Sunday, January 16, 2011

SPIRITUALLY LITERATE RESOLUTIONS

It's two weeks into the New Year...so this seems like the perfect time to share a list of resolutions that were recently passed on to me. I hope they are encouraging, challenging and helpful in your spiritual formation for 2011.

  1. I will live in the present moment. I will not obsess about the past or worry about the future.
  2. I will cultivate the art of making connections. I will pay attention to how my life is intimately related to all life on the planet.
  3. I will be thankful for all the blessings in my life. I will spell out my days with a grammar of gratitude.
  4. I will practice hospitality in a world where too often strangers are feared, enemies are hated, and the "other" is shunned. I will welcome guests and alien ideas with graciousness.
  5. I will seek liberty and justice for all. I will work for a free and a fair world.
  6. I will add to the planet's fund of good will by practicing little acts of kindness, brief words of encouragement, and manifold expressions of courtesy.
  7. I will cultivate the skill of deep listening. I will remember that all things in the world want to be heard, as do the many voices inside me.
  8. I will practice reverence for life by seeing the sacred in, with, and under all things of the world.
  9. I will give up trying to hide, deny, or escape from my imperfections. I will listen to what my shadow side has to say to me.
  10. I will be willing to learn from the spiritual teachers all around me, however unlikely or unlike me they may be.

1 comment:

Nellie from Beyond My Garden said...

I particularly like #4 as I believe many of us have become too secluded in our sealed, air-conditioned homes viewing only selected television channels and hesitant to "bother" strangers or take a chance that they will bother us.