10th Anniversary Celebration of Personal Practices

How time flies! Our premiere issue was fall 1998. Then as now, our goal has been to shed light on spiritual paths. To celebrate our first decade, we invited our contributors, present and past, to share their spiritual practices. We hope you will enjoy — and will employ — these myriad paths to the experience of aliveness and connection.
The Editors

We received so many interesting practices, we couldn't fit them all in the print edition, which appears on this page. Click to read the rest.

Finding My “Gee Spot”
I find a quiet place in nature and I sit still, slow down, and wait. When I slow down long enough, and turn off all of my thoughts and just look and listen, the wonder always comes. Whether it’s the sight of a hawk soaring above or the delicate twittering song of birds that are so tiny they can be heard but not seen, eventually something will touch that spot deep inside me that feels wonder and awe and makes me say “Gee-e-e.”
Betsy S. Franz / writer / naturesdetails.net

Doing Laundry
I get up at 5:30, put in a load of laundry, make a pot of coffee, light candles, and have my journal, a Bible and/or a poetry collection, and a legal pad at the ready. The legal pad is for off-loading my “to do” list from my brain. The journal is for recording my dreams, prayers, and starts of poems. The back of the journal has my prayer list — all the people and situations I try to pray for daily. I am still groggy at 5:30 in the morning, so “be still and know that I am God” is easier for me then, rather than later in the day. The sound of the whirling laundry makes me feel like I am doing something, like something in my life is moving, while I sit and think and pray.
Rev. Susan Baller-Shepard / writer /
spiritualbookclubblog.blogspot.com

Experiencing Yes!
I always try to say yes to experiences, unless they are potentially harmful or deadly boring, and I always follow the arrows. The arrows are everywhere . . . once you become aware of them. They are like signposts customized for you, telling you which choices to make and which way to go. I suppose you could reduce my practices to two words: yes, arrows.
Judith Fein / S&H columnist / globaladventure.us

Gardening
I garden. Gardening is a ritual for radicals, for urbanites, for nomads, and for anybody who wants to stay sufficiently angry, humble, and hopeful to sustain an activist life.
Rev. Donna Schaper / writer / nationbooks.org

Emulating the Spokes-Bear
Jasper is a moon bear. I aspire to practice what he teaches. For 15 years he was kept in the most inhumane conditions — a tiny, filthy “crush cage” on a bear farm in China. (Imagine being pinned in a phone booth.) He had a catheter in his gall bladder so that his bile could be collected. Despite all the pain and indignity he endured, Jasper recovered after rescue and is a genuinely compassionate being and peacemaker. His omniscient eyes say, “All’s well. The past is past. Let go and move on.”
Marc Bekoff / field biologist /
http://literati.net/Bekoff

Composing Haiku
To focus my thoughts
Haiku poems provide my
Daily dose of Zen
Charmian Christie / writer

Bathing in Ice
I wake before daybreak, stuff apple, cheese, and bread into a pack, then walk four miles into the mountains to the river. I let every stitch of clothing fall to the ground. Water clothes me. The river is so cold that my heart slams the inside of my rib cage and pumps new blood fast through my veins. I gasp for air and feel grateful when it plunges into my lungs. The icy cold water shakes me clean.
BK Loren / writer / BKLoren.com

Divine Reading
In the Christian contemplative prayer practice Lectio Divina (Divine Reading), there are four ways to engage with a sacred text: read, reflect, respond, rest. For our daily reading, first we read the passage slowly and listen. We ask, “What is this passage saying?” With a second reading, we ask, “What is this passage saying to me?” Next, we notice if a response to the text is coming from our hearts — an agreement, a feeling of gratitude, a prayer, an action. We ask, “How can we practice this thought as we go through the day?” After a fourth reading, we try to rest in its wisdom and experience it in our lives.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
/ former S&H media editors /
SpiritualityandPractice.com

Seeding Visions
I imagine that tonight I will have the most thrilling dream of my life. As I dream it, I’ll have full awareness and think, this is an honest-to-goodness sacred vision. In this experience I’ll be taken to the wisest Being in the universe and told that I can ask three questions. What will I ask? I write these questions down on a piece of paper and then choose the one word in each sentence that is most important to me. I cut out each of these words and sprinkle them under my pillow for a month. Before sleeping, I think to myself that I’m planting seeds in my imagination with these “three little words” and that anything could happen in the world of my creative imagination. I thoroughly enjoy the process of gardening the interior of my unknown.
Bradford Keeney, Ph.D. / writer /
shakingmedicine.com and mojofest.org

Being Scared
Every day I try to do something I’m scared to do, yet know I must do.
Trebbe Johnson / writer /
visionarrow.com

