Lectio divina is a spiritual practice based in reading—spending time enough to go deep with a sacred text. But there are many other spiritual practices based in reading—or speaking or singing—words.
What is a spiritual practice involving words that is meaningful to you?
The creation of a Tibetan Buddhist sand painting, or mandala, is painstaking, sacred work. And the destruction of that mandala is equally sacred work. It beautiful and requires a great deal of effort to create—and isn’t meant to last. Because that is how life is.
What practice helps you handle the transitory nature of all of life?
What happens in our lives, and in the broader world that touches us, is held in our body. Stress accumulates in the neck, the back, the stomach, in systemic changes such as inflammation. We carry the world with us, sometimes in ways that are painful. Finding ways to constructively hold things in tension is always a challenge.
What tension are you currently experiencing? What helps you to let it go?
A Band-Aid solution is a small or temporary fix. But sometimes what you need is just a little bit of help to solve a problem or hold on until things get better.
What small gesture has made a big difference in your life?
“I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s-self is….”
―Walt Whitman
How do you touch your soul by means of your body?
