Writing as Prayer

Consistency is not my strong suit. I get interested in a topic and for several weeks I devour everything I can find. Then I lose interest and move onto something else. According to George Leonard, in his book Mastery, I am a Dabbler. It's not always a bad thing. I love to learn. Being a dabbler means I learn lots of things. But it does make it hard to master something like photography or exercising or eating well or sermon preparation or blogging. Inconsistency is the death of bloggers.

This morning I decided that I want to master one thing. But what one thing should I choose? I'm interested in blogging right now. I'm still working on my sermon preparation process. Worship is my main focus at the church. I wish I were interested in mastering exercise or eating right. I realized the area that affects nearly everything right now is writing. Writing this blog. Writing my Fresh Worship blog. Writing sermons. Journaling. Tweeting. Writing even affects advertising our church's movie night and our new children's Sunday school.

So I will focus on writing. I remember reading that writer Natalie Goldberg made writing her practice. Writing, all types of writing, will be my spiritual practice. Writing will be my prayer. I won't tack on a prayer at the end of my posts. I won't just ask God for help at the beginning of a sermon. I will make the entire act of writing into prayer. It's something I can do every day.

What is your spiritual practice? What is your prayer?

Do You Pray Right?

When I was in college, I was involved with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. They talked alot about a "Daily Quiet Time." Good idea, although I got the impression that it should be daily (I'm not too good with daily consistency), and in the morning (I'm not a morning person). You were also supposed to read a portion of Scripture and answer questions about it.

Nothing wrong with any of that, except I wasn't too good at doing it. So for the past 20 years I've had in the back of my mind that "I don't pray right." Along the way I've read books like Listening to God by John Ackerman where I learned that there are different types of spirituality, and I'm more a contemplative that meets God through silence. I've discovered the labyrinth and A Guide to Walking Meditation, and learned that I pray better when I'm moving my body. I am nourished by Taize, the music, the prayer services, and now perhaps the podcasts. (Thanks Steve Whitney, for you post on morning prayer for night people, and the links to prayer sites. )I read Everyday Spiritual Practice, and learned that anything from balance to adversity to marriage to recycling can be a spiritual practice. (How about fasting between meals?) I keep in mind a quote from Richard Foster, that just like a child can never draw a bad picture, a child of God can never pray a bad prayer.

And yet... And yet I still have in the back of my mind "I'm not praying right." Why? Why has that stuck so deeply in my soul?

Dear Lord, teach me to pray. And Lord, help me to know that I am already "praying right."

Breathing the Holy Spirit

I've been having trouble breathing. I went to my allergy doctor the other day. She said it was probably caused by my allergies, so I'm supposed to bump up my allergy medicine. She also gave me some breathing exercises to do. I'm supposed to breath in through my nose, and then breathe out of my mouth slowly, for five minutes at a time, eight times a day.

Before my appointment with my allergy doctor, I met with my spiritual director. During the meditation at the beginning of the session, she told me to breathe in the Holy Spirit. All I could think was, "I can't breathe." I wonder if any of us are having trouble breathing in the Holy Spirit? Or maybe we breathe those shallow breathes instead of the deep, diaphram breaths. Do we need breathing exercises to help us breathe in the Holy Spirit? When I do my breathing exercises, I'll think about breathing in the Spirit.

My pastor friend Caroline said that when she leads the prayers of the people in her church, she starts with centering prayer. She prints in the bulletin instructions, such as "With each breath in, breathe in the Holy Spirit, and with each breath out, breathe out your worries." She gives people about 20 seconds of silence to practice the centering prayer, and then she goes on with the prayers of the people.

With each breath in, breathe in the Holy Spirit. With each breath out, breathe out your worries. Practice that for five minutes at a time, eight times a day. Or whenever you think of it.