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Opportunities for spiritual practice in every day life.

"Living in Spirit" appears monthly in the Daily Review.
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Thursday, October 1, 2015

I wish I had more time to give to my spiritual life....

“I wish I had more time to give to my spiritual life” is a common refrain of our age. As a minister of two churches, mother of a teenager, and wife, those words have come out of my mouth on more than one occasion.

But we have what time we have. Our spiritual life is not something we schedule for a hypothetical time in the future when we finally have time, it is happening right now in every moment whether we are paying attention to it or not.

Spiritual Director Janet Corso encourages us to think not just of our “Prayer Life” but our “Life in Prayer.” While I highly recommend setting aside time each day for some manner of spiritual practice, we shouldn’t mistake those times we set aside for the whole of our spiritual life--our spirit is available to us any time. God is available to us at any time. Whenever you have the urge to connect to your spirit, to connect to the divine, I encourage you not to add it to your always-growing to-do list, but to stop in that moment and simply reach out in whatever way your spirit is encouraging you to reach.

All of us have a spirit. All of us have a relationship with the divine, whether you devoutly observe the practices of your religious tradition, or you haven’t thought about it since you were a kid.. I urge you to follow that instinct, to grab hold of that moment when you think “I wish I had time for my spiritual life” and right in that moment --in the grocery store line, at your desk at work, while mowing the lawn -- just reach out. If you are part of a religious tradition, perhaps a particular prayer or practice will come to mind in that moment. If you are not sure what to do, it’s okay to ask for guidance from your spirit, from the divine. Even if you are an atheist or an agnostic, that desire to reconnect to your truest deepest self is a basic human urge, and like eating or sleeping or raising children, something deep inside you knows what to do. So don’t be afraid to ask, to look truthfully into your heart, and to listen to what you find there.

You do have time for your spiritual life--in every moment of every day.

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