Weekly Devotional Passage from the School Chaplain: Spiritual Practices

Today's wise words are from pastor and author Brian McLaren. These words come from his book titled Finding Our Way Again, The Return of the Ancient Practices (page 14):

Spiritual practices are actions within our power that help us narrow the gap. They help us become someone weighty, someone worthy of a name and reputation, someone who makes survival worthwhile by turning life’s manure into fertilizer. They’re about surviving your twenties or forties or eighties and not becoming a jerk in the process. About not letting what happens to us deform us or destroy us. About realizing that what we earn or accumulate means nothing compared to what we become and who we are. As such, spiritual practices are pretty earthy, and they’re not strictly about spirituality as it is often defined; they’re about humanity. Which brings us to the second reason they’re important – aliveness.
Spiritual practices could be called life practices or humane practices, because they help us practice being alive, and humanely so. They develop not just character but also aliveness, alertness, wakefulness, and humanity.