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Embodied Spiritual Practices

by Jessica Petersen

I have wanted to write about embodied spiritual practices for quite some time, because of their significance in my life. In fact, I have begun writing about them, and stopped, several times. It is challenging to describe the effectiveness of these activities that do not on the surface seem “spiritual” and yet, are essential to my own connection with the divine, a form of prayer that doesn’t look or sound like what we often think prayer is, and yet, engaging them reorients me to God, to myself, and to the world around me.

“We do not think ourselves into new ways of living. We live ourselves into new ways of thinking.”

Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer  

Perhaps this quote from Richard Rohr best describes why I find embodied spiritual practices so helpful. I spend a lot of time in my head. That is my personality, and the nature of my work. Engaging in activities that require my whole body gets me out of my head. Embodied practices enable me to do more than think, but to truly live, with my whole being. And that is a form of prayer.

“What is prayer? It’s not a passport to heaven.
If anything it’s a way of seeing here, a way of being here.”         

 Pádraig Ó Tuama, Being Here: Prayers for Curiosity, Justice and Love

In recent weeks, I have engaged in several embodied spiritual practices that I’ll share here. This is not an exhaustive list, simply a snapshot in time. Some are commonplace things I do frequently, on repeat, and they sustain me. Others are irregular, or even one-off experiences. All enabled me to open myself to God, to be fully present to myself and the world around me, and I emerged from these experiences changed, even in some small way.

Walking: Whether in my neighborhood or in a park or down a busy street, this is the simplest and most accessible way to engage my body, even if only for a few minutes. And this is often when I hear and see God’s work in the world and in my life most clearly.

Making sourdough: This is a practice and a process, but there is something holy about keeping sourdough starter alive, nurturing it, and keeping it healthy enough to serve as leaven in bread. And when it is time to bake, I use my body to measure and weigh, to mix and knead, and then the dough rests…and I am reminded that after work, I must rest, too…and after resting, the dough has changed – expanded and risen – the leaven has done its work in the resting time. And I shape the dough and let it rest again, before baking it in an extremely hot oven. And when it emerges, it is no longer a sticky ball of goo, but the most delicious nourishment, and as it feeds my body, I remember how the process of making it fed my soul.

Ziplining: Last Friday, David and I went on a zipline adventure – hiking with a guide to 5 different ziplines, the longest of which was 2800 feet – and it was AMAZING! I have ziplined once before, through a rainforest canopy in Costa Rica on our honeymoon. That was a lot of fun, but it was also in the middle of planned vacation. This was a random Friday. We put our kids on the school bus in the morning, and to be honest – it was one of THOSE mornings – and then we went ziplining while they were at school. This experience was an interlude amid ordinary life, at the end of a week when I was truly exhausted. It might have felt good to stay home and lounge on the couch, read, perhaps take a nap. But what I needed was something different. And while it required energy, it was truly restorative, and it enabled me to re-enter my “normal” life with renewed perspective – more connected to God, to myself, and to those around me.

Puzzles: It is not unusual for me to have a puzzle in process on our dining room table. Conveniently situated between our home office and the kitchen (the hub of our home life), I pass the dining room numerous times each day. I can easily step into the dining room to spend a few minutes puzzling to re-orient my mind during a busy workday, or to calm my mind in the midst of parenting and running a household. And I am always reminded that everything will come together, one piece at a time.

Solar Eclipse: We viewed the eclipse at our daughters’ elementary school, in a field surrounded by hundreds of kids, family members, and teachers. While it was spectacular to see, the gift for me was being fully present to hear the gasps of children as it got dark, to look around and see the amazement on so many faces, to just be, in the presence of other humans, as we witnessed something we may never see again. For a few minutes, time stood still, and everything else fell away.

Gardening: This might seem like “work,” but gardening form of prayer for me. Pulling weeds is like confession, loosening the dirt to plant is like centering, putting a seed or a seedling in the ground is like an offering, watering, waiting and nurturing is like patiently listening for God to speak, and harvesting food for my family’s table is like thanksgiving.

