What Else? Rethinking Spiritual Practice

When Dr. Brown asked me to identify my spiritual practices, I knew exactly what to write.

Morning prayer.

Daily Bible reading.

Bible study.

Choir.

Prayer meeting.

Listening to gospel music.

I handed in my assignment feeling pretty confident. I was doing everything I had been taught to do.

He returned it with a question:

What else?

What else... ?

I didn't understand the question.

What did he mean, what else? I prayed. I read my Bible. I went to Bible study and prayer meeting. I sang in the choir. I listened to gospel music. As far as I knew, I had covered the spiritual-practice checklist pretty thoroughly.

But that question stayed with me.

What else?

I didn't know it then, but the question was asking me to expand my imagination.

The Practices I Knew How to Name

For a long time, I understood spiritual practices as the things I did to connect with God.

And most of those things had been handed to me by the church.

They were good things. They still are.

Prayer taught me to talk to God. Scripture gave me a place to encounter God and wrestle with what I believed. Bible study invited me to learn. Music gave language to things I could not always say. Worship and community shaped me in ways I still carry.

The problem wasn't that these practices were insufficient or somehow less meaningful.

It was that I thought they were the whole list.

The Christian formation I received gave me language for recognizing God in certain places and practices. But it didn't always give me language for recognizing the other places where connection might be happening.

Over time, my understanding of spiritual practice began to widen.

I began to understand spiritual practice not only as the ways I connect with God, but also as the ways I connect with myself. The places where I become present enough to notice my body, my thoughts, my emotions, my longings and my questions.

Spiritual practice became more embodied for me. More immersive. Less like something my spirit did while my body happened to be in the room and more like an experience of bringing my whole self with me.

And suddenly, What else? became a much bigger question.

I Am Still Discovering the Answer

My understanding of spiritual practice has continued to expand, and even now I find myself discovering new practices.

Recently, I have begun paying attention to the way I like to start my mornings.

Before the day gets going, I like to lie quietly in the dark and daydream for a while. No agenda. No need to make the thoughts useful. I just let my mind wander and notice where it goes.

Eventually, I stretch, still in the darkness and silence, allowing my body to wake up slowly.

And then I open the shades and let the soft morning sunlight into the room, and maybe jot down a few things that were significant in this time.

This is new for me. It isn't something I have always done, and I don't do it every morning.

Life doesn't always make room for it.

But I miss it when I don't.

I think that tells me something.

There is something about those few movements, the daydreaming, the stretching, the darkness and silence, and finally letting in the light, that helps me arrive in my own life before I begin responding to everything the day will ask of me.

It is like prayer for me.

Not because I have turned it into another thing I have to do. There is no checklist. No particular outcome I am trying to achieve. But in that space, I become present.

To my imagination.

To my body.

To myself.

To God.

And what strikes me is that years ago, when Dr. Brown asked me to list my spiritual practices, I would never have imagined putting something like this on the page.

I didn't have an understanding of spiritual practice that would have made room for it.

Now I do.

Where Else Is Connection Happening?

A friend once told me that she connects while washing dishes.

There is something about standing at the sink, putting her hands in the water, and moving through the familiar rhythm of washing, rinsing and putting things away that creates space in her.

Her hands are occupied, but something else becomes available.

She can think. She can listen. She can settle.

Maybe washing dishes is just washing dishes. But for her, the rhythm of it creates a space where connection happens.

I know people who connect while running. I once had a pastor who found that connection on the elliptical. Others find it with their hands in the garden or while walking in nature.

For someone else it might be cooking. Painting. Knitting. Sitting beside water. Listening to music. Working with their hands. Moving their body. Being outside.

Not because those activities are inherently spiritual, but because something happens there.

We become present.

We notice.

We listen.

We reconnect.

We make room.

Sometimes we encounter God.

Sometimes we encounter parts of ourselves that have been difficult to hear anywhere else.

And I wonder how many of us have been having experiences like these all along but discounted them because our understanding of spiritual practice did not give us space to name them.

Does That Mean Everything Is a Spiritual Practice?

No.

Sometimes gardening is gardening.

Sometimes a run is a run.

Sometimes washing dishes is just washing dishes.

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Expanding our understanding of spiritual practice doesn't mean we have to make everything spiritual. It means we can become curious about the places where connection happens.

Perhaps the question is not simply, What activity am I doing?

Perhaps it is also:

What happens to me here?

Do I become more present?

Can I hear myself here?

Do I become aware of God here?

Does my body participate in this experience?

What becomes available to me in this space that I have difficulty accessing elsewhere?

Because spiritual practice may not always be about adding more spiritual things to our lives.

Sometimes it may be about recognizing what is already happening within the lives we are living.

The Practices That Form Us

There is another piece I have come to understand about spiritual practice.

Spiritual practices don't only connect us. Over time, they form us.

Maybe that is part of what makes a practice a practice.

We return to it.

And in the returning, something is being cultivated in us.

Prayer may teach us to listen.

Scripture may teach us to wrestle, wonder and pay attention.

Walking may teach us to slow down enough to notice.

Gardening may teach us patience, care and our inability to control everything that grows.

A quiet morning may teach us to arrive before we rush into doing.

The rhythm of washing dishes may create room to listen.

So perhaps another question we can ask of the things we return to is:

What is this forming in me?

What am I practicing when I do this?

What is this helping me notice?

Who am I becoming through my repeated return to it?

Because spiritual practice is not only about where we meet God.

It can also be about how those encounters shape the way we inhabit ourselves, our relationships, our world and our life with God.

Maybe You Already Have More Practices Than You Think

Which brings me back to Dr. Brown's question.

I wonder how many of us have experiences of connection that we have never thought to call spiritual.

Maybe there is something you already do that helps you become present to yourself, attentive to your body, open to God, or aware of something deeper than the noise that usually surrounds you.

Maybe you have never considered it a spiritual practice because it didn't look like the practices you were taught to recognize.

So rather than giving you another list of spiritual practices to try, I want to invite you to look at the life you are already living.

What do you already do that connects you to yourself?

Where do you find yourself becoming aware of God?

What settles you enough to listen?

Where do you feel fully present in your body?

What do you miss when you haven't had space for it?

What do you return to again and again, and what might that returning be forming in you?

What ordinary activity might already be doing spiritual work in you, even though you have never thought to call it spiritual?

Years ago, I didn't know how to answer Dr. Brown's question.

I thought I had already given him the whole list.

Now I realize there was never supposed to be a finished list.

I am still discovering my answer.

Maybe you are too.

So I will leave you with the same question he left with me:

What else?

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Want to Keep Exploring What Else?

I'm looking at ways we can explore the “what else?” in our own spiritual lives.

If you're interested in discovering what might already be present in your spiritual life, beyond the practices you've been taught and the language you've been given to recognize them, I'd love to know.

I'm exploring ways we might continue this conversation together.

Interested? Leave your name and email, and I'll keep you informed as this takes shape.

I'm Interested