Thursday Freewrite Fifteen

Only SIX more ZOOM in the Living ROOM Pilates classes!

I have some writing I need to do this morning, but I have sort of been stalling. Well, I don't know if stalling is the right word for it. I have been on a bunny trail to answer a question I got in an email from my friend about a diagram that I use when explaining abiding and one that has been developed by the leaders of my community. 

It was fun to compare and contrast, but it sort of pulled me away from the main task that I have today: completing the handout on Centering Prayer that I am developing for my community. Well, it is not my main task, really. I have two Pilates classes today, and I still need to do my attendance for my last class. 

I have THREE more days of teaching left - SIX more classes. I am looking forward to being done with Zoom teaching forever. I will do it for my private practice, but for the university, I am done. I just don't enjoy it. Don't get me wrong, I love the students. But I feel like I cannot interact with them while I am teaching, and that is half the fun. All the repeat students that I had for the first five years of my teaching have all graduated and gone. So I have a new crop every term. I miss the rapport I developed with so many of them over time (so much so that one of them even has my videos as a link in her life coaching book - how cool is that?). I am on campus next term. It will mean cleaning all the equipment, but I don't care. I think I will love being back face-to-face with them.

Back to the Centering Prayer handout. I think this has been such a journey in Centering Prayer for me. I am so gung-ho on any spiritual practice. I embrace them so heartily because I love a wide variety of ways to draw closer to God, but I did not see the value and point of Centering Prayer. I remember trying to read the book by Basil Pennington a while back, but I just could not get into it. I think it was the Sacred Enneagram (I know that the author is controversial now, but I really liked that book) section about this practice that challenged me to give it a try. He said he did it two times a day for 20 minutes! I thought NO WAY! I had gotten the Centering Prayer app and practiced it before my Lectio Divina times in the morning, but 40 minutes total a day! 

BUT, we had a practice that we were to choose in my second year of spiritual direction training, and that was the only one I had never fully explored. So I dove in. 

I looked for an option to encourage the practice, and while looking up the Mercy Center in Burlingame, CA (because my Enneagram training graduated from their spiritual direction program, and I was curious about what it entailed) that I saw that they practiced it for 1/2 hour twice a week. So I jumped in, and that has made all the difference. I love the accountability of sitting in front of the screen and practicing it with about 40 other people. I also love that they had a discussion twice a month through the chapters of Open Mind, Open Heart by Thomas Keating. That really helped me understand. Now I have the option of doing it six days a week with various people around the world. That has been so helpful! I look forward to them, and I do it more and more on my own now. 

It is about letting go. I cannot describe it, but I let go of thoughts that are not helpful now in real life, and I no longer yell at cars. I can explain that another time because my fifteen minutes is up!