Day 10 #formation FOUNDATIONS | Why a Weekly Practice

Today is the tenth day of our #formationFOUNDATIONS series. In case you're new here, you can read more about this series or start from the beginning at SacredOrdinaryDays.com/FF. Our goal for this series is to help you...

• LEARN about different spiritual practices that you can adopt for your own walk. You will learn how to make the most of your Sacred Ordinary Days planner or the FREE Essentials Workbook you got when you joined our newsletter list, which has all the most essential pages from the planner that we don't want anyone to miss out on.
• PRACTICE these things on a daily, weekly, and seasonal basis. You will be able to lay (or bolster up) a strong spiritual formation foundation by clearing the space for your new spiritual practices to deepen.
• SHARE your experience with people who speak the same language. You'll get to know the other members of the tribe, who are some of the wisest, most interesting, super fun, and most real people I know  by following along on Instagram or Facebook or inside Common House, our ecumenical online community.

 DAY 10 | Why a Weekly Practice

Last week we talked about daily practices and creating that rhythm for your day that is an anchor, that is intentional, that is uniquely yours for your current season of life. Did it help you start or refresh yours? This week we are focusing on weekly practices: those practices that really help ground you in a way that supports and extends your daily practices (and vice versa). 

Sometimes it seems that our week is set for us, especially in the church: Sunday morning service, weekly small group or Bible study or prayer group, Wednesday evening activities...you know, whatever the schedule and activities are that are unique to your faith community. When a schedule is set for me, I often follow it without thinking and without making it mine. It becomes something that I do as an activity without thought of where God is in it and how God is inviting me to be present in the activity.  

But activity and practice sound so different, don't they? They even feel different to me. The difference between schedule and rhythm is distinct, too. An activity is something that I show up for and participate in; it is something that I do. It might be going to church, it might be weekly garbage pick-up, or just mowing the lawn. A practice feels more like something that I choose to be a part of, that when I think about who I want to be and who God is calling me to be, that they are the things that I choose to do to be who I am created to be. A practice is more about who I am than what I do. 

Are you familiar with the "big rock" imagery when it comes to scheduling and planning? It is the idea that we have lots of things to do and to take care of and each one is represented by a small rock. We also have those intentions and practices that are most important to us and those are represented by large rocks. Our week (or our day) is a jar; it has limited space. And all the rocks need to fit into that jar. We can put all the small rocks in first (all our tasks, appointments, errands, etc.) and then try to fit the big rocks in afterwards; but if you have a lot of small rocks, there is a lot of shoving and and trying to move the small rocks and it will be really hard to get that big rock in. Or you can put the big rocks in first and then put all the small rocks in afterwards to fill in the spaces around the big rocks. 

The first part of doing all this is to name what your "big rocks" are; what is most important to you? What are the weekly intentions that are your big rocks? 

We have four rocks that are weekly priorities for us: the examen, church, relationships, and Sabbath. We will talk about those four rocks this week and about where we place them into our weekly rhythm.