Standing barefoot on the grass: It is hard to describe just how grounding this practice is for me. I wear shoes almost any time I am standing, and so it is jarring (in the best possible way) to walk outside with bare feet, to feel the cool grass under my toes, and the breeze blowing my skin. To just be still, for as long as it takes, to feel connected again, to realize that the spot where I am standing – no matter where it is – is holy ground.

 “What is saving my life now is becoming more fully human,
trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world.”

Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

And today, reflecting on all of these experiences, I am grateful, for their role in helping me become more fully human, one day, one practice, at a time. I think I’ll go ride my bike now.

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A Prayer for When You’re Too Busy

by Jessica Petersen

I’ve been way too busy lately. The start of school is always hectic, as is the beginning of fall programming at church, and I am knee-deep in both. This transition from summer to the school year and the coming fall feels more “normal” that it has in years. In-person events are back, and somehow, there seem to be more of them than ever before. Perhaps we are making up for lost time. My calendar has been out of control the last few weeks. Maybe that’s true for you, too.

One morning this week, as I faced yet another day of back-to-back meetings and events, I scribbled this prayer in my journal. Just the mere act of taking that brief moment to connect with God helped immensely. It changed my day. If you’re too busy, perhaps this prayer will help you, too.

God, I am tired. Worn out from being over-scheduled. Too busy, with no room for my soul to breathe, or to listen to my body. I hate it when I have weeks like this. I feel disconnected from you and others, a slave to my schedule and to-do list, and yet, I consented to this.

Why?

I don’t have an answer to that.

But I know you are telling me to breathe, to listen, to be…even if just for a brief moment of reconnection with my body and with you. Calm my mind. Quiet my anxious heart and enable me to be still. Help me to breathe deeply – your breath in my lungs – reminding me that I am yours. May your breath renew me.

For I already know that I need to make changes, that my schedule cannot continue to be this full. Guide me and show me your wisdom, your way, for me to live fully into who you have called me to be. Amen.

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I Can’t Find the Words

by Jessica Petersen

Lately, there are days when I feel like I don’t know how to write anymore. It’s as if I have forgotten how to formulate coherent thoughts into words and sentences, weaving them together into something that is cohesive and meaningful. It’s not that I haven’t been writing recently. I have. But I haven’t finished anything (with the exception of sermons) in a few months. When I sit down to write, I’m finding it hard to get started, and when I do begin to make progress, I usually need to stop (because: kids, work, other responsibilities, etc). Additionally, the world seems to be moving so quickly that when I pause and return a day or two later, everything I have written seems irrelevant. So, I start again, and don’t finish again, and the cycle repeats. And sometimes I wonder what I even have to say amidst the war in Ukraine, horrific mass shootings occurring with regularity, discriminatory laws against LGBTQ+ persons, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the border crisis, the breakup of the United Methodist Church, systemic racism, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and so much more…

If I’m honest, I couldn’t type that last sentence without crying. It is A LOT, and that list is only a snippet, a tiny percentage, of the pain and injustice, the growing polarization and division, the complete and utter heartbreak that is occurring in our country and in the world. Words elude me to even begin to describe this.

The way I am feeling lately feels similar to something I experienced during my Clinical Pastoral Education internship. While serving as a hospital chaplain during the CPE process is always intense, my situation was unique because one of the long-time chaplains at the hospital where I served was dying of cancer. I was assigned his units to cover, which meant that I spent my days on in the ICU, the oncology unit, and the cardiac unit. Additionally, I spent time caring for staff who were grieving the impending loss of their own caregiver and support person. I was twenty-five years old, fresh from seminary, and it was A LOT. And when it was all beginning to feel like too much, a thirty-two-year-old patient in the ICU was determined to have lost all brain function.

