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Dear Friend,

Several months ago I stumbled on an unconventional but effective remedy for writer’s block. I’d been feeling frustrated with my work, at a loss for what to write about on the blog, uninspired by my current freelance editing project. But instead of doing what I typically do when I’m stuck — mindlessly scroll through Facebook and Instagram (sound familiar?) — I stepped outside. I donned my gardening gloves and tackled one of the raised beds, which was choked with a jumble of dead grass, desiccated oak and chestnut leaves and weeds.

The chore took me only 20 minutes or so, but when the bed was clean of debris, and I’d shucked my gloves, washed my hands and sat down at my desk again, I found not only that I had something to write about, I also felt reinvigorated and refreshed in a way I never would have, had I stayed seated, mindlessly scrolling through my frustration.

The lesson, which can be applied to our spiritual lives as well as our creative lives, is this:

When you’re stuck, change your routine.

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A few months ago I found myself mired in a spiritual rut. My standard spiritual discipline is morning Bible reading, and it’s something I’ve done pretty regularly, ever since I found my way back to God and faith several years ago.

After years of faithfully practicing the spiritual discipline of morning quiet time, however, I realized Scripture wasn’t shimmering for me in the way it had in the past. More and more I found my mind wandering, obsessing about the day’s to-do list or the emails stacking up in my in-box or the fact that I forgot to send in my son’s field trip permission slip.

I was still going through the motions of my morning spiritual practice – the Bible was open on my lap, my eyes were reading the words — but I wasn’t benefitting from it in a real way.

That’s when I decided that I needed to change up my spiritual practices. Just like tweaking my daily routine helped sparked creativity in my writing, changing up my spiritual practices has helped spark newness and freshness in my faith life.

Most of practices I suggest in this little book aren’t your standard spiritual disciplines. You won’t find me talking about lectio divina, contemplative prayer, fasting, or the Sabbath (at least overtly – though you will see threads of these traditional spiritual disciplines in mine).

Instead, these are what I call unconventional spiritual practices – ordinary habits and routines that I’ve transformed into spiritual disciplines.

I hope you’ll see that while these practices aren’t traditional, they can be extraordinarily powerful in drawing you closer to God, which is, in the end, the essence and purpose of a spiritual discipline.

Grace and Peace,

Michelle

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The Spiritual Practice of Staying in Place “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me.” (John 15:4)

Back when we were dating, my now-husband Brad entrusted me with his favorite plant, a lush fichus tree named Herman (in honor of Herman Melville, his favorite writer…I know, it’s a miracle we ever married) before he left town for a while.

I moved Herm into my house, positioned him in a sunny spot next to the sliding glass doors and then watched as he began to drop leaves at an alarming rate. I moved him to a south-facing window. More leaves littered the carpet. I watered Herman, fed him plant food, repositioned him yet again in a less chilly spot. Still he dropped leaves.

A week after Brad left, I called him to report that I’d killed Herman in a record-setting seven days flat.

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I didn’t realize it until I did a little research, but it turns out, fichus trees require stability to thrive — a lesson we would be wise to apply to ourselves as well.

When they first join the order, Benedictine monks and nuns take a vow of stability. “The vow of stability affirms sameness,” says author and Episcopal priest Elizabeth Canham, “a willingness to attend to the present moment, to the reality of this place, these people, as God’s gift to me and the setting where I live out my discipleship.”

To “affirm sameness” is radically counter-cultural in our society. We are conditioned, even encouraged, to drop one thing and move onto the next.

Marriage grown stale? Divorce.

Bored on the job? Update the resume.

Shoes scuffed? Buy a new pair.

Acquaintance irritate us on Facebook? Unfriend.

We abandon with ease, enticed by the fresh and new.

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We are also expected to be as productive as possible, to hustle, push ourselves to the max, and multitask like a boss. The person who resists the rat race is an anomaly and is often seen as weak, an aberration. We wonder what happened to their ambition. A lot of us – dare I say most of us — equate stability with failure, or, at the very least, stagnation.

Yet it’s clear this relentless pursuit of the perfect place, the perfect situation, the perfect job, and the perfect person often leads to the Herman the Fichus phenomenon. We feel restless, uprooted and displaced. We run ourselves ragged trying to excel, achieve, and get ahead, and the result is that we wither rather than thrive.

