Is multi-tasking a spiritual practice cheating or more fully living it?

Beginning to wonder if this regular blogging (almost daily) is keeping me from journaling the way I had been and where/what the right balance is.

Someday it seems there’s extra time and others, not.

I also wonder if this is more or less of a spiritual practice than what I have been doing. There is more of a push to keep this up [imagined?]. I don’t journal daily ... just when I feel the need. I have tried Julia Cameron’s (the Artist’s Way) morning pages at times and they were wonderful, but my life doesn’t allow for that daily. Or am I the obstacle?

At a retreat last weekend, someone mentioned they felt as if they lived their day as a practice instead of setting aside a specific time. That’s how I’ve begun to feel the past couple of years. As if an aperture was opened and keeps getting wider and wider, thinning the veil between realities.

I find myself multi-tasking: using my daily swim as meditation, praying in the sauna, meditating on the treadmill. Is that cheating (myself, mostly, I guess) or making the spiritual more a part of my daily life?

I wonder.

• Do I have a daily spiritual practice?

• What suites me?

• Have I experimented or explored a variety?

• How do I feel when I am without one?

• Are there seasons to a regular practice?

Doubt is my biggest shadow ...

Umm... day 2, will this be a daily practice? Like Julie Powell cooking 365 days of Julia Child. Just not sure yet, but feel some commitment to regularity.

I find it interesting that I am reading Bridget Jonses’ Diaries and Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle – wildly divergent, yet both based on a regular progression of documentation. One fiction and one fact. One revolving round single life in late 1990s London and the other on growing one’s own food for a year. Yin and Yang, perhaps? But something about continuity and accountability appeals to me. Also something about “putting it out there," [maybe that’s why Bridget Jones appeals to me] a message I am repeatedly receiving from a higher authority, yet also from deep within.

I have privately kept journals, in the Quaker tradition without realizing it, all through my 40s and often find it a source of comfort, problem solving and creativity. It’s a place I can turn when it seems no one else understands or wants to hear “it” again ... the “it” du jour. Sometimes I journal religiously, others, not so much.

It seems mildly amusing that as a journalist for so much of my career, I never once considered keeping a journal ... “Just the facts, Mam,” I thought. Older and, hopefully, wiser. I find what’s behind the facts much more interesting and worthy of exploration.

I have two kinds of journals: one for words and another, for images, which often convey for me so much more than words can. I plan to post some of those images here.

Yesterday was quite exhilarating launching this blog (with so much forethought: a couple of hours ... really it’s been a whisper for awhile) and seeing it gain “followers.” Also humbling and gratitude producing. I hope the novelty doesn’t wear off. I joined facebook last year at this time all excited about “finding” old and new friends, then being less enthusiastic when it seemed kind of shallow. I desire a facebook with more substance ... not sure that’s possible given that its name so clearly states the intent. Or my bigger fear: that I have nothing worthwhile to say.

Doubt is my biggest shadow and I am learning to recognize, even honor it ... like the really long shadows of the trees today on the snow in the crisp sunshine.
• What are my shadows?
• How can I more fully integrate them?
• How can I honor them?
• Do I cast them on others, projecting what’s really just mine?
• Can I own them?
I am learning to trust the dark
and see it as not merely
the absence of light,
but the presence
the presence of all
the presence of all color

– Cathy
www.turtleboxstories.com is a place I have created for gathering and sharing the deepest stories of our hearts; please visit and/or share if you’re so inclined

Today is the day I start

So today is THE day I start my blog, an idea that’s been present and forming for sometime and I guess it does not have to be fully developed to begin. I suffer from having to know it all before jumping off and Spirit (I want to be clear that you should substitute whatever word works for you; I may use some interchangeably) says in order to be faithful, I just have to start.

I assume the shape of this will arise, too, with more practice and the actuality of putting it out there. The intention is to share my story, thoughts, dilemmas, joys (yeah, a kind of online journal), etc. in encouraging others to open as well.

I seem to have all of these pieces floating about and am looking for a way to tie them together and something (greater than myself) tells me this blog could be a way. I am in a very transitional place:
– trying to be faithful in producing and publishing inspired
words and images as books
– trying not to worry about “regular” work and doing what I am
called to
– reclaiming myself from constant motherdom as my daughters gain
more independence; figuring out what that means and what to
“do” with it

I also think this time of year, a quieter time for reflecting, also seems like transition; when I can re-create myself for the coming year. Something deeper and more meaningful to me than New Year’s Resolutions. In that vein, I looked over my journal entries for the past year because I so easily tend to forget where I am and have been and it was ... hum ... what are the right words? ... gratitude inspiring. The highs and lows, the grumblings and thankfulness, the disappointments and promises. So, I think I’ll reflect on:
• Where has the path of the last year taken me?
• For what should I be grateful?
• What lessons have I learned?
• Where is the current fork leading?
• What is my prayer for the coming year?
That seems like plenty.

May the solitude of the quiet snow fill the places in your heart and body that are too noisy. Let those meandering flakes melt into those places, spreading peace and love.

– Cathy

www.turtleboxstories.com is a place I have created for gathering and sharing the deepest stories of our hearts; please visit and/or share if you’re so inclined