Plants need water, specific sunlight, and the right type of soil and container. Some require specific pruning, and maybe even extra nutrients, while others are hearty. Regardless of type, plants exhibit healthy leaves when treated with care. Plants need tending.

The same is true of our spiritual life.

Rev. Sherry Ward, trained spiritual director and Retreat House partner, sees our spiritual life similarly to that of soil. With the right elements, healthy soil produces vegetation that is vibrant and alive, bringing joy to those who encounter it.

“When we don’t cultivate our spiritual life, we can become totally pot bound,” says Sherry. “Just like a plant, we can become so knotted up and packed into our container, that water, or the Holy Spirit, cannot run through, and we stop producing leaves and fruit,””

Do you desire more room for the Holy? Sherry invites us to consider practices to help us cultivate life lived in the Spirit:

Participate in Breath Prayer

Experiment with praying a word or short phrase that you can express in the time it takes you to breathe in and out once. Breath prayers, an ancient spiritual discipline, can help you find stress relief quickly in any situation. It is also a time to honor God.

So often we get focused on a project, goal or task, and it blocks out everything else. While this can be a normal reaction, we can miss out on the joy of our journey. Sherry encourages us to take just one to five minutes a day for a breath prayer.

Retreat House offers weekly Breath Prayer, Mondays at 1 pm.

Find Something that Sparks Joy

This one looks different for all of us. For Sherry, nature is where she finds her consolation and inspiration.

“I enjoy taking long walks, says Sherry. Just stopping to look at something that really captures me, and then I look for a long time, long enough for it to sort of come alive.”
Whether in your house, your office or classroom, whatever your environment, the key is finding something that captures your imagination and sparks joy. It might be a painting, an object, or a plant that shows a new bud in the morning, anything that causes you to feel centered and reminds you of God’s creation and the beauty of our world.
“We all have things that sort of catch our breath,” says Sherry. “If I notice a painting I love, I can give thanks to God for the person who developed the potential God gave them to develop that painting.”

Read Scripture

Reading the Psalms can serve as a refuge when life seems hard or we need comfort. While there are gifts during this time, life in a pandemic can feel especially hard. The Psalmists have much to say about wondering where God is when life and the world we know seems at a loss, and Sherry recommends reading some of their cries and questions as inspiration for you to write your own Psalm – what is going on in your life? What do you want to ask God? Meditate and read this as your personal prayer. Take time to see what God is teaching you, or how the Divine might be speaking to you, calling you.

Take time to Journal

Journaling helps us keep a record of how God is working in our life. It also gives us space to organize our thoughts, to write down prayers, visions and dreams we might otherwise forget. Writing laments, hopes, graces, etc. can have a powerful effect on our connection to the Divine as we might begin noticing threads or patterns in God’s ways with us.

“Our lives are a series of cultivations, says Sherry. We are moved to different soil at different times. We can cultivate by driving through the field with a big tractor, turning up the land, or we can do it gradually and intentionally, gently reaping a harvest.”

Seeing the fruit of cultivating spiritual practices varies from person to person. Many times it creates a fuller, loving view of how we see the world and ourselves in it. While for some, it might be a new or renewed relationship, either with ourselves, God or others. Or, perhaps it is both of these things.

Wherever you feel peace and energy, Retreat House invites you to enter into a place of cultivation. You are welcome to join us for weekly offerings where you might develop a new way to see and experience God. Regardless of your method, we would love to hear from you! Share your stories with us.

For additional insight into spiritual practices, we recommend Seven Sacred Pauses:Living Mindfully throughout the Hours of the Day by Macrina Wiederkehr.

Song of the Seed, poem taken from Song of the Seed: A Monastic Way of Living by Macrina Wiederkehr:

Life unfolds a petal at a time

Slowly

The beauty of the process is crippled when I try to hurry growth

Life has its inner rhythm which must be respected

It cannot be rushed or hurried

Like daylight stepping out of darkness

Like morning creeping out of night

Life unfolds slowly

A petal at a time

Like a flower opening to the sun

Slowly God’s call unfolds

A word at a time

Slowly

A disciple is not made in a hurry

Slowly I become like the one to whom I am listening

Life unfolds a petal at a time

Like you and I becoming followers of Jesus

Disciplined into a new way of living

Deeply and slowly

Be patient with life’s unfolding petals

If you hurry the bud it withers

If you hurry life it limps

Each unfolding is a teaching

A movement of grace

Filled with silent pauses

Breathtaking beauty

Tears and heartache

Life unfolds a petal at a time

Deeply and slowly

May it comes to pass

Make Room for the Holy: Cultivating Spiritual Practices was written by Emily Turner and originally published on Retreat House Spirituality Center’s blog.