Like Herm the Fichus, we begin to lose pieces of ourselves. We begin fall apart.

Stability as a spiritual discipline can be practiced on both the macro and micro level. For me, practicing stability in the big picture of my life

“The vow of stability affirms sameness, a willingness to attend to the present moment, to the reality of this place, these people, as God’s gift to me and the setting where I live out my discipleship.”

—Episcopal priest Elizabeth Canham

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means practicing contentment in my career, my parenting, my marriage, my home and my place.

This does not come naturally to my Type A, driven personality, especially when it comes to my work. I’ve long worn productivity, achievement and success as badges of honor, so seeking contentment and self-worth in the present status quo rather than in “the next thing” takes intentionality. Practicing gratitude helps, gently refocusing my attention from “what’s next?” to right now.

Likewise, on a micro level, practicing the habit of stability means making a concerted effort to stay in one place and do nothing, if only for a few minutes at a time.

Last November I began the practice of sitting on a park bench for five minutes during my daily afternoon or evening dog walks, and I’ve kept up the routine pretty regularly. My beagle-girl, Josie, automatically veers off the path and toward our bench now and patiently waits while I listen to the birds and gaze at the trees. It’s become a habit for both of us, and it’s good for me to physically stay in one place and to allow my thoughts to settle into a low simmer.

As it turned out, much the same was true for Herm the Fichus: he simply needed to stay put. I finally stopped moving him around the house and let him be, convinced he was dead but too guilty to dump him into the trash bin. A few weeks passed, and that’s when I began to notice tiny buds sprouting on bare branches. Leaf by delicate leaf, Herm began to thrive, unfurling and blossoming into a lush, verdant canopy.

Left in one spot to rest, he grew strong and whole once again.

Questions for Reflection:

1. Where do you feel the pull toward restless forward movement? In your job? Your relationship? Your friendships? Your consumerism? What might it look like to “affirm sameness” in the area in which you are struggling?

2. What’s one small but intentional way you might begin to attend to the present moment?

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The Spiritual Practice of Digging Dandelions“You will make known to me the path of life; in your presence is fullness of joy; in your right hand there are pleasures forever.” (Psalm 16:11)

Last year, when I heard the honey bee population was suffering from a mysterious insect-world apocalypse, I decided to offer up my lawn for the cause. I would not drown my dandelions in Round Up nor pry them from the earth with a slim forked garden tool. Instead, I vowed, I would let them flourish and propagate in order to provide nectar for the struggling bees. It would be my sacrifice, my contribution to Earth.

This year, come April, I took one look at the blur of yellow blanketing nearly every inch of my front yard and decided bees be damned. Pulling on my gardening gloves, I grabbed the dandelion plucker from the garage and proceeded to rid my lawn of the noxious weed, one bright bloom at a time.

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Three days later my front yard was free of dandelions. I also had a raging case of elbow tendonitis (which would later require a cortisone injection that felt a lot like giving birth out of my elbow, but that’s another story).

While I might not recommend my particular OCD approach to dandelion digging (as my husband said, “Do you not understand the concept of moderation?” No, in fact, I do not understand the concept of moderation), I do recommend the discipline of dandelion

digging in general, which comes down to this:

Monotonous physical repetition frees the mind and soul to open, breathe, and rest.

I thought about a lot out there on my knees, scooting from bloom to bloom, pushing the metal

prong deep into the moist dirt, wrenching the gnarled, stubborn roots free and tossing them with satisfaction into the metal bin beside me.

I let my mind wander as I listened to the staccato call of the chickadee, the trill of the cardinal, the scamper of the squirrels up the river birch bark. I let my body relax into a

“Immerse yourself in the sights, sounds, and smells of creation. This attention to detail, this being present is, in itself, a kind of worship.”

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rhythm, the cool grass bleeding circles of damp on the knees of my jeans, the plunge and push and pull of my fingernails in the dirt.

