5 Ways to Jump Start Your Spiritual Life

Getting out the Door

When I complain that I don’t have enough motivation to get out the door and go running, my sister-in-law often reminds me: “That’s what separates the runners from the non-runners.”

She’s quoting a line I often give to her. Anyone can run, the difference is just that some people actually do. I’ve been a runner for years, and I still have a hard time just getting myself out the door. I don’t think that challenge ever goes away.

Developing your spiritual life works the same way as developing a fitness routine. Anyone can do it: what matters is that you go do it. The advice below isn’t anything new or fancy or complicated because I believe that what you do doesn’t matter as much as that you do it.

What separates a plateaued spiritual life from a thriving one is just getting out the proverbial door.

5 ways to jump start your spiritual life

• Get a different perspective

I’m not speaking metaphorically here. I mean literally changing your usual point of view. Lay on your kitchen floor, pray from inside your closet, go barefoot for a few hours, roll down a hill, get into your house by climbing through a window, walk home on a different street.

I’m often amazed at what I miss because I’ve become dissociated from what I’m doing, which is too bad because earth’s crammed with heaven.

• State what you want

If you know you want something different in your spiritual life, you need to tell someone. Preferably multiple someones. Tell God — meaning pray about what you want. Tell your support system — meaning call on the people who care about you for encouragement and accountability.

And if someone in particular is involved in the change you want, tell them. If you want a deeper relationship with her, ask her over for dinner. If you want some empathy and compassion, ask him for it. If you want more worship time, ask friends to join you. You might not get a ‘yes,’ but the act of stating what you want is clarifying and freeing in itself.

• Pray without ceasing

In order to do this, you’re probably going to have to re-frame your idea of prayer. If you’re not a big fan of being seen talking to yourself in public, put in an earpiece and talk to God on the phone. Sometimes, when I feel words aren’t enough, I make up songs. Write daily gratitude lists, practice the spiritual examen at night, designate certain doors as “pray-ways” and commit to praying every time you walk through that particular door, do yoga, walk a labyrinth, find a new worship service, recruit a prayer partner, write prayers on your walls, set up an altar in your bedroom.

Whatever prayer practices you develop, they should work for you. It isn’t about quotas or answers or self-pressure or expectations. It’s about opening your heart a little bit wider every chance you get.

• Talk to someone very young or very old

Children and elders have incredible wisdom, and, generally, they love to share it! If you find yourself asking tough questions in your own faith journey, ask those same tough questions to someone profoundly brilliant, like a 5-year-old. Or make friends with one of the seniors in your community and ask them to share a time when they learned a valuable life lesson. I’m telling you, stories are everywhere.

• Learn your Enneagram type

I first learned about the Ennegram personality types from my spiritual director. I find the Enneagram more helpful than other personality typographies because it is geared towards self-understanding and personal development. Knowing my own tendencies and weaknesses has helped me deepen my self-acceptance and learn to move through those places where I get “stuck” more easily. Becoming familiar with other Enneagram types has helped me to understand other people (especially those who annoy or scare me) and tap into the strengths they bring to the table. This has been one of the most powerful tools I’ve found for personal and relational growth.

All kinds of great books have been written about the Enneagram. Fr. Richard Rohr has written about the Enneagram from a Christian perspective. Don Riso wrote a series of Releases and Affirmations for each type that I find both healing and convicting. Talk about spiritual growth! [In case you're curious, friends, I'm a 6.]

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What do you do when your spiritual life needs a jump start? What practices have you found most helpful for growing spiritually?

Waking Up: Reflections on the meaning of Yom Kippur

The morning traffic is slow on my drive to work, and I remember. It is Yom Kippur. The public schools in my neighborhood are out for the Jewish holiday.

One of my school teacher co-workers tells me she didn’t know what to say to her students to acknowledge their holy day. “What do you say on Yom Kippur?” she asks me. I’m not sure.

At our staff meeting, our Jewish co-worker reads us this reflection by Rabbi David Wolpe on Yom Kippur, and I learn:

Yom Kippur is about death.

As Rabbi Wolpe writes:

Yom Kippur is a powerful existentialist statement. In its best known prayer, the Unetaneh Tokef, we are reminded that we are fleeting, that our lives are like the wind that blows, like the flower that fades, as a passing shadow.

I think about the article I read last week about another shooting in East Oakland, another child in the schools I served hit by stray bullets of someone else’s fight. I think about a woman in our congregation who was shaken last week after witnessing a stranger’s suicide when they leapt from a tall building. I think about a different woman in our congregation whose doctor found, accidentally, the tumor she just had removed – she breathes a cancer-free breath today.

The Psalmist cries:

Lord, let me know my end,
and what is the measure of my days;
let me know how fleeting my life is.

You have made my days a few handbreadths,
and my lifetime is as nothing in your sight.
Surely everyone stands as a mere breath.

But, of course, because it is about death, Yom Kippur is also about life.

It is about being present to the goodness of another day, being open to the receiving of the grace of living, the mercy of God. It is about humility and open hands.

