• Home
• Books

March Newsletter, “Spotting”

I’ll be posting my free monthly e-newsletters on my blog.  If you’d like to have it sent to your inbox every month, just subscribe at either of my websites.

STRATEGIES for LIVING WELL

Copyright 2009 © by Susan Carrell

All rights reserved

From Susan@CarrellCounseling.com

 

March 2009

 

Spotting

 

Today at the fitness center I was doing deep knee lunges.  I know to “spot”, that is, focus on something just ahead of me as I make my way across the floor lunge by lunge.  It is not much different than looking ahead as you move up an icy staircase so you won’t fall.  Spotting makes all the difference.  If I don’t remember to look just ahead at a fixed point as I’m doing lunges I’ll lose my balance every time.

 

Today as I was spotting and lunging I thought about how spotting applies to spirituality.  I lose my balance if I don’t focus on my spiritual side as I move through life.

 

I think of spirituality as a connection with the ethereal and eternal, a bond with a benevolent force that is powerfully good, a relationship with mystery and with knowing what cannot be known, a link to something that brings us to our best selves, and the presence of a still small voice that reassures us all will be well.

 

I moved to Colorado from Missouri eight months ago and semi-retired from the work and religion I had practiced in the past.  I have not worked or attended church for eight months.  Actually, it’s been more of a sabbatical from both endeavors, time off to reinvent my life.  But I have to keep spotting—finding a focus just ahead as I move forward—or I’ll certainly fall on my face.

 

Writing is the focus that brings balance to my career but finding the right focus for maintaining my spiritual connection has been more fluid.  Like moving across the floor doing lunges, the focus has to change if my spiritual life is to flourish.

 

Living close to the Rocky Mountains has given me one focus.  We hike often and it seems each trek is more beautiful than the last.  We are witnesses to the soaring rock walls and panoramic vistas that define the mountains.  When we aren’t hiking in the mountains, we’re looking at them.  Every evening we stop what we’re doing at sunset to gaze at the purple mountain’s majesty.  In these surroundings it is not hard to remember that God Is.

 

Ella, my two-year-old grandbaby, has become another spiritual focus for me.  Sometimes I just sit and watch her play.  She has taught me a lot about what is really important.  There have been moments that I have been so awestruck with a sense of joy and aliveness that it takes my breath away.  One such moment was when my daughter, Ella’s mother, the baby’s teenage step sisters, and I were teaching her to do a somersault on the living room floor.  We were all absorbed in the mutual task.  Ella’s effort to push her bottom over her head and her antics in the process made us all laugh to the point of tears.  Nothing else mattered; the whole world was reduced to the five of us, fellow travelers on a mysterious journey, united as one in this moment and celebrating just being.  A spiritual experience for sure.

 

A third focus that promotes spiritual balance for me is reading.  There’s something about finding a book that affirms deeply held convictions that you somehow know but might never pull to consciousness yourself.  Recently I read Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth which was like that for me.  I continue to be comforted by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat’s Spiritual Literacy which I am still reading.  As the book’s cover explains, “Using more than 650 brief examples from contemporary books and movies, they tutor us in the art of lingering with our experiences and seeing the world with fresh eyes.”  I find this to be true as I creep through the text slowly, savoring one or two entries a night.

 

Not long ago I attended a worship service and found yet another focus which proved helpful in steadying my spiritual journey.  My hiatus from organized religion came partly because I haven’t had the energy to integrate myself into a new faith community and partly because of some need to step back from anything scheduled for a while.  But last week was Ash Wednesday and I felt compelled to attend my favorite service in the church year.  I chose a church in a neighboring community because the website announced the service would be held in the chapel.  I assumed the gathering would be small, which appealed to me.  The chapel doors were wide open that day and the sunlight and warm breeze fell on the few souls gathered like the breath of God.  The musty smell of well-worn prayer books and the scrape of kneelers against the slate floor as we rose and knelt were anchors to my soul.  I didn’t know anyone there who, like me, was present to acknowledge the beginning of the season of Lent, but I felt I was amongst family.  When the priest smeared ashes on our foreheads in the shape of a cross and reminded us that “from dust we came and from dust we would return”, I thought of the impermanence of life and remembered that all human-kind are indeed family.

 

My strategy for living well this month is to find “spots” upon which  you can focus so you don’t lose your spiritual balance as you move through life.  I invite you to try some that work for me:  Stay as close to nature as you can, find the company of babies and young children, search out books that speak to your soul, and consider the role of organized religion in your life.

Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.

Copyright Escaping Toxic Guilt | Theme by DailyBlogTips