Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

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Filled with the Fullness of Your Own Everyday, Ordinary Life

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A few days ago, as Josie lingered with her snout deep in the weeds – “reading the newspaper,” as a fellow dog-walker once observed – I watched a girl on roller skates sidestep, arms outstretched, down a grassy slope. She wore old-fashioned skates, the kind with four wheels and a rubber stopper like a nose on the end of each boot. Suddenly I was back under a rainbow of disco lights at Interskate 91, Beat It pulsing, skates thumping over the hardwood floor.

Nearby a young man had slung a striped hammock between two white pines. His backpack resting at the base of one tree, bike propped against the trunk of the other, he stood tilting his phone this way and that, angling for the perfect shot, patient as the hammock twirled like a double-dutch jump rope in the early spring breeze.

Making our way through the neighborhood, I caught the almost-familiar scent of something spicy – cumin or maybe curry — wafting through the open window of a basement apartment. The food smelled nearly but not quite like the dishes our Yazidi friends prepare for us when we visit.

Two doors down a new scent, the nostalgic smell of hot dogs on the grill, whisking me back to Fourth of July cookouts on the backyard picnic table. Josie smelled it too, stopping to lift her quivering nose in the air.

Tipping my head back to gaze up at an enormous sycamore, I saw that its bare branches were hung with hundreds of seed balls dangling like Christmas ornaments. I picked one up from the ground and carried it like a cherry on a stem, gently so as not to crush it. When I got home from our walk I put the seed ball on a dish and placed it on my desk.

I’m halfway through my Lenten social media fast. After a month away from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, I feel grounded. My body is grounded. My senses are grounded. My brain is even somehow more grounded. I hadn’t been aware of it until I dialed back the constant noise and distraction, but my thoughts had begun to feel like untethered balloons bumping along with the current, strings dangling.

Being grounded in my own body, in my own environment, in my actual real life, rather than constantly peering into other lives as they are presented on my cell phone screen, has given rise to a keen attentiveness. I notice the girl on the old-fashioned roller skates, the scents whispering through my neighborhood, the regal, whimsical Dr. Seussian sycamore tree.

I see that though it’s April, the magnolia buds are still tightly closed, fuzzed sepals clasping drowsing petals. Even spring’s overachievers, the daffodils, are biding their time, keeping their sunny yellow encased in their papery wraps. Everywhere there is something new and fresh and beautiful to see, to hear, to smell, to touch. Everywhere there is a sense of expectancy.

My life has a different kind of fullness these days – different from the bloated, pants-too-tight-after-a-big-meal fullness created by noise, distraction, input, information, images. Different from the full-of-emptiness one can sometimes feel from ingesting too much of other people’s lives as they are presented online.

These days I am grounded. I am full. Filled with ordinary sights, sounds and smells. Filled with the fullness of my own everyday, ordinary life.

How Doxology Can Change Everything

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Recently I talked to a friend who was having a hard day. It was nothing catastrophic; simply that the mounting demands of her work had taken their toll, and anxiety had gotten the best of her, leaving her feeling overwhelmed and stressed.

My advice to her was twofold. One: get outside; and two: practice doxology.

A few years ago I learned about a Japanese practice called shinrin-yoku, which roughly translates as “forest-bathing.” In Japan, whole forests are set apart for the sole purpose of inviting visitors to be present to the sights, sounds and scents of nature.

Studies show that spending even a few minutes outside each day in any kind of natural space – forested or otherwise — can have a profound impact on our physical health by lowering blood pressure, decreasing cortisol levels and increasing immune function.

But I’ve also found that “forest bathing” – or what we Nebraskans might more accurately call “plains bathing” – can also have a dramatic effect on our spiritual life and the state of our souls, especially when combined with doxology.

Earlier this summer I attended a women’s supper at a local Lutheran church, and at the close of the event, the host suggested we all sing the doxology together before going our separate ways.

“Huh? The what-ology?” I thought to myself, as the women around me began to sing:

“Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise him all creatures here below. Praise him above ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.”

After fake lip-syncing my way through the unfamiliar hymn that evening, I later learned that the word “doxology” comes from the Greek doxa, translated as “glory,” and logia, translated as “saying.” There are a number of different iterations, but in short, doxology is a fancy word for the simple practice of giving praise.

Since learning about the doxology, I now often sing it quietly to myself while I walk my dog (lucky for me, Josie makes sure I get my daily shinrin-yoku in). As we meander along the path, I notice and give thanks to God for the vibrant black-eyed Susans dotting the meadow, for the melodious call of the Oriole hidden amid the oak leaves, for the sleek fox I spot darting into the underbrush across the ravine.

