the corporate route or go an unconventional path.

As we talked about the death, eventually tears trickled down my face like a stream through the woods.

I shared the story of our long days in the hospital and the symptoms of my grief, including my inability to access many memories including my Mother previous to the trauma of her death.

I was in a foreign place with basically a stranger and yet I felt safe. That the grief would not engulf me if I let it out of its cage.

I fear I’ll only dilute the meaning of the experience by trying to describe it, because most of the ceremony was happening within her.

Mainly, like so many other nights on the trip so far, I just sat by the fire adding logs as the heat died down, looking at the trillion stars across the night sky and thinking about random things.

Finally Letting Go

Finally, we talked about the artifacts and mementos of my Mom that I had brought along as requested.

Then, one-by-one I hesitantly added them to the flames.

There was a lock of hair, a shirt she always wore around the house, some photographs, a CD of favorite music.

The cloth, paper, plastic all flashed bright colors in the flames in their last brilliant moments and then turned to grey ashes indistinguishable from each other.

I had brought these along from Oregon as requested in a little bag, expecting that they would help the Marakame “get a feel for” my Mom.

I had no idea they would disappear.

There was one keepsake, a small heart-shaped container I felt strongly about keeping, since it had been a gift from my Mom.

The Greatest Gifts

Deanna shared with me that in many other cultures, from the Egyptians to Mexicans, part of the death ceremony includes a person’s belongings either being buried or burned with them.

In the truest form of this tradition, everything a person owned, even the dirt and dust of his or her home was swept up and added to the fire in order for the person to pass on completely.

There was not a room in my home that did not have something that used to be hers and strongly reminded me of her.

These are the ways that we hold on – physically, emotionally, energetically.

Interestingly, it struck me the sentimental difference between things that were my Mother’s versus things that she had given to me as gifts.

The possessions reminded me of loss, while the gifts reminded me of love.

I wondered, What would the world be like if the only presence we left behind was our presents?

Clearly, in life we would be more preoccupied with giving than accumulating.

While it was hard to let go of her/my treasures, I was truly amazed by the power of the fire to turn everything – a lock of her hair, polyester clothing, CDs, ceramics etc. – into ashes.

Ashes to ashes, so they say.

Answers & Blessings

Six months before the roadtrip, I attended a different fire back home in Oregon, which coincidentally this healer had attended too (though I had not met).

It was a large gathering of some 100 people from around the country and world to hear a respected speaker in the Huichol tradition.

At the end of the evening around one a.m., each person was able to offer a cigar to this man and ask a heartfelt question.

After mulling over questions all weekend, I had decided to ask, “How do I let go of my mom?”

After giving him my cigar, he opened one eye, looked at me and said, “You don’t need a question. You need a blessing.”

He took a puff of his lit cigar, pulled the ashes off the end and dotted them on my forehead like Ash Wednesday.

Curious what the blessing meant, I asked around for interpretations and then eventually went on about my life.

One suggestion was that it was for protection and safe travels.

In Colorado, the fire was similarly over around one a.m. and then I was shown to the guest room for the night.

In the morning, the Marakame and I met and talked to debrief the night before.

We talked about how the ceremony had been a modification of the traditional one due to the long time lapse since death and lack of actual remains, but that it had also been more than just a death ritual.

More than a Death Ritual

We have lost almost all connection to ritual in our culture outside of organized religion.

While we may have strong traditions or habits, we don’t necessarily know or understand their meaning.

In many cultures, birthdays are not significant for the date, but the growth.

Given the timing, having just turned 26 it made perfect sense for the Marakame to say that this ceremony was also about my own initiation into womanhood (celebrated by the Huichol between ages 15 and 26).

Six months after asking the question and just one week after my birthday, I found the answer of how to let go of my mom.

It was time to set out on my own and not live within the safety or the shadow of expectations cast by others.

At a certain age, we must all be initiated into ourselves.

We must have the courage to let go of our parents and independently become our own person. Become whole – in and of ourselves.

Within just twelve hours of arrival, I left Grand Junction with peace of mind and a strong sense of direction.

NOTE: I enjoy the company of new and old friends at monthly fires in Portland as part of the Sacred Fire Community, which I have been attending as part of the Portland hamlet since 2006. The fires, which happen around the world, are a time for people to come together for heartfelt conversation as we so often forget to do these days. You can learn more about local fires at http://www.sacredfirecommunity.org/ and plant spirit medicine healing at http://bluedeer.org/.

January 8, 2018

Your Path to Rest

I had been on my spiritual path for nearly a decade and never asked myself this simple question: when do you rest?

The question showed up one day back in fall, 2014.

I had just signed a big contract with Nike for a 3-month gig. I was in the first year of self-employment and this was way too good to refuse.

But, I had three other consulting projects already, plus service commitments and the rest of life. It added up to 60+ hour work weeks. 80+ if you counted housekeeping and caregiving.