As I approached the ICU to be present with his family, I heard wailing before I even reached the doors of the unit. And when I walked through the doors, I stopped in my tracks. Through the glass walls, I could see the patient’s loved ones gathered (far more than were allowed in the ICU; the room was packed) wailing and weeping and lamenting. I wanted to run the other way. It was too much. But this was my work, what I had been called to that day. When I entered the room, it suddenly became silent. Then, someone asked me to pray. I didn’t know what to pray. I didn’t have words. I bowed my head and remained silent as I tried to find the words and instead tears came…for the family, for their pain and grief, for the impossibility of doing anything to fix or help this situation. And I cried with them and for them and eventually prayed something (I have no idea what, because the words did not come from me but from the Holy Spirit) and somehow, whatever I prayed was comforting, helpful, meaningful to those in the room. After I prayed, the mood in the room was different. Individuals began to talk and share, and I listened. But I didn’t say much, and I didn’t need to. I learned that my words were not what was needed; it was my presence that mattered, my willingness to be with them in their worst moments, to cry and lament alongside them.

I guess what I am saying is that I don’t know what to say right now. But I am here. I am crying, even if you can’t see it. I am lamenting, even if you don’t hear it. I am praying, even if you don’t know it.

While some might think this is a cop-out, what I know about myself is that I have a tendency toward productivity and busy-ness, sometimes at the expense of what God is calling me to. I could put in the time to write a carefully thought-out and polished theological statement (and perhaps that will come, in time) but if I did that today, it would be at the expense of what I really need to do: cry, pray, lament.

So, here I am finishing something I began to write only this morning…800+ words about how I can’t find words. It’s probably not well-written. Perhaps it’s just babbling. But it is finished. And it is my offering for today…as I cry, pray, and lament for the world, for women and girls, for those without the privileges I have, for those hemmed in on all sides and lacking options, for those who simply want to live.

*If you want to read more about lament as a spiritual practice, you can do so here.

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Lamenting for Lent

by Jessica Petersen

The season of Lent has arrived, whether we are ready or not. But since preparation is the purpose of this season, we don’t have to begin the season “ready.” Perhaps it is most helpful to begin this season in a posture of openness to what God will do. If we are open, we create space for God to work in our lives. Whether you engage in an intentional Lenten practice or not, a posture of openness to God is important in this season.

This year I am lamenting for Lent. Why? Because there is so much to lament – in my personal life, in the lives of loved ones, and in the world. For me, lament feels essential right now. Intentionally engaging in the practice of lament compels me to respond to hard things differently than I might otherwise. When I practice lament, I enter in and engage things that bring grief and sorrow by offering them to God. While I might be inclined to become mired in my feelings, or, depending on the circumstance, be tempted to disengage, lament enables me to feel my feelings and do something with them. Lament compels me to engage when it would be more comfortable not to. Lament enables me to be open to God.

What is lament? 

I first became familiar with the concept of lament in college and seminary courses that studied the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. Lament or lamentation, according to The Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms, is “a religious cry of sorrow or mourning.” Certainly, I intuitively engaged in the practice of lament before I knew what it was. But learning about lament gave this type of prayer meaning and form, example and justification. While others may have defined my prayers as “self-absorbed” during my teenage years, I believe they were lament. I was honestly and vulnerably offering to God that with which I was struggling, expecting God to do something with it. After all, isn’t that what lament is?

Lament became an intentional practice for me in seminary when my Old Testament professor, Dr. Ellen Davis, gave an assignment on praying the Psalms. We were instructed to not just read them, pray them. And not just the psalms you like, all the genres of psalms, even the psalms of lament. It was while engaging in that assignment that I learned what lament truly is. I discovered that when I prayed the lament psalms written by others, I lamented not only my own circumstances, but those of others: situations long-past and those in the news today, those relevant in my own life and those entirely foreign to my personal experience.

Lament became my response when I heard about hard things in other’s lives, in the news, and experienced them in my own life. Whether I prayed one of the biblical psalms of lament or lamented in my own words, I offered the hard thing to God in as many words or images or tears or groans as I had. Then, I waited for God to do something with it.

