The first time I heard the word “practice” in a conversation about spirituality, I felt resistance. Practice meant doing something like sitting still, over and over and over again, in a dim, candle lit room, until God decided to come pay you a visit. It sounded stagnant and tiring. For me, it was impossible to delineate between practice as a simple repetitive action that draws someone close to God, versus some form of compartmentalization or escapism that diverts attention away from the truth of a painful feeling. Something about the word evoked visceral agitation in me. It felt like a trendy word white people were beginning to use to describe their “path of awakening”. It was inauthentic, a façade to hide behind, while the real problems were left to fester. I don’t think that we, people, know how to deal with the pain and confusion in ourselves. A spiritual “practice” looked to be another place for people to hide from their inner torment, and this confirmed to me that people run from, not toward, their issues.

I grew up in church, and my family believed the difference between right and wrong was most wholly known through a religious lens. Our shared knowing was strengthened as we attended church every week on Wednesday evenings and twice on Sundays. The routine of attending service was itself an act of worship to God, to show a desire for holiness and shared community with other Christians. But, being young, I wasn’t very concerned with the actual teachings coming from the pulpit or classroom. I was involved in youth group events, summer camps, I was taught how to song lead (my favorite part was using a pitch pipe to establish the key), and I carried the collection and communion plates. I imagine these things made my parents and grandparents very proud. I found a sense of belonging in this way, to show up and participate meant that I was doing what was right, and a sense of pride would shine on my family’s faces. All of this to me, in hindsight, was our practice – our repetitive action to draw closer to the divine. 

I stopped regularly going to church once I left my parent’s home for college, and I still only go on occasion. I quit wanting to belong to the church-going group of people because the way I saw the world was mostly rejected by them, which made me feel lost. Everything felt much bigger once I stepped out of my parent’s world and explored it for myself. But, that life-long practice of gathering together, listening to scripture, and participating in church was lost to me. The act of remembering my identity and belonging to a tribe were also lost, and with those things stripped away, my sense of self became absent. My mental health declined and I felt more isolated than I did before. My relationships lost meaning, I had no sense of purpose, and a real hopelessness invaded my heart.

I began to understand that the word practice was describing a path towards spiritual help, not an escape from it. It’s the way of learning what matters to your heart and being true to that. Choosing to leave my given identity behind birthed a refreshed pursuit for meaning in search of God, exploring my own beliefs to understand what was harmful and helpful, deeply engaging in Life, asking questions that I was too afraid to ask before, finding things that could have never been found if I stayed put. That began a new practice of finding out who I truly was and letting go of the person people believed me to be.