March 2011 - Spiritual Practice for
Times Like These

We continue our series based on the book 'The Seven Whispers: A Spiritual Practice for Times Like These' by Christina Baldwin.

March 6 - Practice Certainty of Purpose

The Seven Whispers, week 3. “Practicing certainty of purpose is a commitment to figure out why we are here and what we are going to do about it. When we practice certainty of purpose we balance our personal will to fulfill certain needs and desires with an awareness that our individual lives affect the needs and desires of the larger community.” ~ Christina Baldwin, The Seven Whispers

Our souls story, especially when we can think of it as a metaphor, a poem, a folktale or fairytale reveals our reason for being here. What have I come here to be? What is my life serving? Where am I in the story of my life? This week as we practice the third whisper, we explore our life story as the journey of our soul into form.

March 13 – Surrender to Surprise

The Seven Whispers, week 4. “Life’s surprises are sometimes delightful, sometimes painful. Life’s surprises introduce unexpected elements and experiences we might not have the courage to choose. But eventually curiosity gets the best of us so that even an initially painful or bewildering surprise becomes a gift we are willing to open. Surprise encourages us to relate to experience with a sense of wonder. It challenges us to be startled awake, and sometimes shocked to our core.” ~ Christina Baldwin, The Seven Whispers.

If growing our soul, is the purpose of our life, then creating and inhabiting a comfortable world would never serve our soul. No surprise then that life is full of sudden twists and unexpected changes. Each offering up an opportunity to awaken into the full life our soul intends us to live.

This week we practice the fourth whisper by noticing what is really happening in our lives, then to work with it and come to accept it.

March 20 – Ask for What You Need and Offer What You Can

The Seven Whispers, week 5. “Our Western cultural consciousness is saturated with competitive messages and assumptions that do battle with our spiritual yearnings. We talk about money and power and time as commodities, but we hardly know how to talk about energy exchange, shared power or spiritual trade. This is the whisper that calls us in the opulent West to accountability. Clattering about in our lives with too many things and too much to do, how do we learn to live simply, so that others may simply live?” ~ Christina Baldwin, The Seven Whispers.

This week we ask ourselves what we really need, and what do we have to offer? Each transaction in our daily lives can become a mindful interchange of giving and receiving. In this moment, what do I have to offer, what can I freely give? And what do I need?

As we celebrate the Spring Equinox today in song and in community, how perfect to practice the fifth whisper of getting clear on what we need, and offering freely what we have.

March 27 – Love the Folks in Front of You

The Seven Whispers, week 6. “Our sense of belonging is based on our ability to move around in the company of people who are basically well intentioned and dependable, and who acknowledge our own good intention and dependability in return. Sometimes recognizing each other is easy, but often it’s hard work. We can choose compatible friends and lovers, but here remain the long journeys we make with the people we ‘can’t get away from’ – and these are often the folks in front of us.” ~ Christina Baldwin, The Seven Whispers.

This week we practice the sixth spiritual practice of heart-centered listening to our neighbors, our family, and those in our community. This week we intentionally distance ourselves from our convenient opinions and judgments that keep us from hearing another’s heart.

Who are the folks in front of us? What are the mythic stories they are living? Who are the people we ride to work with, sit in a cubicle near, or share a meal with as family? Outside or beyond the barriers of protective opinion about those close to us we may discover the inexpressible beauty of Spirit shining through their eyes.

April 3 – Loving Service to the World

The Seven Whispers, week 7. “We are in huge trouble if we have neglected to teach our children to love the world. We are in huge trouble if we ourselves have neglected to love the world – and it certainly seems that we have. In the past few centuries of industrialization and urbanization – leading to our current technostructure – we have strayed so far from home we have almost no idea what Nature is. The closest we get to comprehension is to say we ought to realign our lives with Nature, as though this were an option. As though we were separate. As though we have dominion over the miraculous biosphere that designed us from the molecule up.” ~ Christina Baldwin, The Seven Whispers.

Service to the world is our seventh spiritual practice and our last week in the Sacred Circles. This week we practice gratitude for life and awareness of how we are part of the natural world. Remembering our seven practices, this week we use them all in our development of a commitment to serve life.