Refreshing Your Daily Spiritual Practices

Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Stephanie Woodfield, author of Celtic Lore & Spellcraft of the Dark Goddess, Dark Goddess Craft, Priestess of the Morrigan, and the new Dedicant, Devotee, Priest.

For the past two years, I’ve participated in thirty-one days of the Morrigan challenge, which is organized by a friend. (You can read about it on her blog www.liminalraven.com.) It is a month-long challenge during October where there are different prompts for each day for participants to use as a daily focus. Some people create art, others do something during their day inspired by the prompt, write prose or prayers, etc. The first time I participated, the prayers I created and used throughout the month inspired a book, and you can find more information about how to write your own prayers in my book Dedicant, Devotee, Priest: A Pagan Guide to Divine Relationships.

Although it is is called a “challenge,” what we had really been doing all month was engaging in a daily devotional practice. You know what the funny thing is? It didn’t even seem hard. It was a challenge, after all—it was disguised as something fun, and I’m the type of person that if you call something a challenge I can’t rest until I’ve finished the challenge or collected all the badges.

Once October passed, it struck me how easily I just did an entire month of devotional work, when doing my daily devotions can sometimes be challenging. The thing is that we often treat daily practices as work, or exercise. It’s something we should do, for a health benefit or in this case, a magical one, but it gets repetitive and boring—which is why we so often falter and stop doing them. I had forgotten to make my devotions fun. I also had forgotten that they didn’t need to be overly complicated. I was making them into long, wordy, solemn things I did in front of my altar, which worked for a while, then often fell flat. So, I started writing month-long challenges for my daily spiritual practice. I decided on a theme, sometimes a deity I wanted to connect more deeply with, sometimes a spiritual or mundane goal that I wanted help with. Then I came up with simple prompts for each day. I also decided whatever I did for each day had to be simple. If I took five minutes to mediate and then wrote a prayer, or if I just doodled and drew something in my magical journal, that was fine. Whatever it was had to be related to be engaging, fun, and meaningful. I don’t use this practice every single month, but when I have a spiritual goal I want to work towards or I find I feel disconnected to the divine and my magical practice, it works amazingly. It also reminds me to enjoy and have fun with my connection to the divine.

So, what would you like to challenge yourself with?

Our thanks to Stephanie for her guest post! For more from Stephanie Woodfield, read her article, “Building a Daily Practice.”