Strength Training

While on a call with a spiritual direction client yesterday, we were talking about all the ways in which hir life is shifting. I said:

“Seek out that which strengthens you.”

It felt like good advice for us all.

Some challenges are things we can rise to. Other challenges just serve to grind us down. Some friends are the same. So are some movies, some music, certain activities…

What do you need for optimal strength? Different food choices? Deeper meditation practice? More prayer? A change in how you approach exercise? More laughter? Books you have to study instead of race through? Conversations with viewpoints that differ from your own? More sleep? Less sleep?

This week I took a Pilates class that left me feeling taller and more solid than when I walked in. I get a fair amount of exercise, and some of you followed my explorations with my former trainer. In the last year or so, I’ve been self-motivated: four mile bike rides with sit ups and push ups in the middle. Small amounts of morning yoga at home after my prayers and meditation. Kettle bells. Jumping jacks on work breaks. But I haven’t pushed and stretched myself. I’ve maintained my strength, which is good, but the one hour class felt strengthening in a different way. Someone else was guiding me to do things I would not otherwise. My body loved it. I’m planning to go back.

We all have default settings, whether high or low. Those default settings mostly maintain the status quo, and sometimes serve to weaken us over time. To grow in strength and resiliency, we need a change. Some of us need to slow down and deepen. Some of us need a push toward greater motion. What we need is to rise to – or sink into – a challenge.

What do you think you need? Or what are you already engaged with? In other words:

What strengthens you? 

I look forward to reading your insights.

#challenges #SpiritualPractice #strengthtraining

An Egyptian Goddess, Drones, and Me

I have a new piece over at the Huffington Post where I write about walking with Sekhmet in the Nevada desert, watching drones fly overhead. Here is an excerpt:

We are damaging ourselves, our souls, and the earth. We are dealing out death at a distance, and slowly dying inside. Freedom is hard to bear. But so is war. So is our enslavement and inner blindness. How shall we waken to the light that dawns over the desert so beautifully? If life and death are sacred, what is our role in these wars being fought via real-time video? We try to distance ourselves from the cycles of the earth, but in the long run, this simply is not possible. As Gen. Stanley McChrystal wrote in his report to President Obama regarding the war in Afghanistan: “Pre-occupied with protection of our own forces, we have operated in a manner that distances us – physically and psychologically – from the people we seek to protect… The insurgents cannot defeat us militarily; but we can defeat ourselves.”May Sekhmet give us strength.

I hope you will visit and leave comments over there.

Blessings to you. Blessings to this earth.

#drones #HuffingtonPost #Sekhmet

John Brennan, Sekhmet, and the Fires of War