The shape of our lives
When our first born came along a friend advised us to mentally cycle through a series of simple diagnostic questions when they were distressed: Does it need fed? Does it need changed? Is it too warm? Is it too cold? Does it need burped? Sounds and sounded simple, and it was helpful, and unfussy.
Now, I don’t glide easily into a Review of the Day. I lumber my way through group check-ins. They are such an effort for me. Call me Mr SelfUnaware but I can’t quickly connect. Their call to analysis I find cumbersome and tiring.
I appear though to have stumbled into new territory, perhaps a Heath Robinson version of Review of the Day (the personal version of a check-in). It is to routinely cycle through a trio of fundamental necessities, ones that emerged from this Lent’s Good Friday-Holy Saturday-Easter Sunday reflections. They seem to help me to explore the vicinity of ‘where am I at?’, ‘what do I need to notice’, ‘where am I?’ They invite me to plunge into their promise, move through life a little less clumsily I hope, letting the Spirit facilitate some necessary and often unclear and curious life and/or faith transition. These necessities?
Remember oneness: ‘Injest oneness, simply’ (Good Friday)
This addresses and re-dresses the drift towards believing in the illusion of separation from, rather than intrinsic connection with, God. It may be rehearsed through the Eucharist, and experiencing bodily that sense of interiority, of union.
Let go (Holy Saturday)
The spiritual task, some have said. Learn to die before you die, which is a form of dying to the false self.
Say hello (Easter Sunday)
Is there something around which I am to welcome? What may I be invited to say ‘Yes’ to? What am I compelled to walk towards?
A spiritual MOT
It may also be worth pondering periodically:
- Have I observed core, recurring and necessary spiritual tasks that I am drawn back to time and again? (maybe even just for this season)
- When I do engage in them what do they tend to result in or allow?
- How about folding them into some form of daily review?