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My new spiritual practice: Feeling the feelings

Lynne Baab • Wednesday May 10 2017

When I’m stressed about something, my feelings get buried under my thoughts. Some of those thoughts center around questions about the future: “What if this happens? What if that happens?” Other thoughts are about the feelings: “You shouldn’t be feeling these negative feelings. You should be trusting God.”

I wrote last week about advice from my therapist about separating thoughts from feelings. Some months ago he suggested that I practice self-compassion as a way to cope with negative feelings, and I’ve had a wonderful year learning more about what self-compassion looks like and why God would desire it for me.

The form of...

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My new spiritual practice: Separating thoughts from feelings

Lynne Baab • Thursday May 4 2017

A year ago I was feeling stressed by several things, so I started seeing a therapist twice a month. My times with him have been very helpful, and in these next few blog posts, I want to reflect on what I’ve learned. In fact, I want to argue that what I’ve learned is actually a spiritual practice.

Last year I could tell I was stressed because of the thoughts swirling in my head: What if this happens? What if that happens? How will I cope? Why am I not trusting God more with these things that are stressing me? What’s wrong with...

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Support for Earth Day from hundreds and thousands of years ago

Lynne Baab • Tuesday April 25 2017

Earth Day has been important to me ever since I was an undergraduate student majoring in biology. I fell in love with the beauty of God’s creation and felt sure that humans were called to care for the earth simply because God made it and entrusted it to us. Earth Day 2017 was last Saturday, April 22, and the science marches around the world were scheduled to coincide with Earth Day.

Sometimes we fall into the error of thinking that the notion of caring for God’s creation is something new, unique to our age. Not so!

Psalm 104, which dates back well over...

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Spiritual practices for the Easter season

Lynne Baab • Tuesday April 18 2017

This week I’m reposting an earlier post because the ideas are still so relevant. Maybe I’m reposting it because I need to follow my own suggestions!

Did you know that in many times and places in Christian history, Easter has been viewed as a season, not just a day? The Easter season goes from Easter Day to Pentecost Sunday (June 4 this year), a period of seven weeks. Because Jesus’ resurrection is such a huge, amazing, overwhelming, fantastic gift to us, focusing on it for seven weeks allows time to ponder many aspects of what we receive on Easter Day.

The liturgical color...

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