Developing Personal Liturgies: A Week-long Virtual Retreat

I’ve been punching out words on a near-daily basis and publishing them here. It’s been an active liturgy of creation, one that requires a consistent commitment to a time (5:15 in the morning), place (the gray chair by the fireplace), and an embodied action (putting words to my thoughts). This one act sets the tone of the day. If I publish in the morning, I’ve accomplished something even before I drink my first cup of coffee.

As I wrote last week, our liturgies and rituals are acts of embodied resistance against despair. My morning liturgy of creation is one such act. But this creative liturgy is not the only ritual in my life. In fact, on a good week, I incorporate several liturgies, rituals, and habits.

This week, I’ll lead you through a sort of virtual retreat. It’s meant to help you identify and develop your own personal liturgies. These practices should ground you spiritually, physically, and emotionally. They should provide space for connection with the numinous, the Divine Love. They should direct your work and the ways you interact with others (both in the physical world and in the digital).

Will you follow along in this week-long virtual retreat? Will you commit to examining and developing your own personal liturgies as an act of resistance against despair?

Life Examined:

  1. Do you have any daily, weekly, or monthly liturgies? It might include morning reading or journaling, weekly solitude and silence, or a monthly work-planning day.

  2. Do you resist forming personal liturgies or rituals? If so, why?

***WAKE UP WITH ME***

THE BOOK OF WAKING UP —a book on addiction, attachment, and the Divine Love—launched TUESDAY so order a copy or ten at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookish (my favorite indie bookseller). Then, forward this post to a friend and ask them to read along.