Digging dandelions isn’t “spiritual” in the traditional sense. I didn’t pray or ruminate on Bible verses out there on the front lawn (although you certainly could). I didn’t do anything, actually (besides dig dandelions). I simply let thoughts come, and then I let them go. I noticed and focused on my environment – the pungent smell of early spring dirt, the fresh scent of new growth high up in the pine boughs, the rise and fall of voices up the street, two neighbors chatting in the morning sun. I let myself be immersed in the sights and sounds and smells of creation, which to me often feels like the best kind of prayer anyway.

This attention to detail, this being present is, in itself, a kind of worship. As Brother Lawrence once wrote, “We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.”

It doesn’t need to be dandelion weeding specifically, by the way. Any monotonous, repetitious chore is conducive to this kind of spiritual discipline: folding laundry, washing

dishes, raking, Windexing windows, painting the baseboards in your bathroom. The key is to move your body repeatedly and automatically and to let your thoughts come and go.

Try making a habit out of doing your most monotonous chores mindfully. Eventually, you’ll find, your to-do list will recede into the background. You’ll breathe more deeply. And your spirit will feel more at ease.

Questions for Reflection:

1. Do you ever lose yourself in the monotony of a repetitious chore? How might you shift your perspective, to turn your attention away from the drudgery toward a more worshipful state of mind?

2. Have you ever thought about doing the “little things” in your life with love for God? What would that look like for you?

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The Spiritual Practice of Taking a Technology Break“Only in returning to me and resting in me will you be saved. In quietness and confidence is your strength.” (Isaiah 30:15)

The truth is, we were all a bit nervous – me especially. The thought of spending three weeks in a north woods cabin with no WiFi and no television gave us serious pause.

“What will we dooooo?” my eleven-year-old son Rowan whined.

“You’ll figure something out,” I assured him. “Either that or you’ll be really, really bored. It’s pretty much your choice.”

I’m as critical of my own addiction to screens as I am of my kids’. Sure, I need social media for my job. It’s how I connect with readers, share my blog posts and support other writers. But I abuse it. I waste A LOT of time online, which impacts not only my productivity, but also my mental health. The time I spend online rarely fills the well. More often than not, scrolling social media leaves me feeling agitated, empty and surprisingly depressed.

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After dinner the first night at the cabin, my husband Brad, the kids, and I sat around the living and talked, among other things, about global population growth. Population growth! Who would have thought my eleven-year-old and fourteen-year-old sons would be interested in talking about population growth!

Honestly, this conversation likely would not have happened at our own house, where, after dinner, my oldest typically retreats to his room to listen to music or play computer games, Brad and Rowan enjoy an episode of “River Monsters” or “The Carbonaro Effect,” and I slide into my favorite corner of the couch with my laptop. We chat in bits and pieces between episodes or when Noah descends the stairs to grab a snack, but we rarely converse deeply and meaningfully.

Stepping away from our screens for an extended period gave us the space and time to connect with others and with God in a much deeper and more meaningful way.

It’s one thing to take a technology hiatus on vacation, it’s another thing entirely to do it during the hustle-bustle of everyday life. But it’s no less important. As it turns out, a technology hiatus might be beneficial for our brains as well.

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According to Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, the plastic (or changeable) nature of human brain structure and function is highly susceptible to the pervasive use of the Internet. The result is diminished concentration, deep thinking, and creativity, as well as increasingly fragmented and frenetic cognition. In short, reading online has caused us to do a lot more skimming and a lot less thoughtful, considered reading.

Small breaks away from technology are necessary and good, but longer breaks, if you can manage them, are better. After weathering the inevitable two or three days of agitated restlessness that typically accompany a technology detox, you’ll be surprised to find that your days are longer and slower, your breathing deeper and easier, and your mind more free to roam into new, unexplored places.

And the truth is, no one will miss you. Too much time online leads us to believe that we absolutely have to be there – that if we’re not, the Internet will break or worse, that we’ll be

“Stepping away from our screens for an extended period gave us the space and time to connect with others and with God in a much deeper and more meaningful way.”

forgotten forever. Neither is true. The noisy, busy world will be just fine without your voice in it for a week or two. And when you come back, it will be as if you were never gone.

Questions for Reflection:

1. Do you find that spending time on the Internet or social media affects your attention span, your ability to concentrate, or even your emotional state?

