Formation Foundations ·

Day 5 #formationFOUNDATIONS | Laying Your Foundation: Daily Practice

 

Today's the fifth 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, seasonally and yearly schedule. 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 our community, 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 5  | Laying Your Foundation: Daily Practice


If you've been a person of faith for any period of time, you've likely been taught the virtues (and perhaps struggled with the vices) of a daily practice. It's easy to understand why having a daily anchoring practice is helpful. Starting your day peacefully, intentionally, and on purpose sounds great. But, you've got a real life, a real job, a real family, and dishes that actually need to be washed. And if you can't find the right fit, it's easy to go a long way without implementing a daily practice that is truly anchoring.  

You're probably getting it from multiple angles, too. If you ever hang out in the self-help section of the bookstore or blogosphere, you know that a morning ritual or daily practice is one of the most widely recommended building blocks for becoming "more," whether the "more" is more successful, more productive, more efficient, more focused, or more mindful. People tout a lot of benefits.

I've often noticed that there can be some guilt associated with talk of daily practices. So, this week we're sharing some resources on daily practices so that you can add some tools to your daily practice toolkit, without shame or guilt, but with a playful, creative, gracious approach or "posture," as I like to say.

You might enjoy watching this video I recorded with my friend, colleague, and co-host for season one of the Sacred Ordinary Days podcast. We recorded it on April 4, 2016 and it is on our Sacred Ordinary Days youtube channel. 

The video is 40 minutes long, about the length of a podcast episode. I recommend you just watch the first 15 minutes or so, where we talk about about daily spiritual practice. Save the rest for later in the #formationFOUNDATIONS series.

  • 6:00 – Why daily spiritual practice matters
  • 8:15 – What our daily spiritual practices include
  • 12:50 – Tips for establishing your own daily spiritual practice

 

 

 

The daily pages in our planner are structured to help you find the right mixture of direction, intention, productivity, and efficiency. We think that in order for the Church to grow in who she was created and called to be, we each individually must become who we were created and called to be. To us this means that we start "in the trenches" of our day-to-day. So, let's evaluate some key areas in our life and set some intentions for our everydays. 

Obviously you don't need our planner (or any planner) to set up and grow into a daily practice. But, the right tools can help get a job done more easily and more effectively. We all know that. If you'd like to try our planner for the month of August for $4, you can do that here. However, most folks see more change by diving into our more extensive resources. The planner will help you form sustainable practices and rhythms, plus find faithful traveling companions.

If you're ready to check out our planner, you've got options:

  1. You can get started on the right foot now with the 2017-2018 Academic year planner, which begins August 1st.
  2. You can try out a PDF for August for just $4.
  3. You can get a head start on Advent with the few remaining Liturgical year planners, there's one semester left in our 2017 Liturgical planners, and both the daily and weekly versions are less than 1/2 price.

 



 

It's your turn! We would love for you to set aside a chunk of time and evaluate your daily practices and set intentions for your daily practices. We'll work through the details throughout the rest of the week. Today is just about noticing, reflecting, and setting your intention.

The rest of this week, we'll dive deep into specific pieces of cultivating a daily practice. You can always see the latest blog post in the series at sacredordinarydays.com/FF when it's live. So, check there each day for the latest!

 

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