Good morning and happy Monday, friends!

My intention for 2023 is to share posts on Spacious Faith at least twice a week. (Giving grace in weeks that involve vacation, illness, or as-yet-undetermined crises.)

Wednesdays I will post words for worship, which may or may not be helpful for you in your particular context. But I write them, so I might as well share them. Remember that my sermons and other worship writing are also accessible through my index by scripture reference, liturgical season, and topic.

On Mondays (that’s today!), I’m going with “Monday Miscellaneous.” I’ll post a lot of spiritual practices, Biblical reflections, some humor (at least funny-to-me humor), and probably a few impassioned rants. If you have any suggestions or requests, please let me know!

Today I am sharing about a new spiritual practice that I’ve stumbled upon; I think I might actually manage to do it consistently in this new year. I expect that many people already do this, but I hadn’t heard or thought of it before last week. And yes, OK, the first time I did it was because I wanted to stay in my warm bed just a little longer one morning when Christmas break was over and I needed to get up and act like an adult again. But now I’m doing it on purpose because I love it.

Calendar Prayers

What it looks like for me:

When I wake up in the morning, before I even get out of bed, I say to myself: “My soul magnifies the Holy One, and my spirit knows joy in God, my savior.” (These words are part of my rule of life, which is a topic for another post.) Then I grab my phone and open up my schedule for the day. I pray through each item on the schedule: people who have birthdays or anniversaries, each meeting I will have and the people I will meet with, my work time and my rest time. It only takes a few minutes and I’m finding it a wonderful way to ground myself each day.

What it might look like for you:

Maybe you have a scripture, prayer phrase, song, or even a physical gesture that you want to engage at the beginning of your day. I expect it’s actually a pretty bad habit for me to have my phone right by my bed at night, so you might prefer to pray through your calendar while you have breakfast or at another quiet moment in the morning.

This calendar prayer wouldn’t even have to be a daily prayer—it could be a way to prepare for the week or the month ahead. And it wouldn’t have to be an individual practice. You could pray with other members of your household as you go over the family calendar; you could even pray through the calendar being set by an organization.

I’d love to know what daily practices you find meaningful and what ways you have found to ground yourself in God each morning. Feel free to share in the comments below.

*And also, the “Vision board event” on my calendar is hosted by Traci Smith and if you are reading this post the day it’s published, you can probably still sign up for it!

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