Tag / Christian

woman picking up cell phone
by Karen Twinem

Think When You Reach for Your Phone

Here’s a shocking statistic: Average Americans check their cell phone 344 times per day. About once every four minutes.

That statistic comes from a survey by reviews.org. I tried to find information that disproved it, and I couldn’t.

Our addiction to picking up the phone is scary and mindless. Christian mindfulness offers us an opportunity to approach our cell phones with curiosity. And to slow down the obsessive behavior.

Here’s a two-step practice that can help:

  1. Catch yourself when you pick up your phone casually.
  2. Ask yourself: “Why did I pick up the phone?” Are you bored? Are you worried? Is your job (or a person at your job, like your boss) getting to you?
  3. Pray about that condition. If you are truly bored, find a way to be a force for good at work and at home? Are you at work all the time now? Is that what God wants?

Once you start to think each time you pick up your phone, you will find yourself reducing the pattern. It’s addictive behavior, which is never good.

You also can make some guidelines for yourself about your phone usage. Here are some ideas:

  • Create specific ringtones for key people in your family and at work so you only react to texts from them.
  • Set a specific time to check the phone for emails and other texts.
  • Reduce or eliminate notifications for other things.
  • Use the do-not-disturb feature. (You can make exceptions for key people, such as a kid in college or an elderly parent.)
  • Turn your smart phone into a dumb phone by eliminating most apps.

Take a moment to think about why you pick up your phone. It can improve your life.

worms eye view of spiral stained glass decors through the roof
by Karen Twinem

Add to the Light

If you are already in the fellowship, you should work unceasingly to keep it true to the whole gospel of Jesus Christ. You should see that your personal life and conduct cause no dimming of the light. With unflinching courage, you should seek to eliminate all barriers to genuine fellowship until men know that you are Christ’s disciples because you love one another. And above all, you should urge and encourage all people everywhere to forsake their evil, selfish ways and to come into the kingdom that they, too, might be part of the light of the world.

Clarence Jordan
by Karen Twinem

Making Jesus Known as He Is

Every Christian life reflects on Jesus. Sometimes we can make Him look terrible. We hope that walking with Jesus in Christian mindfulness makes it easier to help people to see how wonderful He actually is.

That is not because we are wonderful. It’s because we are surrendered. When we strive to see the presence of God in the present moment, we grow closer to the Lord. That allows Him to shine in our actions and words, just a light would do through a lantern. Only God can empower us to show His spirit.

The August issue of “Give Us This Day” magazine contained writings from two believers, a century apart, who were practicing Christian mindfulness, rather they knew it or not.

Fr. Daniel P. Horan is director of the Center for Spirituality and a professor at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana. He wrote a sentence that stirred my soul:

In a world that encourages us to take care of ourselves above all else, it does not make sense to love the unlovable, forgive the unforgivable and heal the brokenhearted as Christ did.

The choice is ours, he said. We can “shirk the Gospel by living according to the standards of worldly interests, or risk appearing foolish because we are striving to walk in the footprints of Jesus Christ.” To me, Christian mindfulness is the best way to walk in Jesus’ footprints.

Another inspiring piece of writing in the issue came from Elisabeth Leseur, who died in 1914. These were some of her resolutions:

  • To persevere steadily with my daily prayers and meditations and my communions at least weekly.
  • To increase and strengthen, by divine grace, my spiritual life.
  • In all circumstances to remain gentle, serene and full of love for those around me.
  • By my words and actions, to try to make Jesus Christ known and loved.
  • To ask that He work through me for the good of those for whom I can be the instrument of Providence.
  • To work first for God and then for my neighbor each day.
  • To speak to each one in the language they can understand.

These resolutions are mine as well, although I fail far more often than I succeed. If we all tried to live in the presence of Jesus in the present moment, we might make his nature more obvious to a skeptical world.

by Karen Twinem

Stop Struggling

Are you trying too hard to be at peace? Fighting hard to practice mindfulness?

Stop struggling.

Calm down.

I feel I am striving too hard to abide in Jesus. Instead of opening the door for Him to enter, I am pounding on the other side of the door … straining to keep pure thoughts and to practice my daily round of spiritual practices. That isn’t necessary, productive or even helpful.

God is already here. Yet I behave as if it all depends on me. Yes, I need to quiet down and let God be present. I am grasping for someone who is all around me, yet my grasp comes up empty. It is only when I relax and submit that I feel God doing the work to allow me to abide in Him.

Is it just me? When I mentioned this in a gathering of Christian friends, I got a lot of blank looks.

Yet, one Christian friend responded with a new phrase I love: Try softer.

That’s the title of a book by therapist Aundi Kolber. She believes we don’t have to white-knuckle our way to God or to life, in general. Her book is a corrective for overfunctioning (one of my greatest issues) and anxiety.

Perhaps I have reached the “let God and let God” phase of my spiritual development. Yet again.

I found some tips on the Woman of Noble Character website that can make this effort to stop the struggle more concrete.