Engaging the Five Dimensions
I engage in five practices corresponding to the five dimensions of human life: body, heart, mind, soul, and spirit. I engage the body through walking, the heart through chanting Names of God, the mind through studying sacred text, the soul through silent meditation, and the spirit through surrender. In this way I help cultivate balance, compassion, wisdom, insight, and fierce grace. I used to engage in these practices in order to awaken to the realization of the nonduality of God, woman, man, and nature. Now, I just do them because I enjoy doing them.
Rami Shapiro / S&H columnist /
one-river.org

Waiting on Line
One day in the post office, I felt the peace that I had sought during meditation descend upon me unbidden. The choppy surface of my mind settled to a mirror-like stillness that reflected all: the wanted posters, the American flag, my fellows buying stamps. All was suddenly clear — I was no longer waiting. Now, in the bank, at the supermarket, I am always alert. Dead time is precious time. Enlightenment may lurk in the idle seconds. I make a practice of waiting on line.
Jack Kelly / writer /
jackkellywriter.com

Sensing Arms
and Legs
While walking, sitting, cooking, working, singing, or watching TV, I sense my arms and legs from within, without trying to change anything, without valuing what I am finding.
Rani Willems / writer /
ranimu.org

Liking What I See
When I see something that pleases me, I admire it and declare, “I like what I see.” The more I do this, the more I like. When something brings me down, I find something good and say: “I like what I see.”
Shelley Forrester
/ S&H research advisor /
forresternetwork.com

Conversing with the Dead
Down the road from my house, in a peaceful meadow in the hollow of our hill, lies a small Catholic cemetery. It is set between our tiny golf course, pocked with granite boulders, and a track of houses. Many mornings I walk our little dog along that road and pass the cemetery. Every time, I pause and think about the lives of the men, women, and children buried there. I think of the complexity of their emotions and relationships, their efforts to find good work, make a home, and raise their children. I’m reminded of the shortness of their lives and of mine. I wonder about the mystery of it all and feel the bittersweet awareness of lives so engaged with the struggle to be, cut short by the inevitability of death. But my visit with them is always a happy one. I feel a conviviality there, a community with a history and a personality, people who laughed and enjoyed life. I talk to them and ask their help and offer my thanks for the generosity of their lives. It’s a short meditation, and yet for me it is a genuine spiritual practice. Do they hear me? Am I talking to myself? Does it make any sense? These questions don’t come to my mind. I feel an invitation to open my heart, and I respond.
Thomas Moore / S&H columnist /
careofthesoul.net

Running
I run the trails, hills, and forests that surround my home on Bowen Island, British Columbia. I run to get to the heart of it, to send oxygen flowing through my brain and veins, and to clear away the cobwebs. It’s not just the ocean vistas, lush forest canopies, or the possibility of meeting the cougar that makes me feel alive. Running, even when I feel like I’m dragging a baby grand piano through a swamp, makes me feel like anything’s possible.
Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen / writer /
http://theadventurouswriter.com/blog/

Letting Everything Teach Me
I use a gestalt projection technique I learned while I was studying to become a psychologist. For instance, recently as I was sitting in the woods, a deer walked up to within six feet of me. I noticed that it had a grotesquely dislocated right shoulder — its front right leg was just dangling in the air. How am I living dislocated? I asked myself, projecting my life into the image of the deer. As it ran speedily up the hill, the deer’s dislocation was not apparent. Speed, I thought. Yes, that is what disguises my dislocation from the mindfulness, peace, and acceptance for which I long. By projecting my life into the wounded deer, it became my teacher.
Kevin Anderson, Ph.D. / writer 

Remembering
I am probably the last person to ask about practices, because I am so inconsistent in keeping them. Does it count if I can say “Thanks be to God,” or simply “Thanks” on getting up in the morning, instead of a grumpy, groggy “Oh, hell”? And does it count if I say “Thanks” for three mornings in a row or even longer? No matter how much (or how little) I keep the practices, I know they are vital for my spiritual sanity — praying the Lord’s Prayer, praying the psalms, trying to be hospitable to myself and to everyone I meet. What really grounds me is simply a form of remembering. Remembering that I was created to be more than the sum of my parts; remembering that even though in some situations, especially when I feel frustrated or angry, I might wish to ignore this fact, God is a part of my life. This is the God who promised Jacob, “I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.” If I can just remember that, giving thanks comes naturally.
Kathleen Norris / S&H  poetry editor /
BarclayAgency.com/Norris.html

Repairing connections
Once I know that repair is possible, I can find that first step without submitting my autonomy to your needs or view of the situation. Once I connect with my humility and the possibility, I can ask to talk; I can look into your eyes and see your humanness; I can ask a question about your experience and tell you mine. I can do something that signals to you that I am sorry and want to repair the connection. Not all ruptures are repairable, but if I can have the spiritual courage to repair what can be repaired, the ripples offer limitless possibilities.
Alexis Johnson / codirector of center for intentional living /
intentionalliving.com