Our Spiritual Disciplines: Routines of the House

Growing up, my mom and dad always insisted on Saturday morning that my sister and I would help them clean the house before we got to do anything we called fun. Though it wasn’t meant to be punishment, it sure felt like it. I would regularly complain: “Why can’t I watch cartoons like my other… Read More

Our Spiritual Disciplines: Summer Sabbath Shift

I was introduced to the idea of spiritual practices more than thirty years ago.  Daily journaling before my children were awake was my way in.  Soon I began praying my surroundings and the events of the day as I walked around the neighborhood or the ball fields as my practiced. Choir became a spiritual practice… Read More

Our Spiritual Disciplines: Walking

Solvitur ambulando.  It is solved by walking. ~ Variously attributed to Diogenes and to Augustine. I was a small child when I absorbed the connection between walking and spirituality.  A short gravel drive connected our house to that of my grandparents’ – my first regular walk, no doubt seemingly a long one for short legs.  Destination?… Read More

Our Spiritual Disciplines: Pinteresting

The most fulfilling spiritual practice in this season of my life developed unintentionally. As Pinterest became a part of the zeitgeist, I thanked the heavens that I had just exchanged my marriage vows. Those creative ideas that appeared charming online could only lead to headache and a shame spiral if I attempted them. I’d tried… Read More

Our Spiritual Disciplines: Photography

I was introduced to photography as a spiritual practice or discipline while participating in Spiritual Director’s training in 2013 and since then it has become an integral and essential part of my life in all kinds of ways: social, family, ministry and especially spiritually. I ‘see’ differently, there are times when I see my surroundings… Read More

Our Spiritual Disciplines: Never on Pointe

When my son was three he started taking ballet.  He had been doing parent and child music classes before that and he corrected me that it was not the singing, but the dancing that he loved.  So when The Ballet School offered a special to get boys interested in ballet, we signed him right up.  He… Read More

WitsEndsDay: Spiritual Fantasies

Sometimes I fantasize about a “real” spiritual life–the kind I read about in books: hours hiking in the woods every week, extended quiet times with the sunrise and God, week-long silent retreats, pilgrimages to Iona, contemplative examens at the end of each day. My fantasies though, are generally interrupted by a child needing a Kleenex,… Read More