As the Advent season begins, I looked at my motivation for writing again.  I suppose for me it is part of my (for lack of a better term) spiritual practice.  I want to focus my mind and my heart, to find light in the growing darkness.

The idea of a spiritual practice seems strange to me.  Practice - as though there was something to prepare for, something new.  This is different then preparing a role in a play, or a song for performance.  There isn't a moment when the curtain goes up.  But the practice still counts.  Every time we have to go back and do it again, every time we have to say "I'm sorry," every time we  pick ourselves up from failure, it's for real.  Life counts.  It has consequences.  The point , of practice is, in the best sense, is growth.  I am a better cook when I practice to learn new things.  I am a better writer when I practice reading and writing.  I am a better person when I see every day as an opportunity to practice being human.

This is a practice life.   The yearly story of Advent through Christmas, Lent to Easter, is practice to go nowhere but to God, to ourselves.    We do not practice for success or perfection.  We have room to try and try again,  to keep growing, to keep changing.

For those who know me,  this isn't anything new.  It is a reoccurring theme.  I am weeks away from celebrating my sixtieth Christmas, and I have to remind myself that I am wonderfully and uniquely created in the image of God, and worthy to be loved.  I am more practiced at sharing that truth, then at realizing it myself.  And so I practice, speaking it, writing it, singing it, that I might hear in ways I have not before.  And I am, I am.

Or at least I am practicing.