I want to thank all of you who continue to visit this site. Thank you for being patient, for staying with me, and for lifting me up with your comments and emails when I do get around to posting something here. I have been so touched by your willingness to share your own faith stories and to talk openly about your struggles, accomplishments and moments of crisis. Our community of blog regulars might be small, but you are a mighty and devoted band of followers. You constantly remind me that being willing and able to share the secrets of my soul is not only a great opportunity for spiritual growth but for personal transformation.

In a world where we are often far from family and cut off from daily interactions with friends — especially during life in the time of pandemic — this virtual community has served as touchstone for me, and I hope for you as well. Every once in a while when I start to wonder if I am just spewing my spiritual insecurities to no one in particular, a virtual version of talking to myself, I inevitably receive a comment or email telling me how something on the blog struck a chord or gave someone a feeling of peace. I can assure you that when I started this blog all those years ago, I never imagined that I would be granted such access to other people’s spiritual thoughts and lives. I am humbled and grateful.

Stay tuned for whatever is to come on this site in the weeks and months ahead. I’ve got lots of ideas percolating right now. I can tell you that, as we “speak,” a web designer is creating a new Not Strictly Spiritual logo and is gearing up to overhaul the entire website to make it easier to navigate (and a whole lot prettier!).

Thank you again for sticking with me. You are a blessing in my life.
Peace, love and blessings,
Mary

The post Celebrating 14 years here on Not Strictly Spiritual and gearing up for new adventures to come appeared first on Not Strictly Spiritual.

So here we are in Week 1 of our daily efforts to journey inward and discover our true selves and create transformation along the way. If you missed the first post on this, you can find it HERE. It will tell you what to pack for this journey (hint: If you have a spiral notebook, you’re pretty much good to go. The rest can be collected along the way.) The one “requirement,” and I use that term loosely, is a gratitude journal, because, trust me, it is such an easy way to begin to shift our attitude, and it’s really nice to be able to go back and look at all the blessings in our lives rather than journals filled with angst and woe. So today I thought I would start with that basic daily activity: gratitude journaling.

What does it look like? Whatever you want it to look like. Seriously. You can buy yourself the most beautiful leather journal with homemade paper; you can use a 10-cent spiral notebook picked up at last year’s back-to-school sale; you can even use a great big mason jar or some other container and squares of brightly colored paper. So many options!

Okay, now that we’ve got the actual journal, what do we do? Well, there are lots of ways you can choose to do this, but I’ll tell you my way, which is quick and so easy I (almost) never say, “Nah, I don’t have time.” Every night before I climb into bed, I take the spiral journal from my nightstand and date the entry. Then I write down three things from that day that I count among my blessings. (I number them consecutively so I can see them adding up over the months. It’s a banner day when I hit a milestone, like 3,000, which I did last month!) Sometimes the entries are so simple (the smell of coffee brewing in the morning) and other times sublime (someone getting a good diagnosis). Most days it’s somewhere in between. Once you start this practice, you’ll find yourself noticing things as you go about your day and thinking, “Oh, I can’t forget to write that down tonight.” Of course, you can always jot down those blessings as you go — on your phone, in a planner, whatever is handy. When I do notice something like that and I’m not near my journal, I often speak the blessing or happy moment out loud to memorialize it in some way. It makes it more real (and less likely I’ll forget it when I get to bedtime).

Here’s a sample from a recent entry:

• A big white moon in a bright blue morning sky

• A flock of birds flying in unison over and over right above my car in the Pastoral Center parking lot

• Everyone home for dinner

And here is a day’s entry pulled from the archives from 2006 (told you I’ve been doing this sort of thing for a while):

• For the dark, stark winter landscape of my backyard against the white night snow

• Watching “Magic School Bus” with Noah this afternoon

• For my home

So, today, this week, try to seek out the beauty and blessings around you, the miracles in your midst. Did something make you smile? Did something touch your heart? Did you just look out into your yard or across a room and spy something that made you happy or made you feel grateful. Write it down. The best part of this is that you don’t have to be a writer or a poet or a meditator or any of those potentially scary things. You just need a pen, a piece of paper and the willingness to notice the world around you in a more intentional way.

