Hot Coffee On A Cold Porch

It was minus 10 degrees this morning. As is our custom, we sat on the front porch with our insulated mugs of steaming Sleepy Monk coffee, all bundled up with multiple layers, fleece blankets, wool beanies and warm gloves.

No one would have blamed us if we had decided to stay inside where it was warm and toasty for our morning ritual of coffee, connection, and a little contemplative reading. It was below zero for crying out loud. But somehow, doing what it takes to preserve and protect that practice, come what may, is worth the effort. For now.

It’s not a rigid, letter-of-the-law rule by which we have to abide, but rather, a choice worth making. For now.

It’s a time together at the beginning of the day that sustains and better equips us for whatever life brings our way. For now.

There’s nothing sacred or magic about coffee on a porch. That is found in the showing up. In the readiness to listen. In the openness to receive. In the possibility of being connected to and changed by something way bigger than two elders who love each other and a good cup of coffee. It just happens to take place, for us, over coffee on a porch.

That’s the ritual that sustains us. For now.

That’s the practice that equips us. For now.

That’s the choice worth making. For now.

What might yours be? For now.

Legit

I have every good intention of having a legit spiritual practice. In my mind this is what that is supposed to look like. Early in the morning I head upstairs, step into the lovely little meditation space I created a couple of years ago, light the candle, settle onto the cushion I purchased just for this purpose, set my Insight Timer app for 20 minutes, focus my gaze on the Buddha statue with the beautiful cross around her neck, take a deep cleansing breath, and sit until the timer goes off. Those 20 minutes are how I am supposed to connect with God. With the holy and the sacred that flows through and around everyone and everything.

That’s what a legit spiritual practice is supposed to look like.

Here’s what mine actually looks like.

Early in the morning I walk to the kitchen, pour a cup of coffee, put on a jacket against the chill, and head out to our field. Settling into the chair next to Tom, it’s impossible not to focus my gaze on the mountain in front of our home, take a deep cleansing breath, and sit. No timer. No Buddha. No candle. No cross. Just us, our coffee, and Gracie-the-chocolate labradoodle. We watch the birds, and wait for the sun to crest the pine trees and hit the anthill a few yards away rousing the ants to another day of work on behalf of their community. We read a daily offering from the CAC that lends a holy perspective to our human experience. We talk about everything and nothing at all. We give thanks. We grieve. We complain. We apologize. We laugh. We cry. We do the sometimes hard work of trying to love each other well, or at least a little better. That time, in those chairs, is how we connect with God. With the holy and the sacred that flows through and around everyone and everything.

That’s a legit spiritual practice too.

Almost anything can be a spiritual practice if it helps us to connect, however briefly, to the sacred in the midst of our ordinary lives. It doesn’t have to look like anything other than what it is. A spiritual practice can be as short as our next breath if we notice it, as messy as a toddler’s meltdown if we stay present for it, as scary as engaging a therapist to help us unhook from old stories and heal from old wounds, and as difficult as having the conversations we don’t want to have. Our practice can be as mundane as doing yet another load of laundry, or as miraculous as a few unexpected quiet moments before the rest of the house wakes up. It’s in the presence and the noticing that the practice occurs.

It’s not lost on me that there is a privilege that makes my brand of morning spiritual practice possible. We are both white with all of the advantages that has granted us over the course of our lives. We are decidedly middle class, and generally retired with a bit of time and money to spare. Recognizing that privilege brings with it the responsibility to work for a world that is more just, loving, and inclusive. A world that recognizes the holy and the sacred that flows through and around everyone and everything.

That’s a legit spiritual practice too.

We Are The Mountain

For us humans, emotions are a tricky thing. They can come and go in the blink of an eye, drop in without notice and drop out just as quickly, or decide to settle in and stay for a spell. Most of us relish what we deem the good emotions, and resist having to endure the ones we’ve come to see as bad or negative. The ones that don’t, well, feel good.

I’ve always been a feeling kind of girl. Emotions, even big, hard, painful ones don’t scare me. However, they can snag me, and before I know it, I’m wrapped around some kind of axle and in full reactive mode. It’s like I am the emotion, rather than me experiencing that emotion. It can be exhausting. For me, and for the people I share life with.

This morning, as most mornings, we sit on the front porch, coffee cups in hand, and read the daily offering of Fr. Richard Rohr, founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

His focus this week is Wisdom.

CAC faculty member, Cynthia Bourgeault, suggests that, “Wisdom is not knowing more, but knowing with more of you, knowing deeper.”

To help us dig deeper into wisdom, what it is, and how to grow more of it, Fr. Rohr created a list of 7 pathways, or ways of knowing, that can help us along our own wisdom way.

One of those pathways is emotion.

“Emotion: Great emotions are especially powerful teachers. Love, ecstasy, hatred, jealousy, fear, despair, anguish: each have their lessons. Even anger and rage are great teachers, if we listen to them. They have so much power to reveal our deepest self to ourselves and to others, yet we tend to consider them negatively. I would guess that people die and live much more for emotional knowing than they ever will for intellectual, rational knowing. To taste these emotions is to live in a new reality afterward, with a new ability to connect.”.

As we sat reflecting on our emotions as a way of knowing with more of ourselves, the changing light hitting Mt. Adams seemed to underscore what we had just read.

We are the mountain.

Emotion is our teacher.

Read the todays meditation in its entirety

Setting The Table

This morning I woke up in Albuquerque, NM. Sitting out in the courtyard of our little casita with my coffee, I started reading a new morning book. Part of my practice to live with intention, and to show up as fully as I can for the day before me, is to spend some time reading something nourishing, something that feeds and challenges my soul. Today I turned the first page of the book, Making Sense of Mindfulness by my new-old friend, Keith Macpherson. Soul food at its finest!

What we consume in the morning sets the table for our day.

Just about then my husband Tom joined me in the courtyard. Coffee and book in hand, he settled in with me under a brilliant blue morning sky. Looking up a few moments later, I noticed him reading something on his iPhone, and from the look on his face and the language of his body, knew that he was consuming something other than soul food. Some headline, about some less than soulful action, in some political arena, had whet his appetite and he was loading his plate from a buffet table of less than nourishing stories. 

What we consume in the morning sets the table for our day.

Looking up a little sheepishly, he pushed that overflowing plate aside, and pulled up the blue plate special of the day by Richard Rohr, a Fransician priest, author, and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation here in Albuquerque, and read it out loud. We do that most mornings, and it’s like splitting an order of soul food, both eating from the same plate. Together we’ve committed to this daily morning practice, but on any given morning either of us can get sidetracked, and are grateful when the other invites us back to the practice.

What we consume in the morning sets the table for our day. 

Don’t get me wrong. I believe it’s important to stay informed, and there are terrible things going on in our world that need our attention. But in order to show up fully for playing our part in our shared human drama that is unfolding on our shared planet, we need first to nourish ourselves well. There is an abundance of research suggesting that a nutritious breakfast is essential to our health and wellbeing, and sets the tone for the day. What is good for the body is good for the soul. Let’s nourish ourselves well. The world is hungry for what we have to give. 

What we consume in the morning sets the table for our day.