The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

I've never been good at keeping up with a regular worship, devotional, or ritual schedule.  The closest I come to any religious routine is a quick morning petition of "Bless, guide, and protect me on this day and all my days."  I also manage to mark the seasonal changes, but hey, those are hard to miss.  

In lieu of regularly scheduled practice, I try to find ways to incorporate the sacred (spiritual, divine, whatever-you-call-it) into my day-to-day activities.   My daily walk becomes a time less focused on exercise than on connecting with the local land spirits.  Stitches in sewing projects are set to the rhythm of chanted prayers and blessings.  Specific flowers and plants are put in the garden as offerings.  I think you get the picture.

Does anyone else do this?  In what ways to you turn seemingly mundane acts into spiritual/religious ones?

Do you think that this sort of multi-tasking diminishes or enhances your spiritual/religious experience?  Should religious/spiritual activities be separated from those that are mundane?  Or should just the opposite be true - that we should try to integrate our mundane and spiritual/religious lives as much as possible?

Though I've tried cleansing, when I'm standing in the shower in the mornings, all I can think about is my bed and how much I'd like to go back to sleep

 
 I know what you mean on that one.  I'm not a morning person at all and my day job starts at 7 am.  I'm amazed when I remember my morning petition before getting out of bed.  Never mind getting anything else accomplished.

To me this is sort of in line with the question of "Do we allow electronics/modern technology in our sacred spaces?" and for me the answer has always been "Why not?" (Excepting cell phones; they have no place in the sacred world as they are rude and disrespectful to the people and/or spirits/gods you're working with.)

I don't see much of a line between sacred and mundane, to be honest, and that's why you'll see rocks and sticks and sea glass and barbies and christmas lights on my altars, side by side, existing in perfect harmony.

I mean, I might not always be totally in tune with Spirit but I do believe that I'm a spiritual being having a human experience, not the other way around. So if something feels like it could be spiritual, it is.

I often light a candle dedicated to Brighid (and located on my stove) while I'm cleaning my house or cooking. Wearing my combat boots is pretty much always connected to Morrigan in some way. Sometimes when I'm eating dinner I get poked by one of Them as they say, "Hey, I want some of that!" and so part of my dinner goes on the offering plate and I go back to whatever I was doing. I often knit or crochet and that's a dedication as well. As is my writing.

I mean, just because it's not always intensely spiritual doesn't mean it's not always spiritual. If that makes sense.

 
This. I can't really add anything else!

Does anyone else do this?  In what ways to you turn seemingly mundane acts into spiritual/religious ones?

Do you think that this sort of multi-tasking diminishes or enhances your spiritual/religious experience?  Should religious/spiritual activities be separated from those that are mundane?  Or should just the opposite be true - that we should try to integrate our mundane and spiritual/religious lives as much as possible?

 
I do it all the time. Partly, because while I've mostly had a (sometimes entirely overactive) group practice throughout my Pagan life, it was the way to balance personal practice at home. And the past 2 years, it's been the way to manage stuff when there were days when more structured ritual (much as I love it) just wasn't in the health/energy cards.

(For a good chunk of that time, doing structured ritual meant planning the house cleaning out over 2-3 days, so I'd feel it was tidy enough to manage and not distract me without being overwhelmingly exhausting, a full afternoon + evening free at home without other commitments, and then some time to manage the tidying up after.)

More pragmatically, I tend to think that a life where religious aspects *aren't* integrated is eventually going to fail. That doesn't mean that everything you do has to have religious or spiritual significance - but that as you make choices about your day, you get to choose whether you're going to bear your beliefs and practices and most important values in mind or not.

On the most fundamental level, I very much consider librarianship, for me, to be part of my religious vocation (especially the part about connecting people with information, or helping them find tools that help them make their own choices more effectively, easily, and joyfully.) So, disconnecting the two tends to make me very unhappy and cranky.

(This is not to say I bring this up at work, because that'd be bad in all sorts of ways. But I do use it as an internal reminder of how I want to respond when answering a question for the 10th time that day, or fixing a broken copier, or whatever.)

I also do tons of little stuff:
- I choose desktops for my computer that reflect my current goals and religious interests. (recently, they've been very simple, as part of a desire to get back to core basics and values, but I've done series of seasonal ones, or ones that remind me of a particular magical goal.)

- I do the same thing for regularly changed passwords (such as at work): I pick a password that reminds me of a current goal or focus.

- I have playlists on my computer for each Sabbat, and for other religious interests/goals. (I had playlists both for job hunting and for untangling some complicated emotional work around a lot of changes, for example.) It's music I like, obviously, but there are also times I'll pause and a particular lyric will catch my brain and spark something.

(Basically, I'm giving the universe, and my deities, and whatever else might be worth listening to, a chance to catch my attention on a regular basis.)

- I pick some of what I read as what I refer to as 'processing reading' - stuff my brain's working with on a subconscious level. Not all of it, but about a quarter of my reading (sometimes higher) runs that way usually.

- Plus general informative reading of various books, both Pagan and non-Pagan, and blogs/websites/etc.

- I have an up-all-the-time shrine that includes both deity iconography and materials, and ongoing workings (in particular, a prosperity focused statue and a professional-ancestor statue I made.) I don't spend a lot of formal time there, but I pay a brief bit of attention every time I walk by.

- I also pick jewelry based on a particular day's focus or goal: I have a lot of pieces that have personal meaning to me, but that are not obviously religious in any way. (And I tend not to wear stuff just because I like how it looks, so pretty much any time I wear something, it's for some reason connecting with my spirituality.)

(Basically, I'm giving the universe, and my deities, and whatever else might be worth listening to, a chance to catch my attention on a regular basis.)

 
I hadn't thought of it in quite this way before, but yeah, that's what I'm doing, too.

Also, I've never felt comfortable with an "only on Sundays and at Christmas and Easter" approach to religion.  I'm much happier when the various aspects of my life are more integrated.  There are some things that are explicitly and exclusively religious (like prayer, certain songs, the lamp I light each night for Brighid), but most of my activities are spiritual AND mundane, at least at some level.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what my life would look like if I could choose to completely devote it to Brighid -- in the sort of way that a nun or monk devotes hir life to his/her God.  Haven't got it all worked out yet, but it's an interesting thought experiment.

Does anyone else do this?  In what ways to you turn seemingly mundane acts into spiritual/religious ones?

Do you think that this sort of multi-tasking diminishes or enhances your spiritual/religious experience?  Should religious/spiritual activities be separated from those that are mundane?  Or should just the opposite be true - that we should try to integrate our mundane and spiritual/religious lives as much as possible?

 
This is a great topic.
     I have found my (old) study of Catholic Mystics like Teresa of Avila and Francis of Asissi to be pertinent in some ways.  In that I try to offer up , say, my gardening to Mother Gaia and be totallty mindful in my weeding - listening to the wind, the birds, the earth, etc.  
When I cook at work (and when it occurs to me)  I often bind a Rune of Health to a soup or what have you and put a healing intent in for those who partake.  
I also try to give thanks to the Green and Red beings who gave themselves to be my food, and to those who prepared it, from the underpaid farm workers to the underpaid preparers.
     When my head is in the right space, I make most of my day an offering.  

(Of course the trick is to get my fat head in the right space a lot more of the time.)

I've never been good at keeping up with a regular worship, devotional, or ritual schedule.  The closest I come to any religious routine is a quick morning petition of "Bless, guide, and protect me on this day and all my days."  I also manage to mark the seasonal changes, but hey, those are hard to miss.  

In lieu of regularly scheduled practice, I try to find ways to incorporate the sacred (spiritual, divine, whatever-you-call-it) into my day-to-day activities.   My daily walk becomes a time less focused on exercise than on connecting with the local land spirits.  Stitches in sewing projects are set to the rhythm of chanted prayers and blessings.  Specific flowers and plants are put in the garden as offerings.  I think you get the picture.

Does anyone else do this?  In what ways to you turn seemingly mundane acts into spiritual/religious ones?

Do you think that this sort of multi-tasking diminishes or enhances your spiritual/religious experience?  Should religious/spiritual activities be separated from those that are mundane?  Or should just the opposite be true - that we should try to integrate our mundane and spiritual/religious lives as much as possible?

The ability to infuse my life with a deeper meaning was one of things that really drew mean in when I became heathen. There's a saying that it isn't a religion, its a lifestyle. And it really is; it changes your worldview, it informs your decisions, it gives depth to your relationships with people and law and things. And it isn't really religious or working with gods or anything- its all you and your experience with it. I'm deeply connected to something bigger than myself, I have roots and meaning in everything I do...not by assigning spiritual activities to my life, but just by living.

Does anyone else do this?  In what ways to you turn seemingly mundane acts into spiritual/religious ones?

I've been praying a lot more, myself. And what's amazing is that my prayers are being answered almost immediately most of the time.