Tag Archives: Spiritual Exercises

Exercise 36: A Welcoming Prayer

Here is an audio presentation of this practice:

Background: This prayer become popular in the centering prayer movement.  It was originally written by Mary Mrozowski.  It is a method of recognizing, then releasing difficult emotions.

Proponents of this prayer state that the focus should be on our feelings about life circumstances, rather than the exercise itself.

36 A

The Exercise:

  1.  Create a safe, quiet environment for yourself.  Turn down your phone and consider lighting a candle.
  2. Breathe deeply in through the nose and out through the mouth.
  3. Take a mental inventory of where you are, right now.  List the feelings you are experiencing.  Do your best to engage this with a nonjudgemental attitude.  Your feelings are neither good nor bad.  They simply are.  
  4. Choose the feeling which seems to be the most impactful.  Think, or say “Welcome ___________”  (E.G. ‘Welcome, Fear.  Welcome, sadness.  Welcome, anxiety.  Etc.)
  5. Say, or think, ‘I let go of my desire to change this feeling.’  or ‘I let go of my ___________’  or ‘God, I give you my _____________’
  6. Progress on to the next emotion, repeating steps 4 and 5.
  7. When you have worked through these emotions, spend a moment doing a mental inventory, assessing whether you feel differently.

36 B

  1. Create a safe, quiet environment for yourself.  Turn down your phone and consider lighting a candle.
  2. Breathe deeply in through the nose and out through the mouth.
  3. Take a mental inventory of where you are, right now.  List the feelings you are experiencing.  Do your best to engage this with a nonjudgemental attitude.  Your feelings are neither good nor bad.  They simply are.  
  4. Choose the feeling which seems to be the most impactful.  Think, or say “Welcome ___________”  (E.G. ‘Welcome, Fear.  Welcome, sadness.  Welcome, anxiety.  Etc.)
  5. Breathe once.
  6. Say, or think “I let go of my desire for security and survival.’
  7. Breathe again.
  8. Say, or think, ‘I let go of my desire for esteem and affection.’
  9. Breathe again.
  10. Say, or think ‘I let go of my desire for power and control.’
  11. Breathe.
  12. Say, or think, ‘I let go of my desire to change the situation.’
  13. If you wish, you can repeat this process for a second, troubling emotion.

If you would rather engage the welcoming prayer as an audiofile, consider this:

 

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You Are Welcome Here.

The goal of The Faith-ing Project is to enrich your spiritual life.   Our hope is that this  might be a gymnasium for the soul; a library for the spirit; and a toy store for the psyche.

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I’ve begun a series of reflections on contemplative themes in popular culture.  ‘Mystic at the Movies’ begins with a multi-part deep dive into Academy Award Nominee ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once.’  You can read the first installment here.  

I recently collaborated with the wonderful Auden Campbell to create a poem and video acccompanied by music.  You can find it here.   

To watch a delightful conversation I had the pleasure of participating in, click here.   

These last months have been both strange and fruitful for me.  I find myself exploring and considering the spiritual world from angles I’d never even considered.  And when I think about a rather cruel boy scout ritual called ‘Snipe Hunting’ I see that this is a unique lens to explore the journey as a whole and these latest changes in particular.  For now, Snipe Hunting is a podcast.  I suspect it will become my next book.

Snipe Hunting

You can listen to ‘Snipe Hunting’ here.  

You can access a growing catalog of new audio meditations that have been lushly produced and musically accompanied here.   

 

My latest book release is ‘Words Made Flesh.’ 

There is this disconnect.  We know that The Bible is important, but it sometimes can feel  so distant from us.  It does not need to be this way.

Four spiritual practices can help to bring these words to life.  Prayer and journaling rooted in the scriptures can begin this process.  The time honored practices of Lectio Divinia and Holy Imagining take it even deeper.  When we put these to work we find that eternal truths come to life in a whole new way, deeply embedded in the workings of our own lived realities.

Words Made Flesh uses the four Gospels as a case study.  The four practices are applied to the story of Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection.  As practices and events are explored in a chronological and systematic manner, we come to appreciate Christ’s life in a whole new way, even as we learn these new practices.

‘Words Made Flesh’ is now available.  You can preview the introduction here.    You can order it here.

If you’re interested in books more focused on spiritual practice without the exploration of deconstruction, take a look at the faith-ing project guides.  Samples of some of the Faith-ing Project guides can be found here.  If you would like to go straight to ordering the books at amazon, click here.

You can find general information about building a spiritual practice here.

