spiritual practices – Callie J. Smith

Silly Things We Do That Keep Us Sane

What do you do that keeps you sane?

I’m guessing that a lot of us have things we do that would appear impractical and odd to anyone who observed us doing them (if we actually let anyone observe us doing them). They’d count as silliness were it not for one factor: the good they do us.

A “thing” I did this last winter was something I learned from Bodhisattva the cat. Over the years, my family has laughed at her for this practice, but she’s never seemed to care.

Late in the day, “Bo” (as we call her) will gravitate to west-facing windows in search of sunrays. She’ll search for a while during the greyest stretches of an Indiana winter. She’ll persevere, though, and when she finds even a hint of sun, she’ll stretch herself out in it. On carpets, in chairs, across bedquilts – she’ll position herself anywhere that lets her stretch that little body out and expose as much black fur as possible to the sun. Soon, her fur feels hot to the touch.

On cold days that feels wonderful. This last winter I was craving that kind of warmth for myself. I have a condition which worsened this winter and led me to give up outdoors exercise in the cold weather. No more walks during gentle snowfalls, no more bike rides on brisk days, no more getting out to take advantage of winter sunshine – I gave it all up.

If you don’t love that kind of thing, then that won’t sound like much of a loss. I loved that kind of thing, though. I counted those activities as some of my winter “mental health moments” that helped me change gears, de-stress, let go of whatever I needed to let go of on any given day. Those outings let me get moving and give my mind, body, and spirit some time to relax together, to work together, and to reconnect. I hated that, of all things, these outdoors activities were the very things that my body called me to give up this last winter.

Have you ever had to give up doing something that you loved to do?

It meant frustration for me. It meant winter stir-craziness to the nth degree. It meant agitation and discouragement. And, when I started paying a little more attention to Bo the cat, it eventually meant an opportunity for some creativity. At least, that’s how I began to reframe it.

Late in the days when we had anything that even remotely resembled sunshine, I’d join Bo by a west-facing window. With my body so much larger than hers, I didn’t always find a way to stretch out my entire self in a ray of sun. Instead, I focused on letting the last of the day’s sun fall across my face.

Some days I’d gaze out the window and watch light illuminating the lines of dull-colored winter brush, suddenly not quite so dull. Some days I’d lay on the floor, close my eyes, and bask in the vibrant orange-ish light of sun through my eye lids. Some days I’d take my portable, apartment-sized elliptical machine and push it right up to the window where I could exercise and feel, as much as possible, surrounded by the sun.

What can I say? I felt the brightness in my eyes and the warmth in my body. In my mind, I pictured smiles. For the occasional and briefest of moments, it would sometimes even feel as if the day, or the universe, or some beloved person was smiling upon me. From time to time, it even made me ponder the smile of God and what that would look like.

For those briefest moments, I could almost feel my body, mind, and spirit resting together in a place of wholeness, which is what I think I mean when I refer to “sanity.” I even started to think of these unorthodox winter moments as a spiritual practice of sorts. They changed my gears and let my insides settle. They helped me relax and listen to whatever I was needing to listen to at the time. Mental health moments and spiritual practices – both – can look quite different for different people, and this sunshine through winter windows was doing something very healthy and sanity-nurturing inside of me.

What about you? What do you do that keeps you sane? Like the feel of winter sun on my face, I’m wishing you your own sense of warmth, your own reminders of smiles, and your own pauses of wholeness and sanity these days.

The Beauty of Rest: Contemplative Essays* (Clay Patin Press 2023) is available for free on Kindle today (3/21/23 Pacific Time) only.

To Practice Change

I’ve been looking ahead, daydreaming about blossoms on trees, and fresh starts, and new things. They sound beautiful. Newness means change, though, and I’ve had a complicated relationship with change. Perhaps many of us have in recent years as the pace of it seems to have picked up. Change can bring about great good, but it can also pile up and overwhelm us.

I remember reaching overwhelm one summer when I moved to a new home near a rail trail. Sitting on the floor and unpacking, I promised myself not to box up my life again for a long, long time. Cardboard cuts from moving box flaps were still fresh on my fingers. Cardboard cuts, like life transitions, can look superficial even when they’ve gone deep. For me, some things had gone deep. I needed to heal. Have you ever been there?

Life doesn’t sit still around us, of course, as we heal. I tried to sit still, myself. Outside my new home, joggers, cyclists, pedestrians, baby strollers, and pets on leashes passed by on the trail at all times of day and night. I spent hours watching them from a chair outside my back door. I let the movement flow past me, wanting nothing more than to rest, nest, and observe.

Scanning my shelves in the evenings, I’d take an old favorite book and a mug of tea to that chair out back. One evening, I found well-marked pages in a copy of The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.* I hadn’t picked him up in years, but I remembered his boldness. I’d liked it. I’d liked how he almost seemed to lift up his fingers, marked with their own healed-over cardboard cuts, looking somehow like wisdom by the time he was now writing about experience, and feeling, and discernment.

Ignatius didn’t advise against movement or change. That struck me. Instead, he suggested dwelling with the new possibilities and noticing how we feel as we imagine different options. He explained that not all options come from the same “spirit.” Some spirits, he said, fill the soul “with peace and quiet,” while others bring turmoil.^[1] He suggested noticing which option brought which spirit.

I suppose I’d come to associate moving boxes with turmoil. Perhaps I’d even assumed that change meant the failure. Sometimes that’s the case, but of course, sometimes it isn’t. I couldn’t have found a better place to help me remember that than the little home by the rail trail. The trail kept calling me out, insisting I remember how to move.