Try to go through your days with attention and INtention. This is the first step to reVolution, evolution, transformation and joy. Join me. And, if you’d like, share your experiences with this practice in the comment section. If you miss a day or two or ten, just pick it up and begin again. Always be willing to begin again. You don’t have to wait for a magical date on the calendar. Every day is an opportunity to start over. And isn’t that something to write down in a gratitude journal!

If you keep at this practice, it will slowly change how you see the world around you, and it really will make you more grateful for everything in your life, less likely to complain about the little annoyances, and more compassionate to the people around you. It doesn’t happen all at once, but little by little, day by day, year by year. Just begin and see what happens. If you write down three things every day, you will surpass 1,000 blessings in a year.

I’ve been writing about gratitude journaling for years (decades?), so if you’d like to read some of my previous stories and posts on this, you can start HERE.

You can also find me talking about this topic over on my podcast, Life Lines with Mary DeTurris Poust. Click HERE for that.

Thank you for joining me on this journey. Remember to begin again each day. There is no start date, no end date, no “goal” you have to hit. Just begin. And then begin again.

Peace and Love,
Mary

The post Begin. Begin again. Begin every day. appeared first on Not Strictly Spiritual.

We are not starting out this new year looking to drop pounds and dress sizes or simply start a new exercise routine. We are looking to go much deeper than that, to a place where we can dig into the fertile soil of our soul, a place where there are ideas and experiences and adventures trying to poke through the surface and blossom into the life we deserve, the life we’ve been dreaming of. Stop counting calories and counting steps and counting sheep and start breathing deep, sitting still, looking inward, reaching outward, living life with attention and INtention.

This journey will be about finding out who you really are and coming to terms with your true self and realizing (finally!) that you are good enough exactly as you are right now, at this very moment, whether or not you feel you need to eat healthier, exercise more, spend less time on social media, read more, pray more.

Whatever your “goal,” we want to begin from a place of acceptance, but that takes work. It doesn’t come naturally, does it? We are hard on ourselves, always seeing the cracks, the flaws, the places where we’ve failed to live up to our own expectations. That’s about to change…

Often the root of our feelings are buried way down deep inside. They’re not easy to face, and so we use other things (food, social media, alcohol, gossip, shopping, etc.) to fill the void, and, before you know it, we’ve layered another “issue” on top of whatever else we’ve go going on. We get caught in a vicious cycle, always setting ourself up for failure by making goals or resolutions that are doomed because the real work doesn’t involve a scale or heart rate monitor. It involves getting right with God and with ourselves. Exciting and daunting, but not nearly so much when we do it together!

In years past, the Cravings Tribe (you can sign up HERE)  focused on moving through my book by that name, a book that looks at food specifically and how we use it to stuff the empty places in ourselves. But last year I switched things up and took a different approach. We’ll do the same this year. Our approach will be to go below the surface, not focusing on body image or calorie counting but instead on the person we face when we quiet all the noise and go inward. During this time of ongoing, seemingly never-ending pandemic, when we are still limiting travel, why not take the deepest and most exciting trip of all — the one that leads to your true heart center, the person you have always meant to be, the person you have always been but have hidden beneath what the world expects, demands of you.

Come along with me. Here are a few things I recommend as we start out on this journey of inner transformation (which often results in an outer transformation without us even realizing it!):

• A journal or notebook. It doesn’t have to be fancy; you can pick up a cheap spiral notebook. I’ll give more specific prompts as we move along, but know that there is one thing I consider a requirement: Every day write down three things for which you are grateful. If you’d like, you can get a notebook just for this and keep a separate journal for writing. That’s what I do. More on gratitude journaling to come.

