Can you create your own Spiritual Practice?
What’s your spiritual practice?
Now, before you say anything about attending services, saying prayers, singing songs, and obeying all the rules while living by grace, let me reframe the question a few ways:
What makes you feel connected to yourself, the earth, others, The Divine, like you don’t know where you end and they begin?
What lights up and makes your blood feel alive?
What grounds you, gives you a healthy sense of being here, being solid?
What do you love? Who do you love?
What are your values?
Where do you go to find rest? Inspiration? Purpose?
What keeps you going when things are hard?
The answers to these questions provide clues about your personal spiritual practices.
I've discovered myself returning to little rituals and habits I had as a child, teen, in my early 20s... things that I did that felt organic and like they came from my soul, that brought me comfort and peace, focus and purpose, rest and wonder. These are the things I innately turned to before any church, pastor, or self-proclaimed religious leader taught me to do otherwise.
Growing up, I loved a niche genre of fiction: Sci-Fi historical Celtic stories. I devoured everything Celtic I could. Folklore, history, literature, art, poetry, dance... When I engaged in any of it, I felt a resonance deep in my spirit. I learned how to draw Celtic knotwork, and I covered my teenage room walls with Celtic art and poetry (what else do you do when you grow up in fundamentalism and pop culture is off-limits?). At 18, I went to Bible College, and I was told to "put away childish things" so that I could focus on "The Call," the more important work of the church. And so I did. I took down the pictures, I sent the books to goodwill, I removed the poetry from my vocabulary.
Oh, I missed that connection.
As I deconstructed my faith and started to rebuild my spirituality from the ground up (yes, you are allowed to do that... more on it tomorrow), it was a wonderful reunion when I fell in love with Celtic writers and poets again, like John Philip Newell, whose work has been pivotal in my reclamation, John O'Donahue, and Steven Lawhead. It turns out that my ancestry is rooted in Celtic tradition and culture. Something still sparks inside me when I engage with it.
That spiritual connection and practice were there long before I was taught what was an appropriate practice by the church and those who claimed to know, and even though I tried to replace it for many years with practices that never came close to the same resonance, it didn't take long to reconnect and find my place.
I've come to believe that spirituality is the intentional practice of connection. It's unseen but also manifests tangibly. It's woo-woo but backed by science. It's the process of feeling your joy, really experiencing it, and moving through pain without being swallowed whole. And yes, you might go to a church, partake in some rituals, sing a few songs, and recite a few prayers, but all of those practices have only ever been the vehicle of...
Connection.
That's what I felt all those years ago when I would stay up late at night reading Steven Lawhead novels, and it's what I feel stir within me today when I read John O'Donahue.
What about you?
This week, we'll explore spiritual practice at a foundational level. It's my hope that you'll find some clarity about what spirituality means to you and how you can apply it in your life. It's my prayer (desire even) that you will learn how to connect to yourself, to others, to life as it happens in you and around you, in such a way that you actually experience it, connect to it, and it, to you.
"Your sacred space is where you can find yourself over and over again." – Joseph Campbell.
So much love, as always.
See you in the App,
Liz Milani xo
Instagram: @thepracticeco
From this week’s series titled "A Spirituality Of Your Own," with a subscription in the App. Hope to see you there.
