How Lovely is Your Dwelling Place
Wednesday Wisdom.
How lovely is your dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts! (psalm 84)
Last week, I blogged about how one question opens the door to another question. I’m really enjoying allowing my questions to emerge and guide me. My question last week was: How am I living the path of compassionate love? And it relates to this week’s question: How do we nourish our dwelling place for the Holy? Because what we feed our bodies, minds and spirits is how we live the path of compassionate love.
This question comes out of my observations of what thoughts and feelings are stirring in me during the early morning as I begin to wake up. Are they anxious or calm thoughts; and what am I feeling? One thing I am trusting is that whatever is stirring in me, it’s important for me to be gentle with it.
Noticing is an important spiritual practice. I pray to recognize the Holy in whatever way it comes to me during this day. This noticing is a spiritual practice.
Yesterday, I did a lovely presentation for a group in a training program for hospital chaplaincy and spiritual care. It’s a multicultural, interfaith program so I appreciated the mutual respect in which we came together.
I led the participants in a group spiritual direction process. We used this question to reflect upon: Can you name a recent experience of the Holy?
We meditated over the question, and then I invited the participants to draw as a way to connect more deeply with their experiences.
After our personal reflections, we listened and shared our sacred stories in a contemplative way. One person shared about her experience of marveling at the night sky, filled with stars and the planet Saturn during a recent camping trip; another person shared about putting her head on her partner’s lap and expressing her vulnerability and fear; another person shared about allowing herself to have no expectations and to be fully present to the moment of drawing a circle on her paper; and I shared about compassionately listening to my husband talk to me recently about his personal frustrations.
Noticing our real life experiences of the Sacred is precious and powerful. It allows us to see how we are nourishing our dwelling place, and, perhaps how we would like to more.
I invite you to try the practice of Noticing over the next week:
Practice:
- Be still. Quiet yourself. Take three deep, but gentle, breaths.
- Reflect over the last twenty-four hours. Let your heart and mind notice where, when and how you experienced the Holy.
- Use your senses to help you: what did you see, hear, touch, taste?
- Be with your experience, whether it’s joyful or sorrowful. Invite yourself to see how your everyday experience is where the Holy and Sacred are truly present.
- Savor this experience by continuing to be with it in prayer or journal writing.
- Read all of psalm 84