Sr Lucy Tierney, author of Inner Invitations 2023, has been a great blessing to me over the last 25 years. At a recent training day I attended on-line, she repeated the blessings of her daily practice of 2 + 5.
Two minutes in the morning. How am I?
This is simply doing a check in with yourself to find out how you are, and what is happening inside you. I would encourage this as a simple addition to your daily prayer or devotion reading. Just taking a moment to pause and ask may help you be aware at a deeper level of what is happening inside you. Sometimes we just get caught up rushing from one thing to another, because we are worried about something, or don’t know what to do about something that is stressing us, or we have too much happening. This helps to get things in focus, and then we can pray about them and make healthy or realistic choices about what we are going to do.
If everything is well, then we can take a moment to say thanks. If we are a bit over-excited, we take a moment to be a bit more grounded. You will soon discover what you are being called to do with how you are.
Five minutes at night. A review of the day.
A possible practice before we go to bed. Look back over the day and let things arise. You will discover things that went well, and you can be grateful for. You may discover things about your interactions with others that you might do differently next time. You might discover familiar rabbit holes that you fell down, and simply seeing this may help the next time to step around them. You may realise that you did something well, or better than you normally do. Recognising this will help build those neural pathways and practices.
These practices are very simple. Try them for a week, and wee if they are worth keeping. It’s not self-help, because these practices are asking the Holy Spirit to keep working in your life, and guiding you deeper in the fulness of your life in Christ.