Lament is an Act of Faith

After all, lament is an act of faith. It’s not just complaining. While it may begin there, lament is complaining addressed to God. Someone who has a lot of complaining or whining to do could do that with a friend or write about it in a journal, without addressing it to God. In the practice of lament, those expressions of negative feelings and emotions become prayer. The practice of lament requires vulnerability and trust combined with hope. Isn’t that what faith is?

“In its peculiar way lamenting is an act of faith because it speaks to our understanding that things are not as they should be…Perhaps the more difficult part of lamenting comes in maintaining some element, no matter how small, of trusting that God is living and able, trusting in the inherent goodness of God, and recognizing that God too understands that in a broken world, things are not always as they should be…”

Enuma Okoru, Silence and Other Surprising Invitations of Advent

Lament doesn’t stop with prayer. When we offer lament to God and expect God to do something with it, we are asking for a response from God. Lament also requires our openness to what God might ask of us, because sometimes what God does will change us or involve our participation. That is when the practice of lament becomes more than prayer. When we lament, we never know what God will do, but we always expect something to happen. It might be the opposite of what we expect.

“God cares that I am in pain and can be expected to do something about it. That is a remarkable assumption when you think about it, which we hardly ever do – that the God who made heaven and earth should care that I am hurting. Yet it is the only thing that explains this strange style of biblical prayer…”

Ellen F. Davis, Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament

In the psalms, lament often makes way for praise and thanksgiving. Well-known Psalm 22, which begins with:

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
   Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?”

concludes with:

“To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down;
   before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,
   and I shall live for him.
Posterity will serve him;
   future generations will be told about the Lord,
and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn,
   saying that he has done it.”

Clearly: God hears, God cares, and God responds. That is why I am practicing lament, as an act of faith, and opening myself up to whatever God will do. However you choose to prepare during this Lenten season, may you do it with a posture of openness to God. Blessings on you in this season.   

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A Prayer for When I Feel Scattered

by Jessica Petersen

God, sometimes I feel scattered, blown about by the wind. My brain is going in a thousand directions at once, like leaves on a blustery autumn day. Stress and worry overwhelm me. I can’t get a grip on where I am or what I am doing or even what my priorities are. Everything feels so important that I spend my day frantically “doing,” but I feel defeated because the most important things still are not done. On days like this, I lack focus and perspective because I am not connecting with you. I am just doing to do, as a means of trying to control my stress and manage my anxiety about my overwhelming to-do list, when – in actuality – I’m not controlling or managing anything at all.

Enable me to slow down…pause…breathe…

Speak into the disarray of this blustery day and say: “Peace, be still.” Bring stillness to the chaos. Help me to let go of everything I am holding onto with clenched fists. As I open my hands, help me open my heart to you. Renew our connection as you draw my awareness to your presence within me, the calm that comes when I am attentive to you. Empower me to rest in your presence for as long as I need to.

Then, help me to consider: Who am I called to be? What tasks are mine to do? What can be left undone?

When it is time, enable me to begin again with open hands, a renewed heart, and an attentive mind. And if I am blown by the wind, may it be the wind of your gentle, guiding Spirit showing me the way…not toward productivity, but toward wholeness and life with you. Amen.

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A Prayer for When You Just Can’t

by Jessica Petersen

We all have days when absolutely everything feels hard. Maybe because it IS hard, or perhaps because so many things have been challenging for so long that we hit a wall. And we feel like we just can’t do it, but we don’t have the choice not to (fill in the blank with whatever this is in your life). I’m fully in favor of mental health days and prioritizing self-care. This prayer is for the days when what is required of us far outweighs our ability to care for ourselves. We all have those days, and we live through them. I wrote this prayer on one of those days. Maybe you need this prayer today. I hope not. If not, tuck it away somewhere for the day when you just can’t.

God, I just can’t today. I am weary from chronic stress, exhausted from lack of sleep, run down from too much for too long. The mental load is crushing. I lack patience. Everything feels hard. I don’t have much to give. And yet, the day before me requires energy, the ability to be present with others, creative problem solving. I need to give, to be, to do. And I feel like I can’t. Not today.