Giving thanks to God while immersed in his creation not only settles my racing mind and brings me a measure of peace, it also offers much-needed perspective.

Photo by Noah Johnson

There is something deeply comforting in acknowledging and accepting my smallness in the face of nature’s breadth and depth. Noticing the intricate design of the blossoming Queen Anne’s lace at my feet and the vastness of the sky over my head reminds me of how fleeting and inconsequential most of my anxieties and concerns really are.

Singing the Christian doxology while I practice the Japanese shinrin-yoku under the wide Nebraska sky is a somewhat strange and unlikely spiritual discipline, but it’s become a favorite, near-daily personal routine. I’m always amazed that two simple practices – noticing and giving thanks – can make such a profound difference in my mental, physical and spiritual health.

Turns out, shinrin-yoku doxology worked for my friend too. A few hours after I’d talked to her, she reported back that she’d taken my advice. After a quiet walk around the lake and a few minutes spent gratefully cuddling a newborn kitten in the barn, she had returned to her desk with a lighter heart, a less frantic mind and a replenished soul.

This post first appeared in the Lincoln Journal Star on September 8, 2018.

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Allowing Space in Order to Be Filled

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This time of year I’m always itchy to get my hands in the dirt. As the temperature begins to warm and the ground thaws, I am filled with a restless energy, eager to slip my feet into my plastic gardening clogs, grab a spade from the garage, and dig in.

I love the feeling of satisfaction that comes from clearing a bed of decayed oak leaves, shelled acorns and desiccated weeds, carefully pulling away the detritus of winter to reveal tender green perennials peeking up through the soil.

I love mixing in the dark, loamy compost, turning over the dirt with my shovel and then smoothing it flat with the hoe.

I love carving a shallow trench with my trowel, tearing open a packet of Romaine lettuce seeds, dropping them one by one into the earth and then pushing the soil gently over them with my gloved hand.

The trouble is, I don’t always follow the directions on the back of the seed packet. Rather than spacing my lettuce seeds the recommended six to eight inches apart, I cram them into the soil, sometimes barely allowing an inch or two between seeds. Inevitably, after the seedlings have sprouted a few weeks later, I’m forced to thin my rows, pulling perfectly healthy plants and tossing them into the compost pile in order to make room for the others to flourish.

Maybe you recognize the metaphor here. Perhaps you, too, have the tendency to overplant not just in the garden, but in your life as well.

I often fill my days, weeks and months to overflowing, cramming every bit of space with more – more busyness, more commitments, more projects, more socializing, more stuff. I buy more, I plan more, I do more, I produce more. I sow so many seeds, my “plants” end up jammed together with no space in between.

I believe this urge to sow our days with an overabundance of seeds and to crowd every space to overcapacity comes from an unnamed desire within us, a deep longing for contentment, fulfillment and peace and, beneath that, a longing to be known, valued and loved.

Some of us attempt to quench this longing with a full calendar and a demanding schedule. Others turn to food, alcohol, drugs, another name brand purse or a larger, fancier house to fill the void.

We strive to fill this deep yearning we sense in ourselves, not realizing, or perhaps not admitting, that the best thing we can do is to be “receptive to the unfulfilled,” as author Sara Miles says, neither filling it nor denying it, but simply sitting with the emptiness and acknowledging the presence of longing.

“You have made us for yourself, O Lord,” St. Augustine of Hippo once wrote, “and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Herein lies the essence of our longing. God made us for him – to be with him and in him, to be known by him and loved by him.

He made us in his image as his most precious beloveds, and yet, we cannot rest in intimate communion with him until we make space in our crowded lives for him to enter in.

We must first allow ourselves to be empty, to sit like tiny seeds, vulnerable in the dark spaciousness. We must acknowledge and listen to the longing deep within us without scrambling to fill it, trusting that in time, God will meet us there and fill us with himself.

This post first ran in the Lincoln Journal Star on April 7.

The Spiritual Discipline of Arriving Early

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“If you’re on time you’re late.”

This is my dad’s mantra, repeated time and time again throughout my childhood. More than once my sister was left howling at the end of our driveway, shoes in hand, as my dad drove down the street, my mother in the passenger seat, insisting that he turn the car around and retrieve her. He always did, but we never knew if this was the time Jeanine would finally be left behind.

You’d think, given my history, that I would tend toward either relentless tardiness or PTSD-induced punctuality. But the truth is, I actually like to arrive early. I do it intentionally, purposefully, not just because my dad drilled it into me, but because it’s good for my body, mind and soul.

…I’m delighted to be at Emily Freeman’s place today, writing about why I intentionally try to arrive early…join me over there? 

