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Lesson Overview: Making the Divine Daily: One of the most important aspects of belonging to a LIVING religion is the use of that religion as a daily practice.
In many faiths, daily practices of prayer, meditation, revelation, reading
and blessings are dictated by a clerical hierarchy or written doctrine.
Two really good examples of practicing the spiritual everyday that are not
difficult to research are the practices within Judaism and Islam, especially in
the Hassidic and Sunni subcultures.
For this lesson, please evaluate the practices of three faiths that are practices on a daily basis, and answer the following questions in your evaluation:
| What is the purpose of these practice? |
| How often to they occur? |
| What initiates them (time of day, visual cues, etc) |
| How do they affect the secular daily practices of the participants. |
| Is there or should there be, a Wiccan equivalent to these practices? |
| What is the value of a daily religious regimen, if any? |
I asked a fellow classmate of mine who happens to be a Muslim what his daily religious practices involved. It was a very interesting "lesson" that he gave me on some of the beliefs and practices of the Muslim people. He is expected to pray five times a day, once in the Morning when he awakens (Sunrise), again at noon (noon to three in the afternoon), again from five to six pm, again at Sunset, and once more before going to bed at night.
I asked him how this worked for him going to classes and all, and he told me that he uses one of our empty rooms in our class section for his daily devotions. These prayers are designed for him to take time out of his daily life to come and humble himself before God. His prayers include 99 "nicknames" for God, and all of them are started with his languages word for "slave", so when he prays, he in essence says that he is "the slave of God". It was very nice to hear about this.
Another of my classmates belongs to the Sikh religion, and I asked her about her religious practices, another enlightening experience. In the Sikh religion, practitioners are not to cut their hair, they carry a ceremonial blade, called a "kirpan", and wear metal bracelets on their wrists.
I also asked her if they had any daily practices, and was told that the Sikh's have 5 prayers that must be said in the morning each day, and another prayer that is said at night. Most Sikh's have these prayers memorized.
Something that I am most familiar with, I was raised a Pentecostal, so their practices are what I know. Most of the Pentecostals that I knew, had prayer times that were done daily, usually in the morning when they woke, before meals, and again at bedtime. These prayers were done to make sure that their personal relationship with their Lord and Savior was as strong as ever. They also believed in ecstatic worship, and would spend hours in "prayer and worship" sessions in an attempt to reach an ecstatic state of connection with God.
So how do these practices relate to me and my practices? Most of these practices are all based around prayer times, and how often the practitioners pray. All of them pray several times a day. I know many Wiccans who have similar practices, but it's not a religious requirement. I think prayer is important, and that it helps to strengthen a person's spiritual identity as well as give them peace of mind.
| Is there or should there be, a Wiccan equivalent to these practices? |
| What is the value of a daily religious regimen, if any? |
Give an example of a personal "religious regimen" explain the effect of this on your life.
I have five daily prayer sessions in my personal spiritual practices. It started out as a "weekly assignment" by my offline witchcraft mentor to pray at least 4 times a day to the God as the Sun, to honor, and exalt Him for shining each day in my life. After a great experience with that, I continued my prayers, and then added prayers to the Goddess to my practices. Now I pray at Sunrise to the God and Goddess (as the Maiden), at Noon to the God, at 3pm to the Goddess (as the Mother), at Sunset to the God, and again at Midnight to the God and to the Goddess (as the Crone, and yes, I do get up at Midnight to pray).
These prayers have really strengthened my beliefs, strengthened my spiritual connection to the divine, and has given me inner peace. I enjoy my prayer sessions, and have since added meditations and daily affirmations to each prayer time in an effort to greater understand myself and the Divine.