I need a break. But today, other than this time in prayer, respite is unlikely.

By your Spirit, stretch this moment. Make minutes feel like hours. Enable me to have the energy do just what I need to do today, and no more. Show me the tasks that can wait, or that someone else can do, or that don’t need to be done at all. Help me to say no, and to ask for help. Enable me to focus only on what is mine to do. And through it all, remind me to breathe.

Open my eyes to moments of respite and delight in the midst of my day – a hot cup of coffee, flowers in bloom, the sunshine on my face, kind words, a loving embrace. May those small gifts be means of your grace this day, moments of provision and abundance to sustain me when I least expect it. And at the end of the day, enable me to rest – to quiet my mind, body and soul – in preparation for restorative sleep, so that tomorrow when I awake, I will know that by your grace, I can. Amen.

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Walking in the Wilderness

by Jessica Petersen

There was a time when I didn’t take walks alone very often. With children to keep up with, walks were usually an exercise in multitasking as much as they were actual exercise, and they were rarely peaceful. Now, I frequently take walks alone, just because. A need to get out of the house during the pandemic and an increasing focus on self-care are the reasons I began taking walks alone, but I have maintained the practice because walking has become a sustaining spiritual practice for me.

In the spring of 2020, as the time approached to leave the church where I had served for 9 years, it became clear that I no longer had a home base for my path in ministry, or my own discipleship. I was setting out into the wilderness. I would no longer be hanging around my campsite, with short forays into the woods and back to camp. I was packing up and walking away, with no plan or destination in mind, no timeframe or set distance to travel. I had provisions for my journey and skills for procuring more, but no specific plan.

That was when I began walking on a regular basis. 

I realize now that walking was an intuitive spiritual practice, even if I didn’t know it at the time. I thought I was seeking movement, a little time alone – and I did achieve those things – but unexpectedly, my walks became important times of reflection and discernment. Walking nourished me, like a cool drink of water or a restful night of sleep.

I hadn’t truly considered my path, in my life or my ministry, in a long time. As a teenager and early twenty-something, I contemplated and considered my path often, making decisions strategically with the hope of following a certain path. As I settled into local church ministry and started a family, my sightline became shorter. Instead of focusing on the horizon, I became focused on the here and now, on avoiding tripping over the rocks in my path. But I had begun to look up again, farther in front of me, and what I saw in the distance did not align with where I felt called. I needed to change directions, to take another path. What followed was the decision to change my work situation, to pack up and leave the campsite, setting out into the wilderness.

As I walked the streets of my neighborhood and the trails of nearby parks, I found myself imagining a path through the woods as a metaphor for my ministry. Walking in the woods, a person can go a long time without seeing another human, or even a trail marker. For many months after leaving the church I was serving, that’s exactly what happened on my metaphorical path. I simply walked along the trail, enjoying the fresh air and exercise, appreciating what I noticed and learned along the way. It was invigorating to be in the wilderness. I just wanted to keep walking; I didn’t want to stop and set up camp, to encounter anyone, to approach a crossroads. 

At times it didn’t even feel like I was going anywhere. My path might have been circuitous; it was certainly meandering. There were days I was comforted by knowing it didn’t matter if I was going somewhere, as long as I remained in the wilderness. Other days, I felt anxious and directionless without a plan. I noticed that even when I passed by a familiar spot, it never looked exactly the same. The woods are not static – weather, wind, animals, and the changing of the seasons all influence the landscape – the context is different each time. Not only were the woods changing, so was I.

That was when I realized that my walks had become a form of prayer. 

My walks had begun to resemble my experiences walking labyrinths. I deeply value the spiritual practice of walking labyrinths. I love that when I walk a labyrinth, I don’t go anywhere but I am always changed in the process. I enter and exit at the same point, wander around a small, fixed area and emerge different than when I entered the labyrinth. Similarly, each time I set out on a walk, I left from my house and returned to my house, not having “gone” anywhere, but changed still.

