Journal writing is highly encouraged throughout our nine months. You are not required to turn in any written reflections or to share all of a journal entry. Our year-end ‘project’ is to identify ten sayings, short sections from any reading that you want to continue reflecting on throughout the rest of your life. E.M. Forster famously said, “how do I know what I know until I see what I say?” Journal writing is heuristic, a discipline of discovery. You are encouraged to identify your own personal mode of journal writing of any combination of fully formed sentences, to petitionary prayer lists, to devotional poetry.

A minimum of three days with some sort of physical movement. We need this especially in the winter and during covid-19. Exercise helps relieve our bodies of tension build up. Identify any kind of exercise that especially gets your heart rate up and causes you to breathe more deeply. Climb some stairs, an elliptical, or exercise bike indoors. Bike or walk outdoors.

Seven hours of sleep each night. In conjunction with exercise, more sleep will help our bodies self-regulate and have more energy. It is difficult to sustain our attention of anything in an extended manner if we are exhausted and stressed. Prayer is an invitation to worship God in and through our bodies which are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Practicing daily prayer and regular exercise will allow you to develop a confident, nourishing awareness of God’s presence that is tangible and specific to you and your own unique prayer language.

Moderate uses of money. As best you can during this time of prayer, avoid extravagances wherever and whenever you can in terms of eating out, technology, and travel. Here is another opportunity to practice vigilance as mentioned above. When you need to make sizable purchases prayerfully consider the same questions:
*where do I find rest?
*what am I living through?

Individually discerned practice of Sabbath keeping. Ignatius teaches us, “the goal of life is to life with God forever. God, who loves us, gave us life. Our own response of love allows God’s life to flow into us without limit.” Several biblical vocabularies further explain the purpose of following Jesus: to abide in Christ (John 15), to walk in the Spirit (Gal 5:16), to pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18). These are all the dimensions of “entering his sabbath rest” of Hebrews chapter 4. Abraham Joshua Heschel explains in his classic book titled, Sabbath, is that the biblical instruction is not to practice Sabbath merely one day a week. Instead we set one day aside per week to deepen our familiarity with resting in God so that we can take sabbath into the rest of the week. In fact, this is another way to understand the purpose of the School of Prayer, to develop a rule of life that will help us more fully live in the sabbath to follow the ways of the Lord of the Sabbath.  

The recurring question throughout our time together will be: how is the Holy Spirit inviting you to respond to God’s love in practical ways? The witness of God in the Scriptures is of a self-giving God who invites us to become so full of his love that we also live for the sake of giving ourselves to others. The main arena where we will return to the theme of self-sacrifice, of being other-focused, will be in the context of the experience black people in America (see the Howard Thurman and James Cone readings). You may not be called immediately to engage active reconciliation with people of color. This may not be the next step in your journey. However, what can you learn from the witness of the faithful, black followers of Jesus to be ‘other-focused’ in a lived, practiced sacrifice of yourself? Said more directly: how are you learning to trust God in the way you stretch beyond yourself, beyond your ego and comfort to love your neighbor?