So the last two days I've really been trying, I've said a lot more prayers out loud.  In generally I think you could say I've been more prayerful.  But I still feel that I can get better at it.  So that's what I'm going to keep working on.

More tomorrow.

I am reading a book by Kate Braestrup called Beginner's Grace.  

It is about prayer.  A little bit about how to compose a prayer, and a little bit about the situations where prayer might fit in to daily life, and a little bit about a bunch of different types of prayer.  It is filled with stories from her own life as a chaplain to game wardens and as a mother and widow and daughter and friend.

Inspired by this book, I am going to try to commit to a couple practices regularly for the month of March.

One practice is to pray out loud more - to form the words and create whole sentences or at least whole phrases and to hear the prayers in my own voice.  Many of the prayers that I just mouth silently or form in my head aren't really whole thoughts, they are just half-formed thought bubbles about a general topic.   A lot of times,  I just stop and breathe and try to connect to gratitude and the feeling of being loved.  Which is fine but let's say I wanted to pray with somebody else, or I wanted to lead a prayer, or I wanted to be absolutely sure what I'm praying for/about.  It'd be better if I became more skilled at vocalizing my prayers.  For this next month, I want to stop and say things out loud, things that would make complete sense to other people if they heard me speak it.

The other practice I want to commit to is to stop and pray at the markers that Kate Braestrup calls "bells of mindfulness," which is a term she got from Thich Nat Hahn.  She describes them as "phenomena that you are likely to encounter that can trigger a moment of conscious attention."  Three examples that she gives is meals, bedtime, and parting from loved ones.  I am going to try to catch these moments and speak prayers.  I don't expect to be perfect at it, but I'm going to commit to try.

So one of the things I've been doing has been attending "Faith Formation" sessions on Mondays and "Bible Study" on Tuesdays. Both of these have been opportunities to discuss religious and spiritual ideas with a context, text, or set of suggestions to give the discussion some focus.

 I know a lot of people who describe themselves as "spiritual but not religious," or who say "I create my own religion." I think this is super awesome and I'm always excited for them. But in my own case, I believe that if I don't talk out loud about my own beliefs and values, those beliefs don't shape who I am and the actions I make nearly as much as they do if I "own it" by opening talking about what I believe. 

I've heard it said that "you believe what you hear yourself say about yourself." When my beliefs change, or when I decide I want to live in a way that is more consistent with my values, I always find that it takes a long time for me to find and become comfortable with new vocabulary for what I believe, and that generally I am unable to put my new beliefs or my new commitment into practice right away, it always takes a lot of work. I backslide into old habits and old beliefs. But when I talk out loud about my commitment and my beliefs, it seems to cause an "embodiment" of those beliefs, I become comfortable with a new vocabulary, I stop feeling "weird" and "goofy" about my new beliefs/commitments, and I begin to live them. So I welcome the opportunity to wrestle with questions of value and belief in a group, because it really helps me become the new person that I desire to become.

 Another reason I really enjoy discussing beliefs and values in these sessions is because of the awesome new ideas and perspectives I learn from complete strangers. I don't see my religious beliefs as monolithic. They change all the time. My beliefs today just represent my best understanding today. The important commitment I make to myself is not to be "right" and stubbornly unchangeable but instead to be as rigorously honest with myself (and others) as I can be, and to always remain teachable. The ideas I'm hearing in these sessions are helping me a lot. So to sum up, I'd say that these sessions definitely are an important spiritual practice. I'd recommend it to anybody.

 In fact, for my money, I think participation in small groups openly and warmly discussing the biggest questions (of evil, illness, love, grief, commitment, forgiveness, brokenness, death, anger, food, etc) is a more valuable spiritual practice than any solo practice such as individual prayer and mediation. At least that's what I believe today.

posted this on facebook: Reading the New Testament closely, it seems like Jesus was pretty solidly against biblical literalism, and regularly advocated less literal but more loving interpretations of scripture. Is this a sign that today's biblical literalists are making a mistake that Jesus would look poorly on, or did Jesus have a special license to re-interpret scripture, and after him, everybody else should just be literalists?