The Spiritual Habit of Staying in Place

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Back when we were dating, Brad entrusted me with his favorite plant, a lush fichus tree named Herman (in honor of Herman Melville, because of course) before he left town for a while.

I moved Herm into my house, positioned him in a sunny spot next to the sliding glass doors and then watched as he began to drop leaves at an alarming rate. I moved him to a south-facing window. More leaves littered the carpet. I watered Herman, fed him plant food, repositioned him yet again in a less chilly spot. Still he dropped leaves.

A week after Brad left, I called him to report that I’d killed Herman in a record-setting seven days flat.

Turns out, fichus trees require stability to thrive — a lesson we would be wise to apply to ourselves as well.

When they first join the order, Benedictine monks and nuns take a vow of stability. “The vow of stability affirms sameness,” says author and Episcopal priest Elizabeth Canham, “a willingness to attend to the present moment, to the reality of this place, these people, as God’s gift to me and the setting where I live out my discipleship.”

To “affirm sameness” is radically counter-cultural in our society. We are conditioned, even encouraged, to drop one thing and move onto the next. Marriage grown stale? Divorce. Bored on the job? Update the resume. Shoes scuffed? Buy a new pair. Acquaintance irritate us on Facebook? Unfriend. We abandon with ease, enticed by the fresh and new.

We are also expected to be as productive as possible, to hustle, push ourselves to the max, and multitask like a boss. The person who resists the rat race is an anomaly and is often seen as weak, an aberration. We wonder what happened to their ambition. A lot of us – dare I say most of us — equate stability with failure, or, at the very least, stagnance.

Yet it’s clear this relentless pursuit of the perfect place, the perfect situation, the perfect job, and the perfect person often leads to the Herman the Fichus phenomenon. We feel restless, uprooted and displaced. We wither rather than thrive. Like Herm the Fichus, we begin to lose pieces of ourselves. We begin fall apart.

Stability as a spiritual habit or discipline can be practiced on both the macro and micro level. For me, practicing stability in the big picture of my life means practicing contentment in my career, my parenting, my marriage, my home and my place.

This does not come naturally to my Type A, driven personality, especially when it comes to my work. I’ve long worn productivity, achievement and success as badges of honor, so seeking contentment and self-worth in the present status quo takes intentionality.

Likewise, on a micro level, practicing the habit of stability means making a concerted effort to stay in one place and do nothing, if only for a few minutes at a time.

Last November I began the practice of sitting on a park bench for five minutes during my daily afternoon dog walks, and I’ve kept up the routine pretty regularly. Josie automatically veers off the path and toward our bench now and patiently waits while I listen to the birds and gaze at the trees. It’s become a habit for both of us, and it’s good for me to simply stay in one place, to let my thoughts settle into a low simmer.

As it turned out, much the same was true for Herm the Fichus: he simply needed to stay in one place. I finally stopped moving him around the house and let him be, convinced he was dead but too guilty to dump him into the trash bin. A few weeks passed, and that’s when I began to notice tiny buds sprouting on bare branches. Leaf by delicate leaf, Herm began to thrive, unfurling and blossoming into a lush, verdant canopy. Left in one spot, he grew strong and whole once again.

A Word about Personality and Habits

In addition to identifying the Four Tendencies, Gretchen Rubin (author of Better Than Before) also identifies several personality aspects (she calls them distinctions) and how they relate to habit formation. For example, she asks whether the reader is a familiarity lover or a novelty lover, a lark or a night owl, an underbuyer or an overbuyer, a marathoner, sprinter or procrastinator, etc.. Identifying which end of the spectrum you lean toward can help you discern which spiritual habits might fit best for you.

Case in point: I am a familiarity lover. I’ve eaten the exact same snack at the exact same time pretty much every day for the last four years. New experiences make me uncomfortable. I’m not adventurous, and my favorite place in the world is my own backyard. So, given what I know about myself, it makes sense that I might gravitate toward the spiritual habit of stability – I’m inclined toward stability anyway. Sitting on the same bench at the same place on my walking route at the same time every day is not a huge stretch for me. It was relatively easy to integrate that new spiritual habit into my everyday routine.

BUT, if you’re a novelty lover — if you gravitate toward new experiences — the thought of sitting on the same bench in the same park at the same time every day might sound like your idea of a ticket straight to crazy town. For novelty lovers, the spiritual habit of stability might be more challenging. Not impossible, but probably more challenging.

Read more about Rubin’s personality distinctions here.

If you missed the first two posts in my Spiritual Habits series you can catch up here:

How Our Habits Can Impact Our Spirituality {introduction}

The Spiritual Discipline of Digging Dandelions

Next week: The Spiritual Habit of Scripture Reading