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Where’s the Easter Egg? (+ an Easter gift for you)

How was your Easter Sunday?

If you feel like you were just getting started, then I have good news for you: Easter is not just a day, as it’s often marked. Instead, it’s an entire season of feasting and celebration lasting fifty days and ending with the feast of Pentecost.

You’ll find plenty of posts on the full season of Easter (or Eastertide, as it’s also called) right here at A Sacred Journey, including 25 ideas on how to celebrate Life during the Easter season, and we’ll be talking more about the season of Easter as well as celebration and sabbath over the next many weeks in the Sacred Ordinary Days Podcast. Until then, though, I wanted to give you this little gem and insightful prompt that I received recently:

Where’s the Easter egg?

Holy Week is here with all its highs and lows, celebration and calamity.

It’s an in invitation to walk instep with Christ in his final days, marking moments with ritual, meeting him in his vulnerability, descending with him into death, darkness, and the uncertainty that it brings, and finally with Easter Sunday awakening to new life.

To me, entering Holy Week is essential to fully experiencing the joys of Easter and the season to come, and in today’s new episode of the Sacred Ordinary Days Podcast we invite you to do just that.

Listen/download below or through iTunes or your favorite podcast app, and catch up on past episodes here. And if you like what you hear, would you mind sharing it with a friend and leaving a review? Here’s how.

I don’t like centering prayer, which is to say that I struggle with it daily.

I’m not a fan of struggle, of tension, of staying put amidst discomfort when the rambling voices within are doing their best to keep my mind occupied. I don’t like feeling out of control, and the practice of centering prayer shows me just how out of control I really am.

Truly, it can be maddening. You would never imagine the amount of thoughts buried deep within, chugging along like a steam engine—my ego shoveling coal to keep the train running in an effort to avoid any moment of inner stillness. He knows that when I reach that place, he’s out of a job, if only for a second, and so he keeps piling on fuel for the fire—to-do lists, insecurities, future plans and current musings. Thoughts like What should we make for dinner tonight?, followed quickly by Note to self: take the broth out of the freezer, are accompanied by an a thumbs up from my ego engineer—Way to think ahead, Lacy. You’re so on top of things. Gold star!

But as that gold star fades away, making way for another productive thought (we’re on a roll, here!), I catch myself, remembering my centering prayer practice and returning to that place of inner silence and stillness where the Divine dwells. Planning, thinking, rehashing, imagining—I label each thought that held me captive, disarming their power and releasing them from my ego’s desperate grasp. This manner of labeling thoughts is a mindfulness practice, and I began incorporating it into my centering prayer practice long ago as a tool to help me return and remember in the moments when I need help most.

This is why I practice centering prayer. Not because it’s easy (it’s not), not because I look forward to it (I’ don’t), not because when that sweet bell chimes after twenty minutes I feel as if I’ve touched the heavens (though I do breathe a sigh of relief for making it another day). I practice centering prayer (with practice being the key word here) because of its continual invitation to silence and still the mind in order to simply rest in the presence of God.

While fasting is the most common spiritual practice associated with the season of Lent, it’s not the only one—prayer and almsgiving are common Lenten practices as well.

This week on the Sacred Ordinary Days Podcast we’re continuing our conversation on the season of Lent with a discussion on the practice of prayer—what it was like for us growing up, how we experience it in our current seasons of life, and what practices and tools have become meaningful along the way.

Listen/download below or through iTunes or your favorite podcast app, and catch up on past episodes here. And if you like what you hear, would you mind sharing it on social media and leaving a review? Here’s how.

Today is Ash Wednesday—the first day of the season of Lent.

Many of us will begin this season with an Ash Wednesday service where we will receive ashes on our foreheads and be reminded that our time here is transient, but I hope you choose to begin this season with the latest episode of the Sacred Ordinary Days Podcast, too. In it, we introduce the season of Lent and talk about Ash Wednesday, discernment, and one of the major practices of the season—fasting.

We’ll also continue the conversation as the season progresses with episodes exploring prayer and almsgiving—two additional practices of the season—and end with an episode during Holy Week before the Easter season begins. I love that we’ll be able to journey together in this season of self-examination and devotion, and I hope you’ll decide to come along.

I’ve been hinting at it for a while now, especially on Instagram and Facebook, and today I’m excited to finally be releasing my first prayer beads collection!

Prayer beads have been used as tools for spiritual practice for millennia and across multiple faith traditions, drawing seekers closer to the Divine with each bead touched and prayer offered. Made in the Anglican format to be used by all followers of the Christian faith, the prayer beads in my new collection will broaden your prayer practice and encourage creativity as you gather prayers from Scripture and fellow seekers to help guide you along the way.

I purchased my first set of prayer beads just over five years ago. I was new to contemplative spirituality at the time and was smitten by the beauty and simplicity of the prayer beads, the invitation to recite prayers of old, and the opportunity to make my prayer practice tangible through the sense of touch as my fingers passed from bead to bead.

In the final days of 2015, I made a pilgrimage to the Seattle Art Museum.

Now, I live in Seattle, so it wasn’t a long journey. In fact, the most arduous part of it was that I had to wait for the bus. What is consistent with many pilgrimages, though, is that I had been planning this trip for a long time.

For five years now I’ve gone on a personal day-retreat at the end of December to mark the closing of another year. It’s a “me day”—a way to transition from one year to the next with both delight and intention—and this year it included a visit to the Seattle Art Museum. They were displaying an exhibition entitled “Intimate Impressionism,” and when I received the postcard in the mail toward the end of the summer announcing the exhibit, I knew it would be something to save for the day that has become one of my favorite days, because visiting art museums has become one of my favorite things.

Now that the feast of Epiphany has come and gone, we slip back into Ordinary Time for a season in between two grand collections of seasons.

Personally, I like to mark the entire period between the feast of Epiphany and the season of Lent as the Epiphany season, as the message of Epiphany seems to reverberate into the days and weeks that follow. Some churches do this as well, calling this period the season of Epiphany or marking it as Ordinary Time but counting the weeks based on the feast that has shaped them (“the first Sunday after Epiphany,” “the second Sunday after Epiphany,” and so on). Still, there are others who mark this period simply as Ordinary Time I, distinguishing it from the other, much longer period of Ordinary Time (II) that picks up after the feast of Pentecost and leads us right up into Advent and a new liturgical year.

However you mark this season we find ourselves in, Jenn and I cover it all in our latest episode of the Sacred Ordinary Days Podcast. We also talk about two practices we find essential to our everyday lives and are perfect for establishing during these Ordinary days—crafting a Rule of Life and cultivating a Morning Ritual. Listen closely and you’ll hear a discount code for $5 off my 31 Days to a Meaningful Morning online course, available through February 10, 2016. And, while you’re at it, check out my own Rule of Life written with the pilgrim in mind.

Two days ago marks six months since it happened, which seems like a significant date to remember.

Instead, the date on my mind as it draws ever nearer is March 5—the day my baby would be due. Just six months ago and only six weeks in, I had a miscarriage. It was my first pregnancy, and we’ve been struggling to get pregnant since.

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Which pilgrim path are you on?

Click on a path below to find your direction and discover practices to guide you along the way.
the pilgrim at home

the pilgrim abroad

Where’s the Easter Egg? (+ an Easter gift for you)

How was your Easter Sunday?

Where’s the Easter egg?

Sacred Ordinary Days Podcast, S1|E9: Holy Week & Easter Sunday

Holy Week is here with all its highs and lows, celebration and calamity.

My Struggle with Centering Prayer and Why I Return

I don’t like centering prayer, which is to say that I struggle with it daily.

Sacred Ordinary Days Podcast, S1|E7: Lent + Prayer

While fasting is the most common spiritual practice associated with the season of Lent, it’s not the only one—prayer and almsgiving are common Lenten practices as well.

Sacred Ordinary Days Podcast, S1|E6: Ash Wednesday, Fasting, + the Season of Lent

Today is Ash Wednesday—the first day of the season of Lent.

Now Available! Wearable Prayer Beads in the Journey Shop

I’ve been hinting at it for a while now, especially on Instagram and Facebook, and today I’m excited to finally be releasing my first prayer beads collection!

5 Things Impressionism Can Teach Us about the Spiritual Journey

In the final days of 2015, I made a pilgrimage to the Seattle Art Museum.

Sacred Ordinary Days Podcast, S1|E5: Ordinary Time

Now that the feast of Epiphany has come and gone, we slip back into Ordinary Time for a season in between two grand collections of seasons.

What I Hope to Receive in 2016 (+ my word for the year)

Two days ago marks six months since it happened, which seems like a significant date to remember.

EXPLORE

DISCOVER

CONNECT

How was your Easter Sunday?

Where’s the Easter egg?

Holy Week is here with all its highs and lows, celebration and calamity.

It’s our final episode on the season of Lent and its three main practices, and today on the Sacred Ordinary Days Podcast we’re talking about the practice of almsgiving.

I don’t like centering prayer, which is to say that I struggle with it daily.

While fasting is the most common spiritual practice associated with the season of Lent, it’s not the only one—prayer and almsgiving are common Lenten practices as well.

Today is Ash Wednesday—the first day of the season of Lent.

I’ve been hinting at it for a while now, especially on Instagram and Facebook, and today I’m excited to finally be releasing my first prayer beads collection!

In the final days of 2015, I made a pilgrimage to the Seattle Art Museum.

Now that the feast of Epiphany has come and gone, we slip back into Ordinary Time for a season in between two grand collections of seasons.

Two days ago marks six months since it happened, which seems like a significant date to remember.

EXPLORE

DISCOVER

CONNECT