A few weeks ago, after a very poor sleep, I got up one morning with unhappy thoughts racing through my head. I got ready for work with my usual array of podcasts, though I wasn’t really able to hear any of them. Finally, as I was walking down the hill which forms the first part … Continue reading Silence
This week was the first full week of Lent, and so I wanted the practice for this week to be a specifically Lenten practice. And, since I first encountered it twelve years ago, no practice has jumped out at me as being ‘more’ Lenten, than the Lenten Prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian. The famed … Continue reading Lenten Prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian
It’s been a few weeks now since I looked a practice rooted in scripture reading, so I decided this week to look at one of the other traditions commonly known as lectio divina, or sacred reading. Whereas a few weeks ago I explored devotional reading focused on different ways scripture can speak to us, this … Continue reading Lectio Divina (Gospel Contemplation)
While author and filmmaker Julia Cameron originated morning pages as a way of overcoming creative blocks, she makes far greater claims about their potential and the fruit they can bear.
One of the things I’m particularly interested in is spiritual discernment. This could be because the data of my life have always been pretty messy and so finding the signal in the noise has been difficult for me, or maybe I’m just indecisive. Whatever the reason, I love tools that help me sift through the … Continue reading Ignatian Examen
Matthew Root 