Sacred Practices to support transformation

Excerpt from 2:00 min:

What practices do you engage in, so as to transform your mind or the way you think about things, not what you think, but the way you think. For example, a walk in the woods. Our communities taking a walk in the woods together on Tuesday—sacred practice—why? Because we know it will transform the inner landscape of our being. For me it always involves a soundtrack, sometimes kitchen dancing, other times silence, art, poetry, always. And whatever those doorways, I know that on the other side of them I will, if only for moments, experiencing myself as a completely different person. And more than anything else, those experiences, those sacred practices liberate me from a prison of my own making.

Let me leave you with one last story about how good words, good poetry, good music, wonderful trees can be responsible for enabling us to repent or transform the inner landscape of our being. It was in 1998 when my mother died quite prematurely of cancer. We were caring for her at home. We had a night nurse come in for the midnight shift, and she died at about 3:30 in the morning, and the nurse called all of the family together to be in her bedroom. And my mother loved choral music, and my brother happened to push play, and there was a CD in the CD player, and it was the Messiah. And what we heard in that moment, just randomly, but maybe not, were the first words of that oratorio, words from Isaiah, spoken to a community living in exile, living with some really dark circumstances, having lost life as they knew it, and they lost their understanding of God as they knew that as well. And these words came, "Comfort, comfort ye my people." And as those words suddenly flooded the room in which my mother had died, I can tell you that it transformed the inner landscape of all of us, and it didn't change the facts, but I think it swept us up so that as a family we experienced ourselves to be deeply held by that great mystery. But more than that, I think, recognizing that we, like all of us, are invited to step into the unfolding of a sacred story.

I know that that was memorable and transformative and restorative for all of us that early morning at the end of 1998. So I leave you with an invitation: What practices do you need to commit to on a daily basis, at least a weekly basis, that you know transform the inner landscape of your being so that you can make a deep connection with your identity as a piece of God in this unfolding, unpredictable, sometimes scary, always glorious sacred story?

Covid Sunday practice: For Such a Time as This: Living With Curiosity, Creativity & Courage.