As I walked, all the thoughts floating around in my head began to converge in a way that enabled me to reflect and discern, to listen to my life and to God. As I walked, I reconnected with my call to ministry. I considered my gifts and passions, turning them over like a stone in my hand, feeling their weight and observing their particularities, those experiences that contributed to their present form. As I walked, I discerned God’s voice leading me in a clear direction, but still, there were no signs. Like a labyrinth, I knew I would find my way out eventually, that the path that leads inward always leads back out. I also knew that on a labyrinth, there is no point in trying to look too far ahead; it is best to keep walking, trusting the path with each step. As I walked, I trusted the path, and I kept walking.

One day, I began to see signposts in the distance. I didn’t know what the signs meant, but I could detect them ahead of me on the path. It seemed I was approaching a crossroads; nothing else would need that many signs. When I reached the first sign, I felt anxious, wondering if other people or perhaps a community lay ahead. I wasn’t sure, after so much time in the wilderness, if I was ready to encounter anyone else. It became clear that this was merely a turnoff, an opportunity to travel a different path for a considerable distance before arriving at a campsite. As I kept walking on my path, the signposts continued to appear. So did the people; I was clearly traveling in a more populated area. I struck up a few conversations, learning that those walking in this area had things in common with me. I stopped here and there and helped others, offering what I had to share. And still, I kept walking.

Soon, I discovered that I was near a community. This area was different than where I had camped before. Perhaps I should take a closer look. It was a smaller community than I was used to, but that might be a nice change; I could get to know people more easily. Everyone I met was kind and generous. As I approached and began to explore, I was welcomed with open arms. I was invited in and included. I learned that in this community all are welcome, and all are accepted. So, I set up my tent and decided to stay.

I still take walks in the woods because time alone is critical for self-reflection and spiritual formation, but I am no longer walking through the wilderness with no destination in mind. When I walk, I leave from and return to the same place. And just like when I walk a labyrinth, I am changed each time. I am glad to have a place to call home again and a church to serve, after wandering in the wilderness for so long. And, I am grateful for every meandering step that brought me here.

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A Prayer for Waiting

by Jessica Petersen

Waiting has been a significant aspect of my journey for the last four years. I’ve always had to wait for things to happen, for God to answer my prayers, but not like this. Never in my life have I waited for so many things, all at once, for such a long time. I did not choose to practice waiting, to learn patience in an entirely new way. But the process of engaging in the (involuntary) practice of waiting – as the days turned into months and years – changed me. It is still changing me. I wrote this prayer when the waiting had become too much for too long. Then, I prayed this prayer as I continued to wait. Now I am sharing it because we are all waiting for something. May this prayer be a companion while you wait.  

Waiting is so very hard, God.
As the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months pass by
without response or resolution,
it is easy to become impatient, irritable.

Sometimes, I want to demand an end to all this waiting,
reprieve from the uncertainty,
relief from living in-between here and there,
respite from the space between already and not yet.

Some days, waiting is almost unbearable.
It overwhelms and becomes too much, God.

But then I remember that you live in the space in-between.
It is not uncertain and uncomfortable to you.
You are the God of already and not yet.
In-between is where you do your best work.

This awareness doesn’t make waiting any easier.
Time does not begin to move more quickly.
But I know that I am not alone.
I have a companion on the journey.

Your presence comforts me.
It provides respite, relief, reprieve.
Space to breathe.
It is pure grace.

And I realize that you are forming me,
re-making me while I wait.
Sanctifying me in this liminal space,
shaping me into who I will become.

I don’t know when the waiting will end,
or what is to come when the wait is over.
But I know I will never be the same.
I will not be able to return to what was.

I will simply take a step forward,
and then another; one step at a time.
And you will go with me, into what will be.
I will not step into the unknown alone.

But for now…as I wait…
calm and quiet my soul.
Help me to experience the sacrament of this moment with you,
when I can simply rest in your grace.

Amen.