Steps, Finally Taken

This year I’ve signed up for an online prophetic creative academy, which consists of various online classes and Facebook group communication, as well as a Zoom call and teaching each month. This month our homework was to practise each of four contemplative disciplines – Sabbath keeping, speaking in tongues, Ignatian meditation and Lectio Divina.
I’ve tried Ignatian meditation, and I can see where it could be helpful… I just have difficulty really “getting” it. I could possibly try listening to someone reading the passage I’m using, rather than reading and trying to remember while I meditate on it – I’ll look into that!
This morning I had a go at Lectio Divina. First impressions are that I can see myself getting more out of it, although I find reading out loud to myself a bit strange! This morning the verse that stood out to me was from Psalm 6, the first part of verse 2 –
“Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am faint“
Not the verse I thought I’d focus on!
“Faint”, meaning “lacking strength”, but also perhaps lacking in colour and boldness, or being too quiet, not heard…
“Mercy” – unexpected, unmerited, pouring out…

I am also part of a group doing a study at our church. This week involves starting a new daily habit, which we choose according to our situation. It took me until today to figure out what mine would be. I’m a perfectionist. I’m also a procrastinator. The fact that it took me most of the week to come up with a habit would seem to indicate that! 🙂
So – my habit will be to push past the procrastination block on something each day, even if it’s small.

To that end, I’m trying out a few different things… one of those is to have a pile of stuff that I can use to do some of the things I’ve been putting off. The idea is to have no excuse, because the book/pen/paper etc is right there, rather than somewhere else that would require a special trip to obtain.

I’ll see how that works out…

As part of my “things I’ve been meaning to do but haven’t got around to so why not have a look” today I got a book down from the bookcase that’s been lurking away for years. It’s a daily inspiration type book, and I’m not sure how I’ve gone quite this long without reading it.
What I normally do with this type of book is to flip to my birthday to read what it says, and get a sense of what the book’s like. Most of the entries take up the whole page in some way, so I was expecting my birthday entry to be the same.
It just said “Permission to complete (write yourself a permission slip)” with a couple of little notes in the corner (“learn your tools of completion” and “develop habits of completion”), and a recommendation for a book called… “Procrastination“

I think someone’s trying to tell me something…