Working with seekers in the process of spiritual direction, I am often touched by how frustrating it can be to establish a spiritual practice when life is so busy, especially for those who work full time or have young children to care for or both!
I like to think that spiritual practice does not have to be complicated to be effective, but it does help if it is something that you engage in consistently. Rituals or routines of any kind can be like a golden thread that runs through your day or week or even year, connecting your experience of human life with the spiritual reality behind it in an intentional way.
And perhaps this is the fundamental truth of what it means to have a spiritual practice – that we do something that reminds us that we are spiritual beings having a human experience.
Even the simplest gesture can help us step back from the melee of life into the interior world where we are connected to the source of our being. Practices that accomplish that as well as those that bring us into awareness that the source is where we are connected to everyone and every aspect of the physical world can open our minds and hearts to ways we can be more present to what is happening around us and more intentional in how we choose to participate.
One of the simplest practices that someone shared with me years ago, was the idea of choosing one word as the focus for a period of time, such as gratitude or humility or forgiveness. You can choose a new word each week or make the word the focus for your entire year. Tacking the word up on the wall at work or on the visor of your car or on your refrigerator at home invites you to stop and focus at odd moments of the day, even as you are preparing dinner, driving to work or taking a coffee break. Those moments can be filled with chatter in our heads, or they can be turned into moments of attention that can change the entire quality of our day to something deep and meaningful.