2. If you were to consider taking a technology hiatus, what might that look like for you? What kind of parameters could you establish that might give you some boundaries (i.e. shutting down the computer at a certain time each day; taking one day a week off from technology; taking a longer technology hiatus)?

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The Spiritual Practice of Arriving Early“The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.” (Lamentations 3:25)

“If you’re on time you’re late.”

This is my dad’s mantra, repeated time and time again throughout my childhood. More than once my sister was left howling at the end of our driveway, shoes in hand, as my dad drove down the street, my mother in the passenger seat, insisting that he turn the car around and retrieve her. He always did, but we never knew if this was the time Jeanine would finally be left behind.

You’d think, given my history, that I would tend toward either relentless tardiness or PTSD-induced punctuality. But the truth is, I actually like to arrive early. I do it intentionally, purposefully, not just because my dad drilled it into me, but because it’s good for my body, mind and soul.

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A fountain splashes behind a weathered brick wall. I can’t see it, but I hear the water, a steady burble mingling with the rustle of maple leaves and the clear, two-note call of a chickadee. Visible above the wall are peaked gables, black-shuttered windows, lace curtains, a wooden pergola covered in lush ivy. A secret garden, perhaps.

I park in this same spot nearly every day at nearly the exact same time – 15 minutes before the middle school bell rings. I ease my mini-van to the curb, click off the ignition, roll

down the driver’s side window, slip off my shoes, tuck one foot under my leg, and wait.

I try to resist scrolling Instagram or checking email on my phone. I don’t always succeed, but when I do — when I listen to the fountain and the birds and the wind instead, when I gaze at the pollen

sprinkled across the windshield like pixie dust, when I watch the tabby meow at the front door across the street – something subtle but lovely happens.

“I release my obsession with ‘getting it done,’ my worship of efficiency and productivity. I let myself be, if only for a few moments.”

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My jaw unclenches. My shoulders relax. My to-do list recedes into the background. My body and soul breathe.

In short, I retreat. I release my obsession with “getting it done,” my worship of efficiency and productivity.

I let myself be, if only for a few moments. I surrender to my senses – the scent of apple blossoms wafting through my open window, the scarlet flash of a cardinal amid verdant foliage.

The school bell rings. I watch the sidewalk reflected in the passenger side mirror. My son is always one of the first out of the building and up the street, his shoulders stooped under the weight of his backpack. In the mirror, I see him turn the corner at the bottom of the hill.

As my son approaches the car, I read the faded type that runs along the bottom of the side mirror. Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. The same, I think, can be said of our own selves, our lives, our loved ones, our place, our God. They are all closer than we think, closer than they sometimes appear.

Arriving early and sitting still helps me remember that this is true.

Questions for Reflection:

1. Do you find that you are frequently running late, dashing from one appointment and errand to the next, or feeling frenetic and overbooked? What would it take for you to leave your house five or ten minutes earlier than usual, so you could arrive at your destination early enough to be still for a few minutes?

2. Are there small pockets of time in your daily schedule in which you can work in a few minutes of quiet stillness?

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The Spiritual Practice of Walking the Dog“Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10)

The sun hangs low, bathing the black-eyed Susans and the tall grass golden. A rare stillness drapes the landscape, the air heavy and dense with August humidity, the silence interrupted by a single, piercing bird call – a red-winged blackbird, hidden amid the cattails.

I am walking my dog, something I’ve done nearly every evening since we adopted her three years ago. Ferocious wind, sub-zero temperatures, searing Nebraska heat, stinging snow – no matter what the weather, after the dinner dishes are stacked in the dishwasher and the counters are wiped clean, I slip on my shoes, grab the purple leash from the hook by the back door, and call for Josie.

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I thought I’d dread this part of dog ownership. Before we’d adopted Josie, I’d ranked dog-walking with cleaning up the yard and clipping paw nails. I never expected my daily dog walk would become one of my most cherished spiritual disciples.

Josie’s not a fast walker. Part beagle, part Corgi, she has squat legs and a hound’s nose. The first few months of our daily walks I was irritated by how often she stopped to snuffle in the weeds and wildflowers. I was accustomed to walking with a mission, intent on burning as many calories in as short a period as possible. But Josie does not allow that, and so, reluctantly, I’ve learned to slow my pace.

