Spiritual Practices Part 2

July 22, 2026

Spiritual Practice Part 2

I recently came to a deeper spiritual understanding of something —something many of us know in our souls but cannot always put into words. It was not a new truth exactly. It was more like an old truth finally becoming clear enough to form words that point to what it means. 

Last evening, I walked down the back steps into the yard. The humid night surrounded me like a warm blanket. Moonlight came through the tree limbs and lit my way. Crickets chirped from the darkness, and the air was thick with the feeling of summer.

At the bottom of the steps, the moon illuminated two white gardenias blooming high on the towering bush. They were the only living blossoms left. All the others had turned brown and withered in the mid summer heat. This bush is especially dear to me because I transplanted it years ago from my childhood home in Mobile.

The two blossoms seemed to call out from their high limb: Come smell us. We will only be here a little while longer. So, I bent the limb down gently, brought the velvety white flowers to my face, and breathed in their fragrance. In an instant, I was carried away.

The scent filled me with yesterday—with the long, endless summers of childhood. Summers of humidity and crickets, of bare feet and living daylight, of a world that felt alive in every direction. As I inhaled, I was three, four, five, six, seven years old again. For a few brief seconds, I was simply not remembering the child I had been. I was that child again.

That is the mystery of fragrance. It does not merely remind us. It transports us. It opens a hidden door and lets us step, for a moment, into a world we thought was gone. But then, as always, the first awakening sweetness of the blossom began to fade. The moment passed. The old world disappeared again.

Usually, when this happens, I simply revel in the memory and move on. I know deep in my soul that I have struck gold, but I don't quite know how to dig deeper for it. So, I go into something else. But this time I did something different. I stayed with it. I did not hurry to the next thought or the next task. I remained inwardly still and listened to what the olfactory memory might reveal. And then something deeper arose.

I realized that the fragrance was only the doorway. The memory was only the first room. Beneath both of them was something far more profound— something steady, essential, living, and real. It was not merely nostalgia. It was not just sentiment. It was not only the ache of childhood remembered. It could not be broken down into other components. Beneath the fragrance, beneath the memory, beneath the child I had once been, there was a presence that had never gone away. There was something permanent underneath all the passing things.

The gardenia would wither. The memory would fade. The child I had been was long gone in time. And yet something remained.

Something essential.

Something true.

Something not made by my mind, and not dependent on my ability to remember it.

The only words I can find for it are these:

Pure, True Being.

The words do not capture it. They only point toward it.

I believe this is what spiritual practice helps us discover. It teaches us to stay with experience long enough to see through its surface. A flower is not only a flower. A memory is not only a memory. A fragrance is not only a fragrance. Each can become a doorway into the deeper reality that upholds it and all things that are expressions of the Divine. 

All of nature, all of memory, all of love, all of grief, all of the body, heart, and mind are undergirded by something deeper than themselves. Beneath the temporary is the eternal. Beneath what changes is what does not change. Beneath every passing beauty is the Divine Reality from which beauty comes.

The spiritual practice is simple, but not easy:

Stay.

Stay with the sensation.

Stay with the memory.

Stay with the feelings even if they ache.

Stay with what arises from your depths.

If we stay long enough, we may discover the deepest truth of existence as it arises in us. And sometimes, heaven lets us experience the absolute beauty of existence, that has been there all along.

Spiritual Practice and Inquiry

Try this practice with anything that carries meaning for you… a flower, leaves, rock, even a taste or smell … What arises in you when you travel to its Divine source?

Prayer

Dear God, To now have words that point to what has now touched me in a much deeper way, I give you thanks.

Amen