When a List is Almost A Prayer
Continuing to explore unconventional spiritual practices in daily life
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“A person of prayer is, quite simply, a person who can cry from the heart and laugh from the belly.” —Fr. Richard Rohr
After years of believing that God was mostly (only?) found in narrow spaces and around small tables, I love the continued practice of discovering spiritual connection that catches me by surprise. Not as a means of collecting more practice for practice sake, but all for the sake of love.
We’re soul minimalists, around here, after all. We’re working to create space, not fill it all up. If it leads to shame? Toss it. If it leads to flourishing? Now I’m back in.
Being a soul minimalist doesn’t mean we empty ourselves and become a blank slate on the inside. But practicing soul minimalism (to me) means being vigilant about what I allow in and how long I allow it to stay there.
For example, I can’t imagine where I would be if I still thought God was mad at me.
So in the mornings when it’s hard to pray with words, I’ve been drawing pictures and writing haiku. Does it feel silly? Sometimes. But am I ashamed of it? Absolutely not.
I’m short on laughter these days, but I’m learning how to put myself in the path of it a little more regularly. I may not actually laugh from the belly, as Rohr suggests, but I’m working on my best chance.
4 current pathways to laughing from the belly:
I keep a collection on Instagram called LAUGH and when something makes me laugh out loud, I bookmark it to this collection.
We’re re-watching Modern Family in the evenings and it’s the season where Luke and Manny start high school. Gloria is always yelling, Cam and Mitchell are always telling half-truths, Phil is always doing a magic trick or gymnastics and I laugh out loud at least once every episode.
Soccer is on most of the time even though we’ve never been a soccer family. But it’s the World Cup and we’re not animals so it’s the right thing to do. The drama of if it all is giving me life. Watch them fall down and clutch their injuries like they’re giving birth!
One sentence I wrote recently felt completely normal in the moment and then the next day I woke up and reread it and I laughed for ten minutes straight. See the evidence:
It is, as they say, what it is. Or is it?! That is the actual question.
I’m not saying that watching a game or a show or marking funny things on Instagram is prayer all by itself. But being a person who is a friend of laughter and tears, who can access emotion with some measure of fluidity, who can hold the tension of discomfort long enough to let it make an impact—I think that’s part of what it means to walk with God.
Here’s our quote again:
“A person of prayer is, quite simply, a person who can cry from the heart and laugh from the belly.” —Fr. Richard Rohr
7 current pathways to crying from the heart:
I have a hot flash exactly four to one hundred times a day so I have no sense if it is perimenopausal (it is) or if it’s just because it’s the middle of hot July. At times I laugh at how I fan myself the way I remember my mom doing when I was a teenager and at other times, usually at night, I cry for this body who is still changing and growing and sometimes mystifying me.
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