It’s not what I need to stop doing as much as it’s what I need to let God do. Stop struggling to achieve grace and:

  1. Look for a show of God’s power.
  2. Accept God’s comfort.
  3. Let God work things out for the good of those who love Him, including me.

Yes, I need to practice my daily round of spiritual practices. But I need to move forward in a more gentle, open manner, trusting God to do his part. Without God, I can do nothing.

by Karen Twinem

Get Ready for a Calm Christmas

As we hide away from heat advisories in sweltering August, preparing for Christmas is a fun item on the to-do list. I picked up “Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year: A Little Book of Festive Joy” by Beth Kempton for this purpose.

I already consider myself a mindful Christmas practitioner. Yet Kempton took an approach that I found fascinating. She proposes that Christmas has five storylines:

  1. Faith: The celebration of the birth of Jesus and the Christmas story involving church-based traditions and rituals like Advent candles, the creche and traditional Christmas carols.
  2. Magic: The story of Santa Claus, his reindeer and the elves, plus magical Christmas movies and songs.
  3. Connection: Things that connect us to Christmases past, such as “The Christmas Carol,” Christmas trees and treasured ornaments, Christmas dinners, holiday events and Christmas movie traditions.
  4. Abundance: The joy of getting and giving presents.
  5. Heritage: The Christmas practices of your family of origin and your background.

As a Christian, my Christmas celebrations focus on faith. But I was surprised to realize that my family also finds Connection as very important. For one family member, doing the same things that we have done, as in Heritage, is deeply important.

Talk to your family to see what about your Christmas celebration is most important to them. You can create an intentional approach to the season that meets everyone’s needs and desires.

“Calm Christmas” also offers a variety of ideas for a mindful approach to the whole season. I especially liked the author’s idea of spending the time between Christmas Day and New Years Day’s as a “hush” season. This is, she writes: “A time of long walks, hot coffees, languid lounging with leftover chocolates, adding birthday dates to the new diary, telephone catch-ups … and everything on pause.”

Wow! Can I have that in August, too?

by Karen Twinem

Christian Mindfulness in Exercise

Research shows that people who focus on the sensations of exercise and on their surroundings enjoy the experience more. Christian mindfulness can support our exercise program, and the exercise program can build our Christian mindfulness.

How can we do it?

  1. Pray before your exercise, offering thanks for the body you have been given.
  2. Unplug. Exercise without music or other input so you can focus on the experience.
  3. Pay attention to the changes you feel as you exercise: changes and strains in your muscles, your mood and emotions, your breathing and all else you experience.
  4. Notice pain and decide what to do about it. Be nice to yourself.
  5. Observe the surroundings, whether they are nature or the walls of a room.
  6. Listen to your thoughts. Are you in dread? Watching the clock? Feeling competitive with others around you?
  7. As you cool down, offer gratitude for your body, inside and out.

Exercise can be many things, ranging from an addiction to an experience to avoid as much as possible. Bringing Christian mindfulness into the activity can add some calm and clarity to it.

a passageway in a beautiful stone monastery
by Karen Twinem

Prayerfulness as Christian Mindfulness

Christian mindfulness is a relatively new term for an ancient practice. One of my favorite spiritual teachers, Sr. Joan Chittister, OSB, writes about it in “The Breath of the Soul.” She calls the practice “prayerfulness.”

Prayerfulness, on the other hand, is the capacity to walk in touch with God through everything in life. It is the internal awareness that God is with me — now, here, in this, always. It is an awareness of the continuing presence of God.

Sr. Joan Chittister, “The Breath of the Soul”

That definition absolutely aligns with mine for Christian mindfulness: living in the present moment with the presence of God.

Sr. Joan has been a huge influence on me since 1990, when I read “Wisdom Distilled from the Daily: Living the Rule of St. Benedict Today.” At the time she wrote that book, she was prioress at the Benedictine Sisters of Erie in Erie, Pennsylvania. Now she is known internationally as an important spiritual writer, with dozens of books to her credit.

So I am not surprised that we arrived on the same path with different terminology.

Sr. Joan writes that prayerfulness is her inner dialogue with the living God who inhabits her spirit and mind. Not only does prayerfulness allow us to see and talk with God everywhere, it lets us to submit the present moment, with all its uncertainty and anxiety, to God.

As Sr. Joan puts it, “It trusts that no matter how malevolent the situation may be, I can walk through it unharmed because God is with me.”

Sr. Joan shares her spiritual practices through her website here. You can subscribe to her monthly newsletter, “The Monastic Way,” on the site. You also get free webinars and Zoom calls with Sr. Joan and her group, an online movement called Monasteries of the Heart.

by Karen Twinem

Insects: A Mindfulness Exercise

Insects in the summer used to just bug people. Now, concern about reduced number of bees and other insects give us all a chance to practice mindfulness. And to be thankful for their place in God’s plan for Earth.

This idea first developed when I learned about a study in the journal Biological Conservation in April 2019. It said about 40% of insect species are threatened with extinction. Wow! It turns out that scientists have been concerned about the reduced number of insects for several years.

In its January 2021 issue, the science journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS) put together a series of 12 separate studies from 56 scientists in several countries about insect populations. University of Illinois entomologist May Berenbaum equated the issue to the first studies on climate change 30 years ago. She said insects are critical to the natural food chain and pollinate human crops. On the other hand, many humans hate them.

These studies were released about the same time that I developed skeeter syndrome. Yes, that’s a real thing. It means that I am allergic to the saliva of mosquitos. Each bite swells up into a small mountain on my skin that itches and hurts for weeks.

Searching for prayers about insects also was informative. Almost all of them were prayers to make insects go away, rather than be fruitful and multiply. While I may want the mosquitos to stay away from me, I also want them to exist. Even if they are sometimes identified as the deadliest life form on Earth, God has a purpose for them.

Be thankful for insects

So how can we bring Christian mindfulness to insects? The easiest way is to notice them and pray for them. I have adapted two prayers that I found online. The first one, which I changed into modern English, is about bees:

Lord God, Almighty, you created heaven and earth, and all the animals that live in the air and on the earth for the use of man. You have directed that the ministers of Your holy Church should light candles made of beeswax when the holy sacrifice is offered in which the Sacred Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, Your Son, becomes present and is consumed. Send down Your blessing on these bees, that they may multiply, be fruitful and be preserved from all harm so that the product of their labor may be used to Your honor, and to the honor of Your Son, and the Holy Spirit, and the most blessed Virgin Mary. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

catholic.org

Another prayer I found online begins like this:

May compassion and love reign over all the earth for all the tiny beings who live in the soil, the trees, the water, and the air, creating harmony and balance with your songs, your pollinating of flowers, your graceful flight, your mysterious transformations, and your miraculous ability to literally create soil in which new plants can take root.

allcreatures.org blog

Five ways to help insects survive

A mindful approach to insects also could include helping them survive. Here are five ideas I found:

  1. Reduce the number of times you mow your grass.
  2. Plant native plants. Many insects need these to survive.
  3. Avoid pesticides and go organic in your yard and garden.
  4. Leave old trees, stumps and dead leaves alone. They are home to countless species.
  5. Support and volunteer in conservation organizations.

The Lord made insects as part of His plan for planet Earth. Let’s help Him keep them alive.

by Karen Twinem

Create Your Own Childhood Summer

The happiness expert Gretchen Rubin has a great idea to “design your summer” by planning to add enjoyable activities to your schedule. While you are planning, be sure to re-create activities from your own childhood summers.

In elementary school, summers were wonderful and endless. I would create a tent out of a old blanket hanging off the backyard fence and use another old blanket for a floor. There I would spend hours outside (yet inside the tent) reading books from the library.

Mother, who was a housewife, carted us to the pool when she could get the car from Dad. Otherwise we had a baby pool to roll in when we got hot, sprinklers to jump through and a garden hose to drink from when we were thirsty. We played school and other games in neighborhood basements.

Box fans tried to cool the hot house. No one in the neighborhood had air conditioning. So we often sat outside and watched the lightning bugs. Or we’d pack up snacks to go to a drive-in movie.

In junior high, my sister and I rode our bikes uptown to the bakery for doughnuts and then to the library. The pool was a constant, and we enjoyed heading there on hot days from our non-air conditioned house.

Fast forward a number of decades. The community pool is down the street, and I haven’t been in years.

This summer join me by making sure you add at least one activity to your summer routine that reminds you of childhood.  I’m going to read outdoors. I’ll be on a comfortable outdoor sofa instead of a tent. But that’s okay.

When we’re enjoying that activity, let’s praise God for our good memories of summer.

boy listening to sea shell
by Karen Twinem

Go Outside and Listen

Listen. One of the pandemic’s benefits has been an increase in the amount of time spent in nature. In fact, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development used the pandemic to study the benefits of time in the fresh air.

The results were even better than expected. Not only did spending time outdoors improve general well-being, but it also altered and improved brain structure. The areas of the brain impacted affect mood, concentration and working memory. Spending time in nature could not be a better idea.

Christian mindfulness practices are all easy to adapt to the outdoors. One of simplest is mindful listening to the quiet around you. Is silence ever really silent? Tuning into the sounds around you is a great way to stay in the present moment. And hearing those sounds offers opportunities for prayers of gratitude and worship for the world God made.

The practice is simple.

  • Go to a place outside where you can feel safe and relaxed.
  • Close your eyes, if you’d like, and listen to the sounds of your own breathing first.
  • Thank God for this opportunity to be in His creation.
  • Listen to the sounds as they occur. Hear them come and go.
  • If you identify a sound of something you love (a robin, for example), praise God for it.
  • Notice how this impacts your mood and your body.
  • Close with a time of worship by thinking about the creation around you.

It’s like your mother said: Go outside and play. It’s good for you.