Resources
Reflections, Practices, and Companions for the Journey
One of the gifts of spiritual formation is discovering companions for the journey. These are often important people in our lives, but I’ve also found books, spiritual practices, and ordinary moments sometimes become my companion in spiritual formation. They help center my attention to God’s presence in everyday life.
Below are some reflections, practices, and prayers that I hope might become companions for you in your journey.
Featured Writing
A selection of essays and reflections exploring prayer, friendship, beauty, hope, hospitality, discernment, and the ways God meets us in ordinary life.
I recommend beginning with:
- Selling My House
- Shaking Up My Life
- Shadow and Light
- Kona and the Examen
- You’ll also find other blog entries here
Looking for More?
The easiest way to stay connected is through Process Art, my monthly newsletter.
Each month I share reflections, prayer practices, books, questions, and discoveries gathered from ordinary life.
Here are some past Newsletter examples
Current Writing Projects
A Holy Friendship: Discovering God’s Gentleness
A completed book manuscript that invites readers into a deeper friendship with God through contemplative prayer practices and a renewed understanding of God’s gentleness. Drawing from a range of Christian spiritual traditions, the book offers practical pathways for growing in prayer and spiritual transformation.
The Art Of Moving Well
A developing book project about the practical, emotional, and spiritual experience of relocating from one place to another. Drawing from multiple moves across the country, the book explores belonging, home, grief, hospitality, and the art of creating rootedness in unfamiliar places. While centered on the experience of geographic relocation, it also considers how movement and place shape who we become.
A Prayer Practice: Visio Divina
Once on Palm Sunday, I taught a prayer practice at my church called Visio Divina.
Visio Divina means sacred seeing. You pray with your eyes.
On Palm Sunday, people recognized Jesus because of what they saw. This way of prayer opens the eyes of our hearts and teaches us to see what God sees. Visio divina helps us start to notice the holy moments around us. It attunes our eyes to the presence of God in our ordinary day. Accept anything that happens while you look at the scene in front of you. It might simply be an opportunity to rest your eyes. Or, you may walk away with something that touched your heart in a particular way. Whatever happens, this prayer is a gift. On this page I’ve placed an image you might use or you could choose another, and here are suggested steps and questions.
Immediately below is a tab that opens a picture that serves as the basis for this prayer practice example. I’ve also written out some instructions there to guide you through reflecting on this picture of the Sea of Galilee.
Click here to open the picture and guided questions
- First invite God to show you what needs to be seen in the picture.
- Next, look at an image, piece of artwork, or something in nature, and notice what draws your eye.
- Stay with whatever that might be and notice what comes up within you. Notice what is evoked, what memories surface, and what thoughts you have.
- Let your eyes take in the whole work and continue to pay attention to your interior movements. What grabs your attention?
- Notice shadow, light, colors, shapes, and people in the pictures. Wonder about what causes you to lean in and what repels you.
- What does the image unlock for you? What comforts you? What sparks fear in you? As you sit with the picture, consider journaling what you are noticing.
- When closing your time with the image, thank God for meeting you and ask for the grace to continue to see what God sees.
- Afterwards, continue to notice how the image comes back to you as you go about life. What is it that wants to be known?
What in the image connects with you?
What does this image evoke in you?
What memories arise for you? What does this remind you of?
Notice what is at the center of the picture.
photo credit: Mel Hailey
A Prayer
I first wrote this prayer for a group of students starting a program of ministry study, but I intentionally was thinking of “beginning.” I’ve found it helpful in other beginning spaces as well and maybe you will too.
A Prayer for Beginning
You said yes to God’s invitation to grow
in friendship with Him and other people!
Nothing will ever be the same.
May this time be like a chrysalis,
transformational,
and may you emerge with the freedom to follow wherever God asks you to go.
For now,
May you have courage to walk the trail in front of you.
To seek God in the valleys, in the meadows, and on the uphill climb.
And when you get to the top, and look around, may you be astonished at many places you discover God was right there with you all along.
May you face the unknown with curiosity and openness.
May you learn to listen with the ears of your heart and see with the eyes of Christ.
May your heart break, grow, break again, grow again,
Until you find that Love itself is flowing through you,
Animating you,
Sweeping you into the wide, vast river of Trinitarian life.
May you find yourself surrounded by friends,
A community of people who love you just the way you are,
A community of people who see Christ in you,
A community of people who will cry, and laugh, and struggle, and forgive alongside you.
And may you discover, little by little, the kingdom of heaven breaking in all around you.
May you learn how to go where you never thought to go and be astonished that you can!
May you be blessed in this beginning.
Amen.
Reading Life
I love to read! I hesitate to list authors because I’ll inevitably leave many out, but I often refer to books and authors in my own writing, including in Process Art, and thought you might be interested in them too.
Authors I return to often include:
- Luci Shaw
- Trevor Hudson
- Dallas Willard
- Richard Foster
- John O’Donohue
- Jan Richardson
- Judy Cannato
- Henri Nouwen
- Brian Zahnd
- Aundi Kolber
- Dr. Curt Thompson
- Joyce Rupp, OSM
Their work continues to help me pay attention to God’s presence in the world.
“If we are to stand within the framework of Christian belief, as artists and Christians, we are required to take both earth and heaven seriously; and, moreover, to attempt to find connections that bridge the gap between the two.”
— Luci Shaw, in Breath for the Bones