Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

spiritual practices

The Spiritual Discipline of Driving with the Radio Off {and how it might just change the world}

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Yesterday, as I backed out the driveway on my way to attend an evening event, I clicked on the radio to catch the last bit of news for the day. I’m not a big music person, but when I’m driving I’ll often listen to the news or a talk show on NPR, much to my teenagers’ chagrin, and during my hour-long commute to and from Omaha once a week for my part-time job, I typically have a podcast playing in one earbud.

Yesterday, though, a few seconds after I’d turned the radio on, I clicked it off again and instead rolled down my window and drove the rest of the way to my destination in silence.

A brief shower had swept through the south part of town. As I drove I breathed in the scent of rain steaming off the hot pavement. I let the wind have its way with my hair and felt the humid breeze on my face. As I idled at a traffic light, I heard the steady whine of crickets in the field and the piercing call of a red-tailed hawk from its perch atop a telephone pole.

I realized it had been a long time since I’d driven with the radio off and the earbuds out of my ears.

It was only a 20-minute drive from my house to where I was headed, but when I pulled into the parking lot, I noticed my whole demeanor had changed. My mind was free of clanging thoughts. My pulse was slow and steady, my breathing even, my hands relaxed on the steering wheel.

Later that night, when I mentioned in an Instagram post how much I had enjoyed my silent drive, a friend commented that a year or so ago she’d made a conscious decision to drive with the radio off. “It’s amazing how much more margin I have in my life now,” she said.

Initially I was puzzled by her comment. After all, 15 or 20 minutes of silence is but a drop in the bucket of a typical busy day. How could so little quiet create “more margin” in her life overall, I wondered?

As I thought about my own quiet drive just a few hours before, though, I recalled how I’d slid out of the driver’s seat and ambled unhurriedly across the parking lot, noticing, as I walked, the clouds billowing on the horizon.

I remembered how I’d paused for a few seconds to listen to a meadowlark trill from the prairie grass nearby.

I considered the fact that I’d been noticeably less distracted in my interactions that night, more present to the people with whom I’d engaged.

Our lives are filled with a lot of noise. The clatter of the television, radio and social media. The barrage of advertising. The beeps, dings and ringtones from our smart phones, alerting us to a text, a Facebook comment, a tweet. The back-to-back-to-back meetings at work, the conference calls, the webinars.

So accustomed are we to its constancy, we don’t realize how much this relentless noise and distraction taxes our bodies, minds and souls.

We also don’t notice how much space this constant noise occupies, how it is infused into every facet of our days, how it even impacts how we move and who we are in this world.

Spending even a few minutes in silence has an immediate and discernable impact on our own physical and mental health, to be sure. But as our less distracted, more present selves step back into the world at large, it’s clear the few minutes of silence we take for ourselves also have a ripple effect, reverberating from ourselves into our environment and out toward those around us…perhaps reverberating from them still further, on and on, in wider and wider circles.

It seems, then, that perhaps the few minutes of silence we take for ourselves aren’t just for ourselves after all. As our calmer, more present, more attentive selves step back into our families, our neighborhoods, our workplaces, our communities, those few minutes of silence are making way for a kinder, more compassionate, more spacious world.

…So tell me: do you ever drive with the radio off? What’s your favorite way to enjoy a few minutes of silence? 

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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.

Practicing Ordinary Tasks as Spiritual Disciplines

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I noticed recently that several of the baseboards and doorframes in my house looked dingy. I like white trim, but the downside is that it readily shows smudges, stains and nicks. Last week, unable to tolerate my home’s dilapidated woodwork a moment longer, I grabbed a brush, pried open a can of white paint and got to work.

I don’t mind painting, especially touching up trim. I find the precise work soothing, the repetitive sweep of the brush back and forth over molding and baseboards, the rhythmic dip of the bristles in and out of the smooth paint.

I’d intentionally chosen not to listen to my usual podcasts or music in favor of silence. With my kids at school and my husband at work, the only sounds in the house were the whoosh of the heat blowing out of the vents and the dog snoring softly in her bed. I was hoping the quiet and the hypnotic motion of the paintbrush over the wood would allow my mind the space to noodle over a writing project I am working on. What I didn’t expect was that painting would turn out to be an unconventional spiritual discipline of sorts.

“Constant noise, interruption and drivenness to be more productive cut us off or at least interrupt the direct experience of God and other human beings,” observes Ruth Haley Barton in her book, Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation.

I’ve found this to be true in my own life. I often use social media, busyness and my to-do list to create connection and meaning. I rush from task to task, place to place and errand to errand. I skate by on bits of shallow connection – an email, a Facebook comment, a string of texts. I don’t often linger with people in real, face-to-face conversation. I don’t often allow myself the time and space to soak in the details of a particular place or moment, to let my mind and heart wander toward God.

I didn’t pray outright or reflect on Bible verses as I crouched on my knees last week, paintbrush in hand, nor did I set out to be intentionally “spiritual.” Rather, I simply focused on the task, let my thoughts come and go and was present in the moment.

I noticed the acrid smell of the paint and the faint scent of polish emanating from the wood. I felt the warmth of the heat as it gushed from the grate. I listened to the black-capped chickadee’s two-note call from the magnolia tree outside the window and noticed how a square of sunlight shifted across the living room floor as the afternoon waned.

This attention to the details of the moment was in itself a kind of worship. As Brother Lawrence once wrote, “We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.”

God desires to connect with us personally and intimately. But in our frenetic, loud, technology-dependent lives, we rarely allow the stillness, quiet and space for that connection to happen. The restless agitation we often feel simmering just under the surface hints that we are missing something important, but we don’t allow ourselves the opportunity to figure out what that something is.

Turns out, that “something” we are missing is the nearness of God.

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I wrote a whole e-book on practicing ordinary tasks as spiritual disciplines, called Five Unconventional Spiritual Practices for Your Soul, which I offer as a free gift to subscribers of my weekly blog or monthly newsletter. Interested? You can subscribe HERE. Once you submit the form, you’ll get an email from me with a link to the downloadable PDF of the e-book.

5 Ways to Practice “Hygge” & Banish Your Winter Blues, Danish-Style

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When I stepped out the front door to take my dog for her usual post-dinner walk last week, I noticed it was nearly dark, though it was only 6:30 p.m. Now that we’ve rolled back the clocks for Daylight Savings Time, darkness will descend an hour earlier, and from now until March, I’ll walk my dog by the light of the moon. This realization fills me with dread. As much as I love autumn—pumpkin-spice-flavored everything, vibrant leaves falling like confetti, the scent of wood smoke in the air—the season is a bittersweet one for me, because I know winter is close behind.

It’s not like winter is unfamiliar. I grew up in New England and have lived the last 15 years in Nebraska. I’ve weathered blizzards, ice storms, power outages, and snow banks so high you’re forced to creep your car halfway into the intersection to see past them. Yet as each year passes, I seem to dread winter’s onset more and more.

…Are you dreading winter too? Find out over at For Her magazine how the Danish practice of hygge can help. Click here to finish reading the rest of the article. 

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?