Week Two: Day 6 – Offer an Intention

It helps to set aside specific times when we’re aware, I’m doing a spiritual practice with a specific intention of cultivating that connection with God. Often unless we set aside a specific time just for that purpose we can forget that our whole life is, in fact, spiritual practice.

I think a great help in that is cultivating the offering of an intention at the beginning of a session of spiritual practice. So whatever the practice is, whether it is one of the literally hundreds of practices that the huge treasury of the church tradition offers us, or something that just makes us feel alive, feel connected with life, we can use that as a spiritual practice by offering an intention before we begin a specific period of doing that as prayer. So we might just say a prayer to God, something like, “As I sit down to do this practice of gardening or writing or yoga or scripture reading, or whatever it happens to be,” we can say, “God, I offer my whole person, my heart, my mind, my whole being to you in this practice and I intend to come to know you and to love you more deeply and to make myself more available to your love through this particular practice.”

– Br. Keith Nelson

Question to Journal
What spiritual practice might help you grow?