Last November, I also added another element to our daily walks – a small thing, really: I decided to stop and sit on a park bench for five minutes. Five minutes without movement or distraction. Five minutes without texting, scrolling, or talking. Five minutes of quiet stillness.

The first day I sat on the bench, I looked at my watch after two minutes and then again after four.

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The following day I was a little better. I took a cue from Josie, who sat still, ears pricked, nose quivering, and I tried to copy her. I looked at what she looked at; I tried to smell what she smelled. I’d assumed she’d be puzzled or restless by our stopping. I thought she’d pull at the leash or whine to keep moving. But she seemed content, sitting and waiting, observing and absorbing her surroundings.

Almost immediately I noticed that I felt oddly and unexpectedly vulnerable to be sitting on a bench, right there in the open alongside the path, doing nothing but staring into space, feeling the slippery softness of the pine needles under my feet, sniffing the air for who knows what, listening to the leaves.

This is what our busyness does to us – it distracts us from our own vulnerability. It shields us from our own thoughts, our own selves. Our frantic pace allows us to skate through our days on autopilot, too distracted to prod at whatever lies beneath.

It’s easy to lose the essence of ourselves in this day and age. We fill every bit of margin with noise, distraction, and technology. We rush from task to task, place to place, errand to errand.

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We skate by on bits of shallow connection – an email, a Facebook comment, a string of texts, a Voxer message. We don’t linger with our people. We don’t soak in the details of our places.

We don’t allow our deepest selves the space to surface.

And then, we wonder why we feel fragmented, empty, restless. We wonder why we find ourselves thinking, What’s the point? Where’s the meaning? Is this all there is?

I believe God desires to connect with us personally and intimately. But in our frenetic, technology-dependent lives, we rarely allow the time and space for that to happen. The restless agitation we feel simmering just under the surface hints that we are missing something important, that our souls are yearning for more, but we don’t allow ourselves the silence and space to figure out what that something is.

“Constant noise, interruption and drivenness to be more productive cut us off or at least interrupt the direct experience of God and other human beings, and this is more isolating than we realize.”

– Ruth Haley Barton

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“Constant noise, interruption and drivenness to be more productive cut us off or at least interrupt the direct experience of God and other human beings, and this is more isolating than we realize,” observes Ruth Haley Barton in Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation. “Because we are experiencing less meaningful human and divine connection, we are emptier relationally, and we try harder and harder to fill that loneliness with even more noise and stimulation.”

That “something” we are missing is relationship: with others, with our own selves, and with God.

“Let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him,” the apostle Paul urged the Hebrews. Paul knew something that I, in my busyness and distraction, had forgotten. The way into the presence of God is open to all of us, all the time — twenty-four/seven, seven days a week, 365 days a year, forever. God is always available to us, but we have to choose to connect with him. We have to take a step, to “go right into” his presence.

For me, that step happens when I walk my dog in the quiet of the evening, when I sit still on a bench and simply be. The truth is, nothing stands between us and God except our own

distracted lives and our own distracted selves. Walking my dog and sitting still on a park bench has helped me see exactly that.

Questions for Reflection:

1. Have you ever sat still and quiet for a while and felt strangely vulnerable? If so, where do you think that feeling of vulnerability came from?

2. I work a few minutes of stillness and quiet into my daily routine when I walk my dog. Where might you be able to do the same? Are there rituals or routines in your daily life that lend themselves to this kind of quiet reflection?

A Massachusetts native, Michelle DeRusha moved to Nebraska in 2001, where she discovered the Great Plains, grasshoppers the size of Cornish hens … and God. She is the author of Spiritual Misfit: A Memoir of Uneasy Faith and 50 Women Every Christian Should Know: Learning from Heroines of the Faith. Her newest book, Katharina and Martin Luther: The Radical Marriage of a Runaway Nun and a Renegade Monk, releases in January 2017.

Michelle writes about living out faith in the everyday at her blog, www.MichelleDeRusha.com. She lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, with her husband and their two boys.

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