Monday, August 25
- Scripture: Psalm 4:7 – “You have filled my heart with greater joy than when their grain and new wine abound.”
- Reflection: We are reminded that our contentment, our happiness, our joy, begins and lives deep in our hearts. It touches our minds and bodies and souls, too.
Researcher, author, lecturer leadership expert Brene Brown reminds us about how to live whole-heartedly. She reflects, “Wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It’s going to bed at night thinking, Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.” To learn more about whole-heartedness, we recommend visiting her website. She offers a self-inventory, and then offers podcasts to help explore and cultivate aspects of whole-heartedness. This is a short list of well-rounded principles that can be more deeply explored through Brown’s work. In the Gifts of Imperfection, she offers these “TEN GUIDEPOSTS FOR WHOLEHEARTED LIVING”- 1. Cultivating authenticity: letting go of what people think
- 2. Cultivating self-compassion: letting go of perfectionism
- 3. Cultivating a resilient spirit: letting go of numbing and powerlessness
- 4. Cultivating gratitude and joy: letting go of scarcity and fear of the dark
- 5. Cultivating intuition and trusting faith: letting go of the need for certainty
- 6. Cultivating creativity: letting go of comparison
- 7. Cultivating play and rest: letting go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth
- 8. Cultivating calm and stillness: letting go of anxiety as a lifestyle
- 9. Cultivating meaningful work: letting go of self-doubt and “supposed to”
- 10. Cultivating laughter, song, and dance: letting go of being cool and “always in control.”
- Spiritual Practice Prompt: Read through the list above. Does one of these points resonate with you, as a potential area for growth? Consider ways in which you can cultivate growth in your capacity for joy.
Song:
- “Sweet Disposition” by The Temper Trap: https://youtu.be/jxKjOOR9sPU?si=10eAZfIp2ZTIranW
Spiritual humility is not about getting small, not about debasing oneself, but about approaching everything and everyone else with a readiness to see goodness and to be surprised. This is the humility of a child, which Jesus lauded. It is the humility of the scientist and the mystic. It has a lightness of step, not a heaviness of heart. That lightness is the surest litmus test I know for recognizing wisdom when you see it in the world or feel its stirrings in yourself. The questions that can lead us are already alive in our midst, waiting to be summoned and made real. It is a joy to name them. It is a gift to plant them in our senses, our bodies, the places we inhabit, the part of the world we can see and touch and help to heal. It is a relief to claim our love of each other and take that on as an adventure, a calling. It is a pleasure to wonder at the mystery we are and find delight in the vastness of reality that is embedded in our beings. It is a privilege to hold something robust and resilient called hope, which has the power to shift the world on its axis. — Krista Tippett