• A sacred space in your home. You don’t need a room devoted to meditation and journaling; all you need is a corner, a chair, a shelf. Find some little space where you can go each day to read, reflect, journal, sit in silence, and add a few things that bring a sense of the divine to the mix. It could be a cross or statue of a saint, or it could be things like seashells and feathers, pine cones and rocks. My sacred space happens to have a combination of both.

• A willingness to sit in silence for at least 5 minutes a day, preferably 10, because, really, what major goal have you ever accomplished in only 5 minutes. Go to your sacred space and turn off your phone, the TV or anything else that might distract you. If you’d like, set a timer so you’re not continually checking a clock to see how much longer you have to go. We’ll talk more about this practice in the weeks ahead.

• A spot where you can either see or be in nature. Do you have a chair by a window where you can see birds or squirrels? Do you have a path nearby or a quiet street where you can take short walks (or long walks if that’s your thing)? Nature has a way to heal us, connect us, make us kinder. More to come on that too…

• If you’re an artsy or visual person, consider saving up some old magazines, cards, or other images that speak to you for a spiritual collage down the road. Another favorite activity of mine. In fact, I have an entire journal dedicated to my spiritual collages. I love looking back and seeing the words and images that spoke to me at different times. I’ll do a whole post on this as we move through the weeks ahead.

So, essentially, all you need for this revolution is a spiral notebook. The rest you can cull from whatever you’ve got around you. Not bad. No meal plans to order, no expensive monthly subscriptions to sustain. In some ways, it’s easier to do those things. Those things convince us if only we can eat a certain number of calories or walk a certain number of steps, life will be better, happier. The harder work is to go at this without the crutch of diet plans and expensive workout clothes. It’s exciting, and I hope you’ll join me here on the blog. I won’t be posting every day. I hope to post at least once a week with some prompts and encouragement, links and suggestions. I also hope to supplement this with some podcasts.

For those who would like a little more, I’m offering a three-week meditation and mindfulness series called “Resolve to Evolve” at Jai Yoga School, also available virtually (live). Here are the details: 

Resolve to Evolve — Sundays, Jan. 2, 9, 16, 12:30 to 1:30 p.m.
Cost: $60 for the three-week series. Registration: HERE.

Just remember that you are loved and beautiful and good enough just as you are. Join me on a journey to discover the you you’ve forgotten.

Love, peace and blessings Mary

The post Why settle for a single resolution when you can choose a life-changing reVolution? appeared first on Not Strictly Spiritual.

Now, however, we are on the cusp of Lent, and that provides us with yet another opportunity for growth and transformation. The structure of the season is perfect for making a plan and sticking to it. I don’t know about you, but I’m always able to do things in Lent that I just don’t have the willpower to do in “regular” life. The key is, as I’ve mentioned before, not to set yourself up for failure. Find one thing, one habit, one sacrifice that might challenge you; be sure that it’s infused with prayer and spirituality because that’s what will set this journey apart. Fasting without prayer is just a diet, so connect the dots between whatever you’re giving up and the spiritual path you’re on. To make this more holistic, it’s good to add something to your life — a specific prayer practice or maybe an act of service.

I was not so devoted to the meditation practice I recommended here a few weeks ago, so my plan is going to be to recommit to forty days of daily meditation that will include 5 minutes of spiritual reading followed by 10 minutes of silent meditation. (I’ll continue my gratitude journal as I always do and my yoga practice as well, which is spiritual practice for me as much as it is physical practice.) I haven’t yet decided what I’ll give up. So many things to chose from! I have toyed with the idea of giving up coffee, but I think my family is scared by that suggestion, as am I. My coffee cup is always full and at my side. Still… maybe that’s a crutch I can try to do without for a while. I still have to ponder this idea. Not sure I’m that evolved.

Take some time today and tomorrow, as Ash Wednesday approaches, to think about this coming Lenten season. What would make your time in the spiritual desert more fruitful? This is my favorite season in the Church year; there is something so beautiful about a season to strip away the things we don’t need or the things we allow to replace our connection to God and to dive deeper into the prayers and practices that can break us open and lead us forward.