Hello, this is my new blog. Welcome. I would LOVE IT if you read it and leave comments. Feedback and interaction is the whole point of posting it rather than just keeping a private journal. I'm doing an "individual contract" this quarter for college (TESC). The primary objective of this blog is to report my work and findings for that contract. But this work means so much more to me than just college credit. I feel that I am in a new phase of my own "faith formation," and I'm working hard at investigating spiritual practice and issues of embodiment.

 The name of the contract is "Spiritual Practice in the 21st Century - Public and Private." I have committed to doing some research and reading about spiritual practices, and I have committed to keeping regular daily spiritual practices, including trying new things. I should give a little bit of background. I have been studying religions and spiritual practice for a few years now. I started reading important ancient spiritual texts about 10 years ago, and I started studying religion at college about 2 years ago. I have read Buddhist scripture, Hindu scripture, Daoist scripture, Confucian scripture, most of the Hebrew bible and the New Testament, and various other ancient sacred texts and wisdom literature. I focused on Judaism and Islam for the first two quarters at college. The next two quarters I focused on communities of faith. Last quarter and this quarter I am especially engaged with Christianity, although I am considering any and all spiritual practices, Christian or otherwise.

 Here are the things I'm doing for reading and research:

 1) I am participating in a Faith Formation group at an open, affirming Christian church that I would describe as "progressive."

 2) I am participating in weekly Bible Study at the same church.

 3) I am helping to organize a social justice action with the same church.

 4) I am helping to record stories in a church oral history project, interviewing church members about their life and church experiences.

 5) I am visiting other places of worship or community spiritual practice, not all of them Christian.

 6) I will conduct an informal survey about individual spiritual practices, through a church and also on the internet.

 7) I am reading these books: "Beginner's Grace: Bringing Prayer to Life" by Kate Braestrup, The Sacred Way: Spiritual Practices for Everyday Life by Tony Jones, and Everyday Spiritual Practice: Simple Pathways for Enriching Your Life, edited by Scott W. Alexander.

 Here are the spiritual practices that have already been a part of my life prior to this contract:

 1) I sometimes pray spontaneous prayers that I improvise.

 2) I sometimes read prayers from books, or repeat rote prayers that I have memorized.

 3) I attend a Unitarian Universalist church and sometimes participate in Sunday Worship services, which includes something that I see as group prayer, although some others participating might object to the word "prayer." I also consider the singing, the liturgy, and listening to a sermon all to be spiritual practice.

 4) I study ancient texts - right now I'm reading the Bible, almost every day.

 5) I have a regular practice in which I attempt to regularly take a personal inventory, and when I'm wrong, promptly admit it. Sometimes this inventory is mental, but at other times I do it on paper or share it with someone I trust.

 6) I sometimes meditate.

 7) There are other practices in my life that I sometimes think of as spiritual practice - exercise, eating right, service to others, carrying a message of recovery from addiction, breathing deeply.

 I hope to write a blog post about this "other stuff" at some point in the future, and about the definition of spiritual practice. I really should stress that this is all about practice, rather than belief. Christianity is generally seen as a religion of Orthodoxy, which means "right belief." Judaism, in contrast, is generally seen as a religion of Orthopraxy, i.e. "right practice." But I believe that even though Christianity has creeds and frequently focuses on beliefs and the authority of the Bible text, there are also a lot of spiritual practices in the Christian tradition and other orthodox traditions. I am concentrating on learning how do DO spirituality, rather than merely on WHAT I believe.

This is what I want to commit to doing: I want to continue my practice of reading sacred text each day, but I want to spend more time contemplating the text and possibly writing about it. I want to pray every day, possibly on a fixed schedule. I want to meditate regularly. And as I study other practices, I want to experiment with new practices or new ways of doing the practices I've tried in the past. And I want to commit to reporting about all this on this blog. Watch this space, subscribe to the feed if you can, and please feel encouraged to give me feedback.