Asking the Clergy: What daily practices sustain you spiritually?

Routines can serve as milestones for our day — the morning stretch, the afternoon stroll and, for people of faith, the bedtime prayer. This week’s clergy discuss the spiritually helpful habits that help guide their daily lives.

Arthur Dobrin

Leader Emeritus, Ethical Humanist Society of Long Island, Garden City

Religious humanism focuses upon creating a better world through human relations. In this regard, three practices, which are spiritual from a humanist perspective, come to mind.

First, whenever my wife, Lyn, or I leave each other even for a short while, we make sure that we kiss each other goodbye. This not only reinforces our love for each other but recognizes that we never know when this life will end, as it surely will.

Second, I make sure to see or call at least one of my children or grandchildren every day. Not only does it remind them that I love them, it reminds me that I must act responsibility in this world to help ensure that their lives can flourish.

Third, whenever I am in public, I pay attention to those around me. I don’t want to make their lives more difficult because of my carelessness or thoughtlessness. So I try to remember to smile when I can, open doors for strangers and be helpful wherever possible.

My favorite aphorism is from the Victorian writer George Eliot: "What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?" This is a spiritual practice that I try to live by daily.

Bob Yugi Festa of Huntington

Zen practitioner

The Buddha said: "If one speaks and acts with a pure thought, happiness follows one, like a shadow that never leaves."

Zen Buddhist practitioners take this advice very seriously, and it is reflected in our daily practice. What did the Buddha mean by a "pure mind"? It is the mind that responds to situations without putting a conditioned "spin" on it. In other words, the intuitive mind.

How does one minimize the conditioned (everyday) mind and develop the intuitive mind? The answer is meditation. In Zen there are two approaches to meditation. One is Koan study, solving a nonlogical statement such as "the sound of one hand clapping," which requires a shift to the intuitive mind. The second is just sitting and addressing all that comes up by acknowledging it and letting it go instead of spinning a story about it. Eventually, there appear times when nothing comes up: first short gaps, then progressively longer gaps when the conditioned mind is at rest. This requires daily practice, which I do for an hour every day.

When I am not in meditation, I do my best to be aware of my "pure mind," and when it is not present, bringing myself back to it.

Rabbi Lina Zerbarini

Kehillath Shalom Synagogue, Cold Spring Harbor

Upon awakening, I recite a prayer, Modah Ani — "I acknowledge that I live in your presence, Sustaining Guide." The word modah means acknowledge and thank: I am more fully grateful when I connect to my wholeness — to be fully human is to embrace all of it! The more reality I allow in, the more aware I am of my blessings.

Next, the bathroom prayer speaks of a humanity formed with wisdom and notes the miracle of the workings of the body.

Exercise strengthens my mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health. The body is the vessel that supports my soul in this world and enables me to care for others and take action. This is worth blessing!

Each morning, I say: "The soul You have placed in me is pure." I sit and pay attention to my breath (a word that shares its root in Hebrew with soul) and find some stillness before the day begins. Allowing this calm increases the possibility that I might be able to access it throughout the day. Modah Ani — I am grateful for the practices my ancestors developed and handed down which connect me with my spirit and with the Spirit of the World.