Dear Cheryl,

I don’t have what I would call a regular or singular “routine” as such, but a variety of practices that I utilize.  One is the question of the work I am engaging in that day: How can it contribute to lifting pressures for myself or others?  Why am I doing what I am doing today?  And tomorrow?  Whom is it serving?  How can it usher in Joy for others?

Another method I employ is to pick up the Psalms (I usually use the translation by Rabbi Zalman Schacter).  I often thumb through it or just let pages open.  Invariably, the psalms speak to my issues.

Another practice is to look out the window to see what’s going on in nature (my computer sits in front of a large ground-to-ceiling window/door.  The sunshine or the rain, the sky or the clouds, the birds flying overhead often have clues in them about why I am here on earth (after 13.8 billion years) and how interconnected I am and we all are. And, how my time and opportunities and work remind me of the joy and beauty in living in a world that I did not make but which made me.

Calling up Via Positiva experiences for which I am grateful, blessings in my life that have brought me where I am and doing what I do.  I ask myself: “How is my work a joy or a blessing for myself and/or others this day?”

In a class we recently taught together, cosmologist Brian Swimme talked about waking up and shaking his feet and reminding himself that all the atoms and molecules of our feet are 13.8 billion years old and how they are beckoning us to do good work and to be grateful.  I find that a helpful way to keep the Via Positiva alive and viable.

On a special day, I will make the prayer to the four directions that reminds me of the cosmos of which I am a part, and that calls on the spirits or angels of each direction to bless my work and presence in the day ahead and what a privilege it is to be here.

I may take a sentence or two from a mystic and meditate on that.

I may turn to my Daily Meditations and recall a theme that I am scheduled to write about that day and research and get to doing it.  And, in the process of writing it, stay open to how I am speaking to others but also to myself.  And make room for Spirit to speak through me.  Thus, art as meditation.

Music and poetry do the same.

Practice the Via Negativa of silence and stillness and letting go of all thoughts and projects and sink into nothingness and silence and stillness and emptying, including emptying the mind of the day’s depressing news.  As Eckhart puts it, “We sink eternally from letting go to letting go into the One.”

Observe my dog and how he practices contentment.

Or go walking with my dog and do the same.

~ Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox