Spiritual Life

Practices to support Spiritual Wellbeing

  1. Breathe.  Take time in your day, at any moment, to take ten deep even breaths. Carve out 5-10 minutes to meditate or practice mindfulness or contemplative prayer.
  2. Ground yourself in the present moment. Focus your awareness on something real, enduring, or beautiful in your surroundings. Discover the wonder and awe that is around you.
  3. Acknowledge your fears, anxieties, and concerns. Offer them up in prayer, if you pray. Write them down. Share them with others if you’re comfortable doing so. Feel what you feel, honor it, and know that it is not final.
  4. Remember you are not alone. Ever. You are surrounded by care and support. You matter. Reach out.
  5. Create and sustain community. Show up for one another. Listen compassionately. Practice empathy. Stand with those most vulnerable and those who suffer the brunt of prejudice and fear. Check in on others. Call family and friends.
  6. Unplug. While staying aware of developments, do not let chaos govern you, but forgive yourself if and when it does.
  7. Practice kindness.  Remember we are in this together. Remember to engage one another. Smile when you can. Bring good deeds and good energy into our world.
  8. Stay healthy through sleep, diet, exercise. See healing and wellness holistically – mind, body, and spirit.
  9. Create art. Discover, imagine, engage your hopes and fears, the beauty and ugliness of our world.
  10. Practice gratitude. In the face of crisis, make note of the things for which you are grateful: your breath, the particular shade of the sky at dusk – or dawn. The gifts and strengths you have, other people in your life, the ability to laugh.
  11. Connect with your spiritual, religious, humanist, cultural, or other communities. Find strength and solace and power in traditions, texts, rituals, practices, holy times and seasons.
  12. Pray as you are able, silently, through song, in readings, through ancestors. Remember the long view of history, the rhythms and cycles of nature, the invisible threads that connect us all.
  13. Practice hope. Trust in the future and our power to endure and persist, to live fully into the goodness that awaits.