Devotional Practices and Doing Things Differently This Time
On meeting myself where I’m at, leading with love, and resisting perfectionism
As is typical this time of year, I’m finding myself with lower motivation and increased desire for rest. A big win is that I (almost) never shame myself for this anymore. It’s taken many years and a lot of trial and error but I have figured out some things that really work for me in this time of year. I need to get up earlier so I can walk in the early morning sun. I need to eat soup and apples. Once it’s dark, I need to bundle myself in a giant blanket on the couch and rest. I need more silence. Generally, I need to do less. This requires regular check-ins with myself around needs and boundaries. This requires a commitment to loving myself and knowing I have my own back first. A commitment I renew by showing up to these devotional practices, sometimes when I don’t really want to. Tending takes work but if I can center it in loving myself, my motivation improves.
I’m still feeling deep grief about the election and have taken the last few weeks to tend to myself and many of these practices. My grief is also so much bigger than the election. The general state of things. The experience of 2019 to 2024 and even before that. Probably something in there that you’re thinking about, too. There are so many things. It can be easy to feel paralyzed by the sheer enormity of it all. It wasn’t lost on me and many internet meme-sters that the Pantone color of the year is basically shit brown.
On a very basic level, my devotional practices are about remembering that life isn’t shit. Not right here in front of me in this moment. Even as my heart holds so many other truths. My practices are about putting enough space and distance between myself and the weight of the world that I can hear my own thoughts, feel myself in my body. Acts of devotion and care that sustain me. That are sometimes very mundane.
I just completed a 12-week strength-training program. Weightlifting has become a devotional practice for me. It has made just about everything in my life better and sometimes it’s really hard and annoying and I don’t want to do it. I notice I like feeling myself getting stronger. Walking is a devotional practice I’ve had for more than a decade. These practices are times where I can check in with myself. Times where I notice things. Time when I can talk to G*d. Times when I am just with myself in silence.
Pulling tarot cards. Writing in my journals. Brushing my teeth. Flossing. Chopping fruits and vegetables. Routines and rituals yes but they don’t have to be.
I’ve also been letting myself be a beginner at things, letting myself try new things and not be good at them and go through the awkwardness of learning and improving, using my tenacity to sustain me along the way. One of those things is drawing in Procreate. I have been practicing hand-lettering this year and have really enjoyed that while still having a lot more learning to do. I have also just been letting myself free draw. In that I have really noticed how little I let myself just be messy and see what comes in a creative practice. I want more of this. Here is one I made this week:
A question I’ve been asking myself is: what do I want to do differently this time? Some answers: consume less news, consume less social media, be (even more) intentional about creating and investing in community and where I choose to spend my time, energy, and resources. I want to tend to my nervous system better than I was able to from 2016-2021. I want to panic less and take more action. I want to remember my power and our collective power. I want to endeavor to lead with love.
In my walk today, I thought about Viktor Frankl and Man’s Search for Meaning. The reminder that we, as humans, can choose our response to any given situation.
I also thought about Heather Heyer, which surprised me a bit. I have never forgotten Heather or her murder in 2017. I was living in Charlottesville at the time as white nationalists descended on our town. The images of that time still feel surreal to me even though I know I lived them. Nothing prepares you for seeing a seething mob of white men carrying burning torches, marching, chanting racist bile. Down the street from where you live.
I went to the memorial that was created on the street after Heather died. I will never forget the group of guys who approached me as I stood silently taking it in, thinking about what had taken place here. They told me they had driven from states away. Christians but it didn’t matter. They weren’t pushing this. They said they had come to “love on the people of Charlottesville”. They asked if they could say a prayer with me. Something inside me nudged me to agree, at a time when I was much more removed from my spirituality than I am now. It was brief. It was meaningful. It was a connection between strangers. Strangers whose only goal was to say we care. That was my goal, too, in showing up to that memorial that day. I care. I care about Heather. I care about my town. I care about defeating racists. I care about standing up for justice. A swirl of complicated emotions from being there that day, but I never regret going.
Last year at this time I was in the midst of my spiritual direction training with Still Harbor. I remembered that for part of one of my assignments I recorded myself singing. A song that had captivated me at the time, ‘Secret’, by Rose Betts.
This was vulnerable for me as someone who was once “classically-trained” as a singer and also hasn’t really sang much in the last ~15 years. Also a story for another day, perhaps. I’m choosing to share it here with you now precisely because it’s not perfect. It was something that came from my heart. This is why I started singing in the first place.
May it meet you where you are today, may you remember you are loved.