I am not a very disciplined person. If you try to follow my blog you already know this. I am unpredictable as to when I will write a blog and how frequently one will appear. Part of that is because I wait until something strikes me as worthy of note and part of it is because I am just not disciplined to write at a certain time on a certain day. Even when I set myself up to try and follow a regime, I inwardly rebel and break my own rules.
It is no surprise then that, last month, when my Spiritual Director asked me what my devotional practice is I confessed that I do not have a practice. I pray when I think about it and meditate when I am forced to. I say prayers of gratitude at night if I don’t fall asleep first. Understandably she looked at me with concern. She said, “I feel you should be spending time with God.” Then she said, “I don’t know what the consequences are for not doing that, but I know they are dire.” Yikes – that sounded serious. She encouraged me to set aside a period of time everyday, saying, “I don’t care if it is only 3 minutes, I just want you to sit with God.”
I agreed to three minutes every morning. I did it twice. This month when I went to see my Spiritual Director she asked me how it was going. I told her that I had really liked the two times I did it but admitted that I then ‘fell off the rails’. I whined that I find it sooooo hard to stop and sit and not be feeling as if I should be doing something. She reminded me again that we are only talking three minutes. Then she gave me some tips on behaviour modification. She knows that I love to check my email. She knows that I check my email frequently. Confession : I check my email when I get up in the morning and before I go to bed at night and about a thousand times in between. I say I don’t have time to meditate but I seem to have loads of time to check my email. My Director knows me and she is right in her observation that at the end of the day I don’t feel very good about the fact that I cannot resist email but I feel I have no time to pray. So, she gave me a new encouragement. Each morning BEFORE I check my email I am to sit in prayer for three minutes. The behaviour mod. part is that the email is my reward (yes, you armchair psychologists, think Pavlov’s dogs!). So I have been doing that.
What I am realizing is that I find it hard to just be and to not be doing – even if what I am doing is frittering away my time! But it is getting better. Today, after my three minutes I did a little reading of a devotional book a friend gave me. In my prayer time I was thinking about some friends who are going through some struggle. I was asking how I might best be a support to them. I was wondering how difficulty can be a time for growth and how hardship can strengthen us. You can imagine my surprise and delight when the two quotes that leapt off the page for me were, first a scripture verse, “Test everything; hold fast to what is good.” I Thessalonians 5:21 followed by this lovely quote from Dame Julian of Norwich. “But all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things will be well.” Both are reminders I need to hear in this time of worry and concern.
My Spiritual Director is correct. My day goes better when I start it with some time for grounding myself in a spiritual practice. I am going to try and keep on with my three minutes. Who knows, I may advance to four.
Do you have a daily discipline or spiritual practice? How does it strengthen you?
I love your blogs! You check your emails 1000 times a day, well I look for your latest blog posting a little less than that, but more than once a day. Your posts are always relevant and personal and I really do enjoy reading them irregularly because that’s the anticipation and reward I get from never knowing when you’ll be writing next. Thanks!