The Other Spiritual Practices: Lent at Bethany

Our Lent is certainly not what we expected this year. But we were already planning to focus on the spirituality of our every day lives. Here’s pastor Vince Amlin’s piece from the newsletter:

A few years ago, at the annual gathering of the covenant group that Rebecca and I share with two other UCC ministers, one of them asked me about how my spiritual practice was going. My immediate reaction was shame. This group was happening 5 months after Nola’s birth, and the truth was, after praying so hard for so many months for her arrival, I hadn’t done much at all lately.

“I don’t really have a spiritual practice at the moment,” I began. But then, I stopped. “Actually, I have been singing a lot to Nola. And that’s been — “

Before I could say anything else, a flood of feeling hit me, and I started to cry. When I could speak again, I said, “I guess that’s been pretty important to me. And pretty spiritual.”

And it had. In those long days and nights of sleeplessness and anxiety, I’d taken to holding Nola and singing to her for hours on end. I chose songs that made me happy, or sad, or songs that spoke about the world I wanted her to live in. I sang often through tears and often through heart-rending joy. And all of that was very much spiritual practice, a path to connection with God.

Even though I know better, whenever anyone says “spiritual practice,” I go to the same old ideas of what that means: prayer, pilgrimage, fasting, discernment, sabbath…And more often than not, I’m hit with a pang of shame, that I don’t do enough of any of them.

Maybe you’re the same way. That’s not what this Lent is about. This Lent is about looking at the other spiritual practices, the ones we do all thetime, often without thinking of them. The regular activities of our lives that connect us to God, center us in peace, and encourage us to be our best selves.

Making music, making dinner, riding a bike, reading a book, washing the dishes, dancing, cuddling, marching in the streets, going to meetings. They can all be spiritual practices. Maybe they are for you.

This Lent, we’re going to take the time to notice the other spiritual practices. The ones we’re already doing. So that we can do them with intention and without shame, knowing that God can show up anywhere and everywhere and does, even and especially in our ordinary lives.