Practicing the Inner Life: A Five Part Exploration of What Spiritual Practice Can Mean for You

Join Pádraig Ó Tuama for a five-week course exploring the Inner Life. Taking the Celtic year as a template, this course will consider what practices can nurture a vibrant inner life: in order to be present to yourself, present to others, and present to the world. Participants will be supported in reflection exercises and writing exercises, as well as learning from poets and writers from diverse spiritual traditions.

Celtic spirituality is remarkably grounded: it is about surviving the elements, about paying attention to the weather, about knowing the seasons, and about the stark reality of both life and death. Ireland has a lot of mist, but there’s nothing misty about the spirituality from there.

This course, while not only about Celtic spirituality, certainly will lean heavily into the concrete nature of spiritual practices: we will think about breathing, about rituals, about daily, weekly and monthly practices, about capacities to hold your days together, and about accompanying each other — and, most importantly, yourself. The Inner life is a practice — i.e., it is something that you do. There won’t be prescribed homework, but there will be the expectation that people will try out different practices over the course of these sessions and have reflections on what works, and why, or what isn’t working, and why.

The course will make use of practices and texts from different spiritual traditions, but fully understands that people may come with multiple, or no affiliation to a formal religion. All religions bear witness to practices, and those practices have been used fruitfully, or fruitlessly, for centuries. Many practices will be suggested, and individuals will be welcome to try what they wish, knowing that some will work, and others won’t. Every week will have some dialogue about poetry, as well as space for personal narrative reflection.