That trail had an interesting history. Nineteenth-century Midwesterners called that railroad path “the Monon.” Tracks of the Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville Railroad ran through the state of Indiana like a big “X” crossing at the town of Monon. The Monon carried troops and supplies during the Civil War. It hosted 90 miles of the funeral train procession for Abraham Lincoln. It served the limestone industry, five universities, and two resort hotels. Eventually, as rail lines were discontinued, tracks got removed. Long swaths of the Monon were converted into the multi-use trail system so busy in my own day.

Though its cargo had changed, I suspected the Monon had kept its old energy. It moved people and things. That’s what it did, and it lured me out.

I started setting books aside for short autumn walks. In October, I noticed a great horned owl beginning its outrageous calls overhead. I brought out snow boots for late November walks. Winter cramped my style, but after months of endless white, grey, and brown, my first glimpse of a crocus poking up through trail-side dirt felt thrilling. I loved those moments observing the earth move through its cycles around me. With so much to take in, is it any wonder I began making time to walk that trail so often?

I’d visit shops along the way. A sporting goods store had operated for years in an old house beside the trail. When they’d grill burgers out in the front yard, I’d stop to chat and look through sale racks. Though a vegetarian, I even ate a burger and enjoyed it.

New places caught my attention, too. Cafes and farmers market days offered new tastes and new faces. When I bought a bike and tried to ride even further, I discovered the aches and pains of middle-aged legs moving in new ways. I found I didn’t dread that pain as much, though, as I’d dreaded the pain of cardboard cuts. Perhaps it was the new shops, and farmers markets, and faces I thought of finding with the new distances my bike could give. I kept on with it, and I wasn’t disappointed.

I even took decisions out with me for my time on the Monon. Paradoxically, the movement slowed down my brain in ways that I needed. My mind got to wander, to reflect. I’d picture possibilities. I’d alternate between lingering in daydreamed scenarios and noticing the world around me. One day at a crossing signal, a man on his bike stopped beside me.

“You come this way a lot,” he observed.

“Yes,” I said, studying him, “and you pass me a lot.”

He laughed.

“You must enjoy it,” he said. “You’re always smiling.”

I hadn’t known that. I had known that other people kept smiling at me, and I’d smile back, relishing the exchange. I’d known that I was settling into movement that took me new places, showed me different things. Some days it even brought me peace. I’d known that eventually, with whatever decision I had on my mind, I’d come to a sense of what I needed to do. Perhaps all that stretching and strengthening of my legs was helping me work through other kinds of pain, as well.

“Just as taking a walk, journeying on foot, and running are bodily exercises,” wrote Ignatius, “so we call Spiritual Exercises every way of preparing and disposing the soul.”^[2] I liked his exercise metaphor, but I also liked how he noticed that bodies, senses, and emotions carry their own insights. They teach us and change us, and we practice their lessons in how we pass our days.

I found myself trying out the idea of leaving that little home by the rail trail much sooner than I’d expected. It raised the specter of moving boxes and cardboard cuts, for sure, but it also came with some new possibilities I hadn’t gotten to consider before. I daydreamed through them as I wandered the Monon over the next couple of months. When I once again gathered moving boxes, I noticed a change in myself. This time, I was making no promises about how long it would be before I moved again. Instead, I was feeling more confident that I could know when movements were right. I suspect the Monon trail had given me some good practice. I felt grateful for my time on that path.

What about you? How do you practice change?

Notes
^[1] Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius* (New York: Vintage Spiritual Classics, 2000) 116.^[2] Ignatius of Loyola, 5.

This essay originally appeared in The Beauty of Rest: Contemplative Essays (Clay Patin Press, 2023). The Beauty of Rest is available as a free Kindle ebook today (3/1/23 Pacific Time) only.*

Befriending the Unknown (Kat’s Dreams)

What if we saw the unknowns of life not as things to worry about but as spaces full of promise?

Author Callie J. Smith discusses facing unknowns, what she’s giving up for Lent, and her new novel Kat’s Dreams (free as Kindle ebook Feb. 21-22, 2023 only)

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Video Transcript:

“Befriending the Unknown”

This year for Lent I’m working on giving up my fear of the unknown, which is hard because I’m such a planner. I like to think five steps ahead, but given all the unknowns in life, giving up that fear is valuable. It’s valuable, and it’s one of those efforts that will take me way longer than the 40 days of Lent, which is sort of the point. In the Bible, the number 40 represented a lot. Forty days or 40 years represented a long time.

That’s one reason I set my novel Kat’s Dreams during the season of Lent. The main character Kat is trying to put some things behind her. She’s been trying to do that for a couple of years, and she’s still struggling with it, which is okay. Some of the most important things take time, and the thing about those kinds of journeys is that they aren’t primarily about that bad thing we’re wrestling with. The bad thing is real. Sin is real. The character Kat faced an experience of sexual harassment that was very real, and as she figures out what to do with that, she’s not sure what any of her options will mean for the future. But those unknowns and that sin aren’t the most important parts of the story. The most important parts are God, and hope, and living with hope in what God is doing even when we can’t see it.

That’s the challenge: to befriend the unknown and assume that God is making a way forward, a way of blessing, even if we can’t see more than a step ahead. It goes back to my Lenten challenge. I want to assume the unknown spaces in life are full of promise and not things I need to worry about. I want to look at the unknown and see promise. What about you? What do you see when you look at the unknowns?

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