Healthy Spirit

Spiritual health is the capacity and ability of people to seek, experience, and express meaning and purpose in their lives often through love, hope, gratitude, forgiveness, peace, and community in order to enjoy a sense of the Sacred (as they understand it). Spiritual health provides the sense that life is meaningful and has a purpose and is defined by the ethics, values and morals that guide us and give meaning and direction to life.

A spiritual practice is a regular routine that helps us to tend to our spirituality and spiritual health.  Just like our physical health, our spiritual health needs attention and intention in order to thrive. There are many varieties of spiritual practices geared towards different strengths, preferences, and our own personalities.  No one is better than another.  How can you tell which one is right for you? 

To quote the Christian Scriptures, "By their fruits, you will know them" (Matthew 7:16), meaning, if you find yourself experiencing more peace, more life satisfaction, more comfortable with life's uncertainties, more meaning and purpose, etc. chances are that particular spiritual practice is right for you.

If you are a visual person, you may wish to try praying with art or specifically, religious icons.  Simply behold the artwork and allow it to "speak" to you.  What details do you notice?  What does the artwork signify?  What does this artwork say to you regarding your Higher Power?

If you tend to "hold things inside," you may try journaling as a way to express yourself, your thoughts, and your feelings.  Journaling provides a creative release of your interior life that can lead to greater self-understanding and more appreciation of our behavioral patterns. The exercise of journaling allows you to be real and authentic without fear of judgments.  Building this kind of genuine and reliable relationship with self can foster a deeper relationship with God or our Higher Power.

If you enjoy quiet, you may consider meditation, or specifically, centering prayer.  With meditation, the objective is to still the mind from all its random and ceaseless thoughts in order to allow God in the silence. 

With centering prayer, a person becomes quiet inside and uses a mantra (a word or a brief phrase) in order to re-focus, or to "return to center."  The word or brief phrase is used as often as need be in order to quiet the mind.

A very practical spiritual practice was taught by St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits.  St. Ignatius instructed his community to observe the examen twice daily.  The examen is simply reflecting on the last 24 hours and to see where God was operative in the day-to-day activities of our lives. 

We pause to offer gratitude for all the blessings that we've enjoyed. We also reflect on the opportunities of our day: where we may have experienced some strong emotion(s), where our thinking may have led us astray or gotten us into trouble, and where we may have fallen short of who we claim to be. 

Thinking on all these behaviors helps us to recognize our need for Grace.  The examen concludes with a forward vision of the next 24 hours, and asking for the help we anticipate we will need with the day ahead.