Background: In mourning the loss of the lovely Thich Nhat Hanh, I came across the following facebook post: “As Elizabeth rests in peace, I become a man of Peace. As Thay rests in Peace, I become a man of Peace. As Desmond Tutu rests in Peace, I become a man of Peace. As Jesus is the Prince of Peace, I become in Christ, a man of Peace. Let Peace walk before me. Let Peace come behind me, on the right and on the left, above and below, let there be Peace on Earth this night, and let it begin with me.”
The writer of those words is Bob Holmes. The Elizabeth mentioned at the beginning is the beloved wife who died one year ago. He also goes by the identifier “Contemplative Monk” on social media I was deeply moved by his way of expressing these ideas. It suggests to me that we might borrow some of the peace that our loved ones are resting in, that we might draw from it. I also connect with the idea that one of the ways are loved ones live on is through the ways their lives and deaths shape and challenge us.
In the process of asking Bob for his permission to use this as a template for a spiritual practice, I’ve got to know him a little better. I’ve always really enjoyed his content. It was exciting to know that there’s a good man behind the great thoughts. You ought to check it out here.
This practice will ask you to generate a mental (or physical) list of people who have died that impacted you. It might be someone you know. It might be someone famous. It could be ancestor, a historical or religious figure. Please show healthy discretion around engaging this practice. Faithing death is an important task that most of us recieve very little preperation for. I encourage you to challenge yourself, some, but beware of being too ambitious with trying to contend with deaths that are too new and raw in this way.
The Practice.
Release your concenrns and worries for this time.
Take three deep inhalations and exhalations.
Spend some time bringing to mind the people close to you that have died. If you’re likely to forget names after thinking about them, it might be wise to right some down. Don’t rush this process.
Inhale. Exhale.
With your next inhale think, “As ____________ rests in peace….”
exhale and think “I become a person of peace.”
Repeat steps 4 through 7 either with the same person or the next person on your list.
Sit with whatever feelings or sensations are with you right now. It might be feelings that considering the death of these people brings up. It might be feelings about death. It might be feelings of peace. It might be something else. It might be nothing at all. Consider releasing these feelings with your exhalations. Or discussing them with God. Or simply naming them and holding them close to your heart.
For more spiritual practices coordinated to specific Enneagram types, see Contemplating The Enneagram. available May, 2020.
Background: An interesting game to play is “What if there were only type ___ in the world?” Twos love to help others. They have a great deal of trouble accepting help0 from others. If there were only twos in the world, I imagine them running around trying to help and support each other. And none of them getting to do it. Because all of them would refuse the help of others.
Like nearly any comment you can make about personality types, this is of course a generalization and an over simplification. But it gets at a fundamental reality for two’s: it is easier to give help than recieve it.
As the above thought-experiment demonstrates, giving and recieiving help are both vitally important. We couldn’t have one with out the other. This first practice equates this interdependence to the parts of the breath. Just as we could not have an inhale without an exhale, so too we could not have helpers with out those they are helping.
Somewhere, deep down, we might have this tendency to think, “Well, I can help other people… because they have an easy time recieiving help. I don’t need to be the person who takes help, there’s plenty of other people out there.”
This is an adventure in missing the point. Much of the spiritual work that needs to be done by twos is allowing themselves to be helped.
The Exercise.
Place your feet flat on the floor.
Inhale.
Exhale.
With the next inhale, think “I can recieve help.”
With the next exhale, think, “I can give help.”
For most of the time that you have devoted to this practice, repeat steps 5 and 6.
When you are ready, release these words. Sit in a time of wordlessness.
Type one’s often face an inner critic. A personality-within-a-personality that offers a never ending diatribe about all the things that they are doing wrong. Sometimes, it is helpful to meet this creation head on.
There are many ways and approaches to disarming the inner critic. One is to name it something ridiculous and personify it in a manner that is outragous. A second is to be more humane with it. On this account, we recognize that it once did us good.
The Exercise
Find an empty chair. Bring it near you.
Close your eyes and take three deep breaths.
Consider your inner critic and consider the power it has over your life. Ask yourself which approach would work best for taming it.
Now, personify your inner critic. See her or him sitting in the chair. Imagine the color of the critic’s hair. The timbre of their voice. See the clothes your critic is wearing.
Sit in silence with the critic for a time.
Tell the critic that it is no longer doing what it set out to do. Explain that it has worn out its welcome.
Dismiss the critic. Let it disapear.
Spend some quiet time alone.
For more practices curated especially for Enneagram type 1, see Contemplating The Enneagram, available in May 2020.
This email exploration is focused on three interconnected ideas: Transitions, Deconstruction, and Liminal Space. These three ideas grow increasingly specific and increasingly complex. Over these next three emails we will consider each of them.
Transitions happen every day, of course. Compared to deconstruction or liminal space, they are fairly straight foreward. Nonetheless, they are not easy. The transitions that we are hoping for in life are not the ones we notice much. Generally speaking, the transitions which cause us stress bring with them a host of unwanted emotions.
This is why we are beginning with 2 different forms of The Welcoming Prayer. There are many forces which conspire to “teach” us to live in denial of the feelings we carry. We hope that ignoring these feelings makes them go away. The reality is that the opposite is true: Naming and owning them can go a long way toward evaporating many of our most intense and unwanted feelings.
Create a safe, quiet environment for yourself. Turn down your phone and consider lighting a candle.
Breathe deeply in through the nose and out through the mouth.
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.
Choose the feeling which seems to be the most impactful. Think, or say “Welcome ___________” (E.G. ‘Welcome, Fear. Welcome, sadness. Welcome, anxiety. Etc.)
Breathe once.
Say, or think “I let go of my desire for security and survival.’
Breathe again.
Say, or think, ‘I let go of my desire for esteem and affection.’
Breathe again.
Say, or think ‘I let go of my desire for power and control.’
Breathe.
Say, or think, ‘I let go of my desire to change the situation.’
If you wish, you can repeat this process for a second, troubling emotion.
We have recently made our entire audio file library available to everyone. There are numerous exercises on this page, including an audio file of the welcoming prayer we have been practicing these last couple days. You can find The Welcoming Prayer and other audio files here.
One of the figures who has been pivotal on my spiritual journey is father Richard Rohr. He has written many amazing books. The organization he began is The Center for Action and Contemplation. They feature a powerful daily email, classes, podcasts, and more. Check out the CAC here.
Thanks for joining The Faith-ing Project’s September Email Exploration. You probably know that this time around, the focus is on building a spiritual practice through times of transition, deconstruction and liminal spaces. These emails will launch every other day at 5 PM US Eastern Standard Time.
They will consist of 3 parts. This introductory section will introduce ideas relevant to building a spiritual practice of related to the topics of transition, deconstruction and liminal space.
The middle section will consist of the day’s suggested spiritual practice.
The bottom section will feature announcement and updates about other exciting events, generally those related to The Faith-ing Project.
Many of the positive outcomes connected to a spiritual practice will come up when they are practiced at least once a day. On the “off days” when no email arrives, it is highly recommended that you give a second try to the most recent spiritual practice.
It’s exciting to have you on this journey! Thanks for taking it with us. There are lots of ways to connect with me and I love hearing from participants. If you would like to share observations, please reply to this email, click the links at the bottom of this page, or send a message to otherjeffcampbell7@gmail.com
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.
This is an important place to begin during times of transition. It is inevitable that lots of feelings, many difficult to manage, pop up in the midst of change. For this reason, our next exercise will be a similiar practice, designed to identify and welcome the feelings that pop up for us.
It is always advisable to read through the practice before beginning them. Notice that on step 5 today you will have a choice to make about the specific words that you use. Choosing which one you are going to use in advance will be helpful.
36 A
The Exercise:
Create a safe, quiet environment for yourself. Turn down your phone and consider lighting a candle.
Breathe deeply in through the nose and out through the mouth.
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.
Choose the feeling which seems to be the most impactful. Think, or say “Welcome ___________” (E.G. ‘Welcome, Fear. Welcome, sadness. Welcome, anxiety. Etc.)
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 _____________’
Progress on to the next emotion, repeating steps 4 and 5.
When you have worked through these emotions, spend a moment doing a mental inventory, assessing whether you feel differently.
The exercise to be introduced Wednesday is an alternative Welcoming Prayer. It is exercise 36-B. If you would like to try it in advance of that email you can find it 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Faith-ing Project 