“It’s kind of like Ash Wednesday,” our Jewish co-worker explains. “You repent, you restart. On Yom Kippur, the Book of Life is closed, and you can again appeal to God for forgiveness.”

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Later, in the afternoon, I drive South, away from the city.

The trees lining the highway, blushing their first touches red and gold, lean in and whisper Wake up, be alive in this moment.

The gray clouds slouch across the strip of sky, and they too lean in and whisper Wake up, be alive in this moment.

Suddenly it is as if the whole world is a quiet chorus bringing me to life, calling me to gratitude for the fleeting brush of this one moment, this one breath, and I feel so tiny and so huge all at once.

And I remember that each breath I take is precious because of the first breath I won’t take.

Wake up.

You are already alive in this moment.

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Joining the harmony of voices at SheLoves for the AWAKE Synchoblog. Go visit and read some other stories of awakening.

When blessing comes in quietly

A season of quiet blessing

I wrote earlier about what it means to be blessed, about the richness of life that comes through memories and forgiveness and small pleasures.

This has indeed been a season of blessing for me. Not the kind of blessing that runs through your life with extravagance — no miraculous late-life pregnancy like Sarai’s, no new name rewarded after an epic night of struggle like Jacob’s — but the kind of blessing that comes in quietly.

It has been a season of blessing more like the one God gives to his sheep in Ezekiel 34:

I will make with them a covenant of peace and banish wild animals from the land,
so that they may live in the wild and sleep in the woods securely.
I will make them and the region around my hill a blessing;
and I will send down the showers in their season;
they shall be showers of blessing.
The trees of the field shall yield their fruit, and the earth shall yield its increase.

I love how gentle and open this blessing is: the very hills around the sheep are a blessing.

Why? Because they receive rain and yield fruit. That’s it. The land does what it is meant to do, and that is blessing enough to keep the sheep safe.

There is no overturning of religious or political systems, no supernatural force of change, no whirlwinds or fiery chariots — there’s just the abundance of the land. That is the blessing.

Breaking the dependence

Notice the text says God sends the showers of blessing in their season. They don’t come all the time. They come in appropriate balance: dryness and rain, sunshine and dark. That balance is life-giving blessing.

I imagine those sheep may have not even noticed the blessing of their safe, abundant hillside. They may have mistaken the showers of blessing for showers of normalcy.

In other words, they may have taken their blessing for granted.

I can relate. Sometimes blessings come into my life so quietly, I almost miss them — as though I’m too dependent on those supernatural fiery whirlwinds to mark the blessings that come in without them.

There is a deep importance around breaking that dependence, around noticing the balance, the abundance, the showers of blessing that we experience.

May we continue to be attentive to our sense of gratitude, our safe places, and the moments of goodness in our lives — no matter how subtle.

Being Blessed…

Being blessed is

drinking steaming mugs of coffee in morning sunshine,

the feeling of grass under toes, soft cat fur under fingers, warm hands caressing shoulders,

the woosh of breath in and out of lungs that quickens to match the pounding of feet on pavement, the pounding of heart in chest.

Being blessed is

hearing “I love you” and “I’m sorry” and “I understand,”

saying “I love you” and “I’m sorry” and “I understand,”

being hugged by a stranger with soft, wet eyes who has told you their life story before they have even learned your name.

Being blessed is

sharing watermelon and spitting out the seeds all the way to the other end of the yard,

childhood memories of fireworks and oak trees and church pews,

hushed in the glow of stained glass sunshine,

the thrill of connection that comes just from holding his hand.

Being blessed is

the deepness of scripture becoming shallow enough to sink in,

the bad coffee and stale cookies and warm smiles at church potlucks,

the glimmer of God as she sparkles across the ocean waves,

as she swoops in pelican form toward earth,

as she tugs at your heart when you pray: Come, come, and may all our souls be homes.

Being blessed is

crying the kind of sobs that catch in your throat,

clenching your fist in anger when the news is bad,

feeling the pulse of your own power– you are someone who matters,

you are someone who changes.

you are.

Being blessed is being awake, wide and alive and salty.

It is to be created creature, made of mud, called by name, known to the depths of yourself.

It is to be weened from yourself, ushered into mystery, lifted and held in this very moment.

It is to be born, again and again, into goodness.

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Thanks for asking us, Emily, what it means to be blessed!

How to Welcome a New Year

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year.
It is that we should have a new soul.      -GK Chesterton

Foster gratitude for the year that has ended; foster hope for the year that is beginning.

Know that for everything there is a season. Spend time reflecting on the season in which you are dwelling at this time in life.

Carve out space in your schedule to play, to rest, to make art — knowing that these, too, are forms of perfect worship.

Soak up the mercy of God, that is new not only every year but every morning! Let that mercy be a call to love yourself and others with transforming love.

Open wider the doors of your heart and home by offering hospitality. Celebration is increased by shared rejoicing.

Begin now to create change in your life and your community by pursuing what makes you come alive. (Because, as Howard Thurman taught, what the world needs is people who have come alive!)

Welcome 2012!