I share some thoughts with you from a colleague, Brian McLaren, from a work of his entitled, Finding Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices.

God Encounter

You cannot take an epidural shot to ease the pain of giving birth to character. In a sense, every day of your life is labor: the rhythmic agony of producing the person who will wake up in your body tomorrow, creating your reputation, continuing your legacy, and influencing your family, friends, colleagues, neighbors and countless strangers, for better or worse. It is questionable whether you can ever be exactly the same person for two consecutive days. What today throws at you will force you to become better or bitter for tomorrow. It will push you toward breakdown or breakthrough. Nudge you a step closer to courage, nobility, generosity, integrity, and honor ... or otherwise.
In a wild world like ours, your character, left untended, will become a stale room, an obnoxious child, a vacant lot filled with thorns, weeds, broken bottles, raggedy grocery bags, and dog droppings. Your deeper channels will silt in, and you will feel yourself shallowing. You will become a presence neither you nor others will enjoy. And you and they will spend more and more time and energy trying to be anywhere else.
Well tended, your character will be a fragrant garden, and artist's home, with