I knew something had to give. And it wasn’t the work.

It turns out it was the Rest.

My Path to Jack

Several women in my interfaith women’s group saw the same spiritual director, Jack Kennedy. At first, I didn’t really know what a spiritual director was, but I had seen therapists and shaman, so it seemed in the ballpark of familiarity.

I got his phone number, called to set an appointment and showed up at the house where he rented a room for his sessions.

Nestled into the the antique striped couch at my first meeting, I explained why I’d come to see him and what was on my heart: the heavy work load, running a business, volunteering, family, the upcoming holidays.

He listened for 15 minutes until I reached the end of my laundry list and this question: How was I going to do it all and not get burned out?

“Well, when do you rest?” he asked.

Not power naps. Not quick breaks between meetings. That’s just more doing.

He meant time and space for deep, restorative being in rhythm with my own body, the world around me and something bigger. He meant Sabbath.

I was speechless.

Sabbath Keeping

It was not something I had experienced yet in my everyday life.

But, as he described Sabbath, it sounded a whole lot like my magical times at the coast on personal retreats.

And I could have some of that magic every week? I was in.

That fall and for the last 3 years since, I have set aside one day a week, usually Saturdays like in the Jewish tradition, for rest and renewal.

Sabbath has become my weekly retreat.

An ancient practice, Sabbath is the fourth commandment. “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.”

It comes before family, before murder, before adultery and more.

Overwhelm and overstimulation are newer human conditions. But, hard work is not new. Labor is not new.

Many call it a merciful gift. Compassion for all this labor. In other words, it is a day that has been given.

There are many ways that different religious traditions remember or observe the Sabbath, including Christian services on Sundays and Buddhist monks’ recitation of precepts.

Barbara Brown Taylor describes her experience in Leaving Church:

“Observing the Sabbath is saving my life now. For the first time in my life, I can rest without leaving home. With sundown on the Sabbath, I stop seeing the dust balls, the bills and the laundry. They are still there, but they lose their power over me. One day each week I live as if all my work were done…Now, when I know the Sabbath is near, I can feel the anticipation bubbling up inside of me. Sabbath is no longer a a good idea or even a spiritual discipline for me. It is my regular date with the Divine Presence that enlivens both body and soul.”

Finding My Spiritual Path

Just as Barbara says, Sabbath has become a highlight of my week.

It is not simply a day to set everything aside, to stop doing and simply be. But a “regular date” to reconnect with what grounds me and inspires me, something bigger than myself.

My path to rest did not start with this practice in 2014. I think it actually started in 2007 when I went to a spiritual community gathering, the first step toward spiritual development I’d taken since leaving home at 18 years old, seven years prior.

Or perhaps I’ve been on the path my whole life?

I was raised in a “new age” household by a former Roman Catholic mother and a former Episcopalian father (more by label than by practice for both of them) who found more inspiration in the outdoors than in the church.

My parents started their own spiritual journey in their 20’s soon after getting married, leading them to a new, broader sense of spirituality (though heavily influenced by the Judeo-Christian traditions).

Growing up, my only exposure to religion was tagging along with friends and most of it was “too churchy” compared to our hikes and seasonal gatherings.

While organized religion was not to their taste, looking back now I see that ritual, ceremony, values, and beliefs were baked into my very spiritual upbringing.

I distinctly remember in high school having a discussion about this with my parents – about not having any religion. Their response?

We were to chose our own religion.

My response: “Huh, well I won’t be doing that.”

Nowadays, I worship at a Unitarian Universalist church, I commune with the Sacred Fire Community outside around the fire, I find fellowship with interfaith, intergenerational women at BBB, I observe Sabbath, I am again practicing yoga in a nearby studio.

While I did no choose a religion yet, I am religious about my portfolio of communities and practices, along with many tools, that help me navigate the world.

It has been a journey of seeking what’s true to me. As well undoing dysfunctional beliefs that I created along the way.

24/6

Some of the dysfunctional beliefs I still struggle with directly conflict with Sabbath.

Rest is earned not given.
Taking naps is being lazy or childish.
Doing creates a worthwhile day.
Living life to the fullest means doing many things at the same time.

These are the beliefs that make me forget Sabbath.

So, how do I remember the Sabbath?

I remember that rest means more than simply being tired.

I remember that rest is a break, a pause.

I remember that rest is an important note in music.

I remember that when I step out of the grind I find space for reflection.

I remember that when I find space, I find perspective.

I remember how I’m connected to everything. Everything.

And over the years of remembering, observing, practicing Sabbath, I have also started showing up differently in the other six days a week.

I am:

more present
more connected
more energized
more focused

While the path getting here has not been easy – the path to rest never is – I bet it would have been a lot easier if I had always remembered the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.

Moving forward, I do.