It’s such an honor to be involved with projects that I would listen to even if I wasn’t a participant.  The ‘Be Still App’ is a prime example.  They are an amazing resource and feature several meditations from this page and my books.  Find out more here.

 

Our  audiofiles have been supplemented with videos.  Click here to see our audio file page. 

 

Spiritual Exercises By Category

If you do not find what you are looking for here, click this link.  Many of our resources, including audio files, strategies for bringing the practices home, contemplations built around the work of famous authors, and contemporary traditions can be found there.

Spiritual Exercises Listed Individually

Exercise 1: God’s Name   (written and audio)

Exercise 2: Breathing With God (written and audio)

Exercise 3: A split-Breath Prayer

Exercise 4: A Time for Silence, A Time for Speaking (written and audio)

Exercise 5: Lectio Divina (written and audio)

Exercise 6: 3-phrase Cycles

Exercise 7: More Lectio (written and audio)

Exercise 8: Sacred Writing with an Unconscious Focus

Exercise 9: Sacred Writing With a Deliberative Focus

Exercise 10: Centering Prayer

Exercise 11: The Word We Need the Most

Exercise 12: Constant Repetition

Exercise 13: Apophatic Meditation  (written and audio)

Exercise 14: Candles, Clouds & Waves

Exercise 15: The Riverside Meditations

Exercise 16: Apophatic Meditation with Variable Phrasing

Exercise 17: Emphasizing a different word within a phrase

Exercise 18: Who am I, God?  Who are you, God?

Exercise 19: A Second Riverside Meditation (A related audio accompanies this practice)

Exercise 20: Tonglen

Exercise 21: Listening to God Listen to You

Exercise 22: Slowly Honing in Via Lectio

Exercise 23: The 5 Remembrances

Exercise 24: A Walk with Jesus

Exercise 25: Padres

Exercise 26: Nature Adoration

Exercise 27: The Examen

Exercise 28: The Jesus Prayer

Exercise 29: A Prayer for…

Exercise 30: The Five Senses

Exercise 31: Adoration

Exercise 32: 7-11 Breathing

Exercise 33: Through a Verse, One Word at a Time

Exercise 34: The Examen with Multiple Questions

Exercise 35: Loving-Kindness and Grattitude

Exercise 36: A Welcoming Prayer  (Written and audio)

Exercise 37: Apaphatic Prayer focused on Trinity

Exercise 38: The Countdown

Exercise 39: Emptiness, And Fullness (A related audio file accompanies this practice)

Exercise 40: Mirroring

Exercise 41: Mindful Walking

Exercise 42: Another approach to Lectio Divina

Exercise 43: Be Still.

Exercise 44: An alternative Examen

Exercise 45: The Eye Through which…

Exercise 46: Apophatic Meditation with an Emphasis on Breathing

Exercise 47: Oneness Within a Network of Living Things

Exercise 48: A Second Oneness Meditation

Exercise 49: Observing the Breath

Exercise 50: Mantra Meditation Revisited

Exercise 51: A Body Scan (Written and audio)

Exercise 52: Metta (Loving-Kindness) Meditation II

Exercise 53: You are Closer Than Our Breath

Exercise 54: Labeling Thoughts

Exercise 55: Advent Meditations

Exercise 56: Advent Visualizations

Exercise 57: In God’s Womb

Exercise 58: God’s Breath, God’s Name.

Exercise 59: Breathing This breath with God.

Exercise 60: Beginning the Journey

Exercise 61: All Shall Be Well

Exercise 62: Embraced by the Silence

Exercise 63: And Now!

Exercise 64: St. John of the Cross and God’s Breath

Exercise 65: Hand washing as a Spiritual Practice

Exercise 66: Mindful Eating

Exercise 67: Tonglen for Times of Strife and Discord

Exercise 68: Three approaches to Sati (mindfulness meditation)

Exercise 69: Box Breathing

Exercise 70: Greeting and naming (ideal for contemplative walks)

Exercise 71: Finding Hope

Exercise 72: Oneness on a Winter Night

Exercise 73: Whole Body Mystical Awakening

Evercise 74: Welcoming With a Bow

Exercise 75: The Possibility of Resurrection

Exercise 76: Resting in Peace

Exercise 77: Body Scan for Pain and Soreness

Exercise 78: Finding the still point in the New Year

If you are interested in taking a look at some brief meditation prompts like the one below, click here.

” we can actually change our reality by being grateful first; not as a response but as an innate way of being.” – –Cynthia Bourgeault (1)