Three Questions to ask about Lenten Spiritual Practices
I grew up thinking that Lenten spiritual practices always meant giving something up. Fasting. Giving up chocolate, coffee, or meat as a daily reminder to pray. And for quite a few years I tried giving something up and each time I craved it, I would turn my thoughts to prayer and notice how my longing had a deeper desire with it. That deeper desire was for the sacred, for holy presence.
I was an adult (and probably in seminary) before I realized I might also choose to take up something for Lent rather than quit or give up something. Trying out a new practice is another way to attend to the holy in one’s life. I have often used the season of Lent to deepen or enhance a spiritual practice that is already familiar to me. A few years ago I focused on turning anger around each time I encountered it. This helped me to recognize the value of anger for acknowledging my most deeply significant values.
Today I want to offer you three questions with the hope that they may assist you as you choose your spiritual discipline or practice for Lent. Whether you are giving something up or taking something up, I invite you to try these questions as you discern your Lenten spiritual practice for this season.
1) Is it calling to you?
When I began teaching the practice of contemplative prayer many years ago, I watched people try it for the first time. I began to understand that like vocations for work, spiritual practices also needed calling. Practices like prayer and meditation, walking and writing, ministry and parenting, are vocations, and they call to us.
Soย when you are choosing to experiment or try out a new spiritual practice, pay attention to what keeps showing up in your life. If the spiritual practice is attracting you, then perhaps it will be more likely to stick around. And if it stays around more easily, then it becomes more sustainable.
2) Is it sustainable?
Asking ourselves if we can sustain a new kind of prayer, meditation, or embodied spiritual practice is good discernment. How can we integrate this practice into our lives? If you want to take up walking prayer, but currently have an injured body, or do not live near a safe walking place, then that practice may need to wait until another season of your life.
Physical ability, health, and access to places and materials are important. But perhaps even more important is the question of integrating a spiritual practice into one’s everyday life and work. For example breath prayers and spiritual practices related to food and water can be very sustainable because they connect to aspects of our lives that we must do each day.
3) Do you have a community of support?
All genuine spiritual practices are rooted in particular times and places and communities. Quite a few practices like the ones Richard Foster describes in his classic book The Celebration of Discipline, sound likeย something to do alone or in solitude. Yet they arose from communities of faith. And if we want to sustain our spiritual practices we need other people who will be in conversation with us.
For me journaling and writing more broadly for work and for connecting with other people as we learn, is one of the most long-standing spiritual practices in my life. Of course school work leads to a great deal of writing. And I have spent much of my life as a student or teacher, so writing is unavoidable. But it is also a practice that continues to call to me. It is a practice that makes me want to connect to other writers.
So this season I am working with a team of hosts. We are delighted to offer LENT @ the Writing Table. If writing will be your spiritual discipline for the season of Lent? I hope you will consider joining our community of writers for encouragement, accountability, and support.
Learn more about LENT @ the Writing Table.ย
Save your seat for the season of Lent.ย
We will meet mornings 1030a ET // 930a CT // 830a MT // 730a PT
on weekdays from Ash Wednesday 2/14 thru Good Friday 3/29.
Hosts include Traci Smith, Erin Robinson Hall, Betsy Turner, Elizabeth-Anne Lovell, and myself. We will be delighted to welcome you!
(click on the image below to register, or visit the registration page.ย https://3mmm.us/Lent@WT
