Spiritual Practice | The Sacrament of Everyday Life
Spiritual practices are small, everyday rituals that can bring comfort, create better lifestyles, help set positive intentions for life. They assist us to uncover our deeper purpose, enhance or relationship with the holy and reconcile with all of creation. Practices open our hearts and minds to the injustice in front of us, the joy abounding within us, and the pull we feel towards meaning and significance.
Contemplative spiritual practice incorporates some degree of solitude, silence and stillness. We encourage you to explore these eight practices. Each one will vary in its degree of solitude, silence and stillness. Each practice offers a window into your soul.
Experience of the holy through daily practices validates scripture and tradition. Help us to live into a new world view when our old world view is changing. Moving us into a new way of seeing and a new way of perceiving and a new way of acting in the world as the Beloved. Practice helps us find balance and grounding as we navigate this new way or call so we can trust what is unfolding and emerging.
Spiritual practices allow us to engage with the fullness of reality, making every day sacred.
Practices to try at home
Pray / Meditate
Spoken | Words or ritual that awaken our hearts to the presence of the holy.
Silent | Still the mind and find rest for your soul. Like meditation, contemplation and what Christians in the Eastern Orthodox tradition call “the prayer of the heart.”
Lectio Divina
A traditional monastic practice of scriptural reading, meditation and prayer intended to promote communion with the Holy and to increase the knowledge and understanding of God's word.
Move
Moving our bodies – walking, running or dancing stimulates or calms our minds while connecting our spirit to God.
Create
Creativity is an expression of being fully human and fully divine it is eternal. Here we find truth found in the world in which we live. Through music, poetry, fiction, dance and other works of art.
Listen
Listening – actively and intentionally – allows us to be fully present with those around us, with ourselves and to all that our precious lives and God’s love have to offer.
Breathe
When we breathe it is life for our soul. As we exhale, we can share our joys, concerns, and other thoughts, and as we inhale we open to receive God’s grace, goodness and wisdom.