We’ll continue this journey together in the weeks ahead. Share your experiences in the comment section, or shoot me an email. I love to hear from you. And thank you for inspiring me to show up and continue the hard work of becoming who I am meant to be.

The post Cravings Tribe: Transition week has arrived appeared first on Not Strictly Spiritual.

I think it’s important to share that with you if only to remind you that it’s okay if you stray off the path or pull into a rest stop for a few days. When you’re ready, dust yourself off and begin again. The only thing you should try to continue to do no matter what else is going on is your gratitude journal. But always, always continue to be kind and gentle with yourself no matter how this journey is going for you.

The next thing on the list I outlined when we were on the cusp of this revolution-not-resolution transformation journey was a connection with nature. Can you find a spot where you can either see or be in nature each day? Do you have a chair by a window where you can see birds or squirrels? Do you have a path nearby or a quiet street where you can take short walks (or long walks if that’s your thing)? Nature has a way to heal us, connect us, make us kinder.

When pandemic first hit last March and most of us were trapped in our homes, I took to working in the armchair in our family room where I can watch the goings on in our backyard, in particular the bird feeder. I became a bit obsessed with bird watching. I downloaded apps to track the varieties I could identify; I kept a running list in the notes on my phone; I talked to them; sat outside with a camera hoping to catch them in action; found myself disappointed and rejected if our feeder was empty. I wrote a column about the way sitting at my window in pandemic changed me. You can read “Falling for Spring in a Season of Fear” HERE.

Although the initial obsession with the birds faded a bit, my newly found love for these hearty and cheerful creatures has settled into a lovely spiritual relationship. I look outside when it’s only 3 degrees and the snow is deep and marvel at the little sparrows so oblivious to the cold, flitting around looking for a snack. On the days when I take the dog for a walk, I talk to the crows sitting in the trees on our street. (Crows can remember a face, so be nice to them!) Although we are awaiting a winter storm, I just unpacked a new bird feeder and a 20-pound bag of black oil sunflower seed so that I can give the cardinals a place to eat since my current feeder doesn’t suit them. (Maybe the obsession hasn’t quite faded.)

Many of us at this time of year are dealing with cold and snow (we’re expecting 8 to 12 inches as I write this). It can be hard to love this season if we’re not skiers. It can be easy to wish away the present and long for warmer and sunnier days, green trees and sitting on the deck. But can we learn to be content, happy even, with the season we are in — the physical season of the world around us and the life season we are currently navigating day by day?

I’m currently listening to the book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May. I have a feeling this is another that I will purchase in hard copy as well so I can revisit my favorite lines. As I drive through the cold and snow to get to work or the yoga studio, as I sit in my chair awaiting the next storm and knowing spring is a long way off for those of us in upstate New York, her words call me back to the here and now, reminding me to savor what is right before me, even when my teeth chatter, even when I’m worrying about the kids driving on slippery roads.

“We may never choose to winter, but we can choose how,” May writes. And that is the case for everything in our lives. We may not choose our circumstances, but we can choose how we respond to them. If we can begin to practice acceptance with the seasons of the year — learning to allow ourselves to feel the cold and appreciate the sharpness in our lungs, learning to accept the rain dripping down our window even when we wanted sun — it can help us learn to accept the more challenging things we encounter, not just in nature but in life itself.

Henry David Thoreau wrote: “Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.” Good advice. When we resign ourselves — not in a defeated way but in an accepting and joyful way — we open our hearts and minds and spirits to a whole new way of seeing and being. It may start with appreciating a goldfinch at a bird feeder, but if we nurture it, it can evolve into finding joy even in our challenges, of learning to balance sorrow and joy without losing our balance or our peace in the process.

When I fell off the path briefly last week, there was the danger that I’d just stay there. In the past, I might have wallowed for weeks and in a deep self-loathing way. But little by little this journey of transformation — which is often a dance of two steps forward, one step back — has allowed me to recognize when I am sinking and make a course correction before I get too dug in. That is the gift of commitment and discipline and the willingness to begin again over and over. We are not called to perfection; we are called to practice — prayer, journaling, silence, nature, whatever helps us go deeper. Start there and then, if necessary, start again, and you will continue to move toward your true self and all the joy it holds for you.

The post Week 5: Connecting with nature, even a snow storm appeared first on Not Strictly Spiritual.

If you go back to the original post that launched this journey, you’ll note that the third thing on our list — after gratitude journaling and creating a sacred space — is making time for silence every day, even if it’s just a few minutes. So let’s talk about that and what it might look like in your busy life. I know making time for silence is usually not easy, even when we have the time and the space, even when we’ve got nothing on our plate but doomscrolling on our phones. Why is it so difficult to sit in silence? Because silence is challenging, especially when we first start — and it’s anything but silent. We might not be saying anything or listening to anything but our mind is screaming with thoughts and memories that demand to be heard.

So, first things first. If you created a sacred space, this is where you should go for your time in silence. If not, find a place where you won’t be disturbed. (If necessary, put a sign on the door or alert family members so they give you some space and peace.) Find a time that works for you — first thing in the morning or just before bed (or both) are the obvious choices, but if you have other times that work better, go for whatever will make you more likely to stick with the practice.

Commit. The hardest part is showing up. Isn’t it funny how we do that to ourselves? We can waste countless hours on TV, social media, shopping, talking or texting, and yet, when it comes to even five minutes of silence on a cushion or in a chair, we suddenly don’t have the time. So commit to showing up, even if it’s only five minutes, even if you say you’ll show up five days each week rather than every day. It gives you a cushion. Although making this a daily practice or twice daily practice — like brushing your teeth or showering — will weave it into the fabric of your life and make it less likely that you’ll shrug it off day after day.

So what do you do once you get to your sacred space and sit in silence. Well, here are the practical/physical tips: You want to sit with a nice straight back, so either sit up on a cushion on the floor (if that’s your style) or sit a chair where you won’t sink back and slouch. If you’re in a chair, you want both feet on the ground. Spine long, crown of the head lifting toward the sky, chin even with the floor of even slightly down so the back of your neck is long. Let your palms rest on your legs. If you’re clenching your jaw or furrowing your brow, relax your face. Soften your heart and belly. Deepen your breath, but don’t force or manipulate it, just gently invite your breath down into your belly rather than breathing shallow from your chest. Close your eyes or lower your gaze so you’re looking at the floor. Now you’re ready. You can set a timer for however long you want to pray, meditate, sit so that you’re not constantly checking your clock (and you will want to constantly check your clock if you’re new to this).

Now what? Now you listen. For the still, small voice, for the Spirit speaking to your heart, for your own inner voice crying out to be heard over the din of the world. Depending on your faith tradition, you might want to begin with a prayer asking the Spirit to guide to you. If you have trouble staying silent and still, find a word or phrase that speaks to you and come back to that, like a mantra. It can be a verse from Scripture or a word that makes you come back to God’s presence, or it can just be your breath. Keep coming back to your breath when you mind wanders, but don’t fight the thoughts that come up. “Monkey mind” is the term Buddhists use for the inability of the mind to quiet its own chatter when we sit in silence or meditate. A spiritual director on my very first silent retreat told me to imagine those thoughts like a leaf or twig floating on a river. Just watch them come and go and let them float away without grasping or attaching in any way. That’s easier said than done, but it will get easier the more you practice. When your timer goes off or you’re done for the day, don’t jump up and grab your phone immediately. Come out of it slowly, maybe with hands in prayer position at your heart. Say a little prayer of thanksgiving if you like or some other prayer, bow your head, and return to life with more gentleness toward yourself and others.

Saying all of this to you inspires me to recommit to my own practice of daily silent prayer and meditation. I often meditate as part of my yoga practice, but I’ve let my early morning silent prayer practice fall by the wayside these days, and I can feel the difference in my life and in my inner peace. Today I will join you in making a plan to sit on my cushion at least five days a week first thing in the morning. Let’s check back next week and see how we do. If you have questions or suggestions or observations, please share in the comment section.

Peace, love, blessings,
Mary

The post Week 3: be still, be silent, just be appeared first on Not Strictly Spiritual.

Setting up a personal sacred space is not only simple to do; it’s fun and satisfying. You do NOT need an entire room or even a big portion of a room; you just need a small space to call your own. Stake your claim. If you don’t already have a place where you go to pray or journal or be in silence, take a look around your home and see what you can do. Is there a favorite chair near a window or wood-burning stove, a writing table in a quiet corner, a shelf where you keep favorite personal items or candles? Start there.

My sacred space has morphed and migrated around my house of the years. For the longest time, my sacred space was literally two shelves of a bookcase in my basement office, sandwiched between a cat condo and a video game console. I would turn my chair (or sit on the floor) in front of this space when it was time to pray or meditate. The shelves had a cross, an icon, and some favorite items gathered on retreats or given to me by friends. When I would come down to my basement office to write, just seeing that space would make my shoulders relax and my breath deepen. I loved that space.

For a time, I used our sunporch, although that’s a seasonal sacred space since it gets pretty chilly in an unheated room during upstate New York winters. I would go to that space, surrounded by windows on every side, and look out at the beauty of nature and pray the Liturgy of the Hours in the mornings. A cup of coffee on the table beside me, a candle burning on the electric stove and a cathedral of pine trees was all that space needed.

These days I am blessed to have a room set aside for work, prayer, yoga and meditation. A purple room, no less! I inherited the space from my youngest child when she graduated to her brother’s room. I didn’t plan on it at first, but as I started moving in books and icons and paintings, it became clear to me (and my husband, LOL) that this was becoming Mary’s Room. It had actually been my office before Chiara was born, so it felt like coming home. I have a meditation cushion on the floor in front of a small table that serves as my personal altar space. When I sit on that cushion, I can see out into the trees in the backyard and watch snow falling or branches swaying. I can hear rain pattering against the window or blink against the sun as it starts to sink low in the sky — depending on when I’m in my space.

My space has pinecones gathered on walks around the Abbey of the Genesee (one of my favorite retreat spots), sea shells and rocks from favorite places, an cross forged by a friend’s husband, a lotus candle holder that reminds me that without the mud, there can be no blossom. Rosary beads and mala beads, icons and inspiring images. Make your space your own.

The sky is the limit. In fact, if you are someone who prefers to be outdoors, you can set up an outdoor sacred space, or do your praying while you hike or snowshoe. Just find a place where you feel comfortable not only talking to God, but LISTENING for the still small voice. So often we go to God with a laundry lists of wants and needs and thank-you prayers, but on this journey there needs to be a time when we simply sit and wait and listen. That can be really challenging (something we will talk about more in Week 3.)

When you have a sacred space, you are more likely to go there to pray, to retreat there when you need peace, to seek out the space when you are confused or overwhelmed. It’s like an open door, an around-the-clock invitation to be still.

And wherever your sacred space, even if it’s a comfy chair in the corner of the usually busy living room, let everyone at home know that when you are in that chair early in the morning or late in the evening or whenever you set aside time to pray, you need silence and solitude.

Keep up the good work. Let me know how you’re doing in the comment section. And thank you for being here!

P.S. I’ve been hearing from some of you who are following through on last week’s suggestion to keep a gratitude journal. If you’re finding that practice helpful or have any suggestions or observations to share with the rest of us, leave us a comment on the original post or this one. We’d love to hear from you. .

The post Week 2: A room — or corner — of one’s own appeared first on Not Strictly Spiritual.

So here we are in Week 1 of our daily efforts to journey inward and discover our true selves and create transformation along the way. If you missed the first post on this, you can find it HERE. It will tell you what to pack for this journey (hint: If you have a spiral notebook, you’re pretty much good to go. The rest can be collected along the way.) The one “requirement,” and I use that term loosely, is a gratitude journal, because, trust me, it is such an easy way to begin to shift our attitude, and it’s really nice to be able to go back and look at all the blessings in our lives rather than journals filled with angst and woe. So today I thought I would start with that basic daily activity: gratitude journaling.

What does it look like? Whatever you want it to look like. Seriously. You can buy yourself the most beautiful leather journal with homemade paper; you can use a 10-cent spiral notebook picked up at last year’s back-to-school sale; you can even use a great big mason jar or some other container and squares of brightly colored paper. So many options!

Okay, now that we’ve got the actual journal, what do we do? Well, there are lots of ways you can choose to do this, but I’ll tell you my way, which is quick and so easy I (almost) never say, “Nah, I don’t have time.” Every night before I climb into bed, I take the spiral journal from my nightstand and date the entry. Then I write down three things from that day that I count among my blessings. (I number them consecutively so I can see them adding up over the months. It’s a banner day when I hit 1,000 or even 2,000 in a single journal, which I did back in December.) Sometimes the entries are so simple (the smell of coffee brewing in the morning) and other times sublime (someone getting a good diagnosis). Most days it’s somewhere in between. Once you start this practice, you’ll find yourself noticing things as you go about your day and thinking, “Oh, I can’t forget to write that down tonight.” Of course, you can always jot down those blessings as you go — on your phone, in a planner, whatever is handy. When I do notice something like that and I’m not near my journal, I often speak the blessing or happy moment out loud to memorialize it in some way. It makes it more real (and less likely I’ll forget it when I get to bedtime).

Here’s a sample from my own journal on Jan. 30, 2019:

• A plane, lights blinking, cutting across the night sky

• Two crows circling overhead gracefully in the morning

• Watching Chiara compete on bars

And here is a day’s entry pulled from the archives from that same date in 2006 (told you I’ve been doing this sort of thing for a while):

• For the dark, stark winter landscape of my backyard against the white night snow

• Watching “Magic School Bus” with Noah this afternoon

• For my home

So, today, this week, try to seek out the beauty and blessings around you, the miracles in your midst. Did something make you smile? Did something touch your heart? Did you just look out into your yard or across a room and spy something that made you happy or made you feel grateful. Write it down. The best part of this is that you don’t have to be a writer or a poet or a meditator or any of those potentially scary things. You just need a pen, a piece of paper and the willingness to notice the world around you in a more intentional way.

Try to go through your days with attention and INtention. This is the first step to reVolution, evolution, transformation and joy. Join me. And, if you’d like, share your experiences with this practice in the comment section. If you miss a day or two or ten, just pick it up and begin again. Always be willing to begin again. You don’t have to wait for a magical date on the calendar. Every day is an opportunity to start over. And isn’t that something to write down in a gratitude journal!

If you keep at this practice, it will slowly change how you see the world around you, and it really will make you more grateful for everything in your life, less likely to complain about the little annoyances, and more compassionate to the people around you. It doesn’t happen all at once, but little by little, day by day, year by year. Just begin and see what happens. If you write down three things every day, you will surpass 1,000 blessings in a year.

I’ve been writing about gratitude journaling for years (decades?), so if you’d like to read some of my previous stories and posts on this, you can start HERE

I hope to podcast on this topic later this week. I’ll be sure to share that recording if/when that happens.

Thank you for joining me on this journey. Remember to begin again each day. There is no start date, no end date, no “goal” you have to hit. Just begin. And then begin again.

Peace and Love,
Mary

The post Week 1: Begin. Begin Again. Begin Always. appeared first on Not Strictly Spiritual.

We are not starting out this new year looking to drop pounds and dress sizes or simply start a new exercise routine. We are looking to go much deeper than that, to a place where we can dig into the fertile soil of our soul, a place where there are ideas and experiences and adventures trying to poke through the surface and blossom into the life we deserve, the life we’ve been dreaming of. Stop counting calories and counting steps and counting sheep and start breathing deep, sitting still, looking inward, reaching outward, living life with attention and INtention.

This journey will be about finding out who you really are and coming to terms with your true self and realizing (finally!) that you are good enough exactly as you are right now, at this very moment, whether or not you feel you need to eat healthier, exercise more, spend less time on social media, read more, pray more.

Whatever your “goal,” we want to begin from a place of acceptance, but that takes work. It doesn’t come naturally, does it? We are hard on ourselves, always seeing the cracks, the flaws, the places where we’ve failed to live up to our own expectations. That’s about to change…

Often the root of our feelings are buried way down deep inside. They’re not easy to face, and so we use other things (food, social media, alcohol, gossip, shopping, etc.) to fill the void, and, before you know it, we’ve layered another “issue” on top of whatever else we’ve go going on. We get caught in a vicious cycle, always setting ourself up for failure by making goals or resolutions that are doomed because the real work doesn’t involve a scale or heart rate monitor. It involves getting right with God and with ourselves. Exciting and daunting, but not nearly so much when we do it together!

In years past, the Cravings Tribe (you can sign up HERE) has focused on moving through my book by that name, a book that looks at food specifically and how we use it to stuff the empty places in ourselves. But this year I want to change things up, find a different approach, one that in some ways goes even deeper because we won’t be talking about body image and potato chips but instead about the person we face when we quiet all the noise and go inward. During this time of pandemic, when we can’t travel far beyond our homes, why not take the deepest and most exciting trip of all — the one that leads to your true heart center, the person you have always meant to be, the person you have always been but have hidden beneath what the world expects, demands of you.

Come along with me. Here are a few things I recommend as we start out on this journey of inner transformation (which often results in an outer transformation without us even realizing it!):

• A journal or notebook. It doesn’t have to be fancy; you can pick up a cheap spiral notebook. I’ll give more specific prompts as we move along, but know that there is one thing I consider a requirement: Every day write down three things for which you are grateful. If you’d like, you can get a notebook just for this and keep a separate journal for writing. That’s what I do. More on gratitude journaling to come.

• A sacred space in your home. You don’t need a room devoted to meditation and journaling; all you need is a corner, a chair, a shelf. Find some little space where you can go each day to read, reflect, journal, sit in silence, and add a few things that bring a sense of the divine to the mix. It could be a cross or statue of a saint, or it could be things like seashells and feathers, pine cones and rocks. My sacred space happens to have a combination of both.

• A willingness to sit in silence for at least 5 minutes a day, preferably 10, because, really, what major goal have you ever accomplished in only 5 minutes. Go to your sacred space and turn off your phone, the TV or anything else that might distract you. If you’d like, set a timer so you’re not continually checking a clock to see how much longer you have to go. We’ll talk more about this practice in the weeks ahead.

• A spot where you can either see or be in nature. Do you have a chair by a window where you can see birds or squirrels? Do you have a path nearby or a quiet street where you can take short walks (or long walks if that’s your thing)? Nature has a way to heal us, connect us, make us kinder. More to come on that too…

• If you’re an artsy or visual person, consider saving up some old magazines, cards, or other images that speak to you for a spiritual collage down the road. Another favorite activity of mine. In fact, I have an entire journal dedicated to my spiritual collages. I love looking back and seeing the words and images that spoke to me at different times. I’ll do a whole post on this as we move through the weeks ahead.

So, essentially, all you need for this revolution is a spiral notebook. The rest you can cull from whatever you’ve got around you. Not bad. No meal plans to order, no expensive monthly subscriptions to sustain. In some ways, it’s easier to do those things. Those things convince us if only we can eat a certain number of calories or walk a certain number of steps, life will be better, happier. The harder work is to go at this without the crutch of diet plans and expensive workout clothes. It’s exciting, and I hope you’ll join me here on the blog. I won’t be posting every day. I hope to post at least once a week with some prompts and encouragement, links and suggestions. I also hope to supplement this with some podcasts.

Just remember that you are loved and beautiful and good enough just as you are. Join me on a journey to discover the you you’ve forgotten.

Love, peace and blessings
Mary

The post Why settle for a single resolution when you can choose a total reVolution? appeared first on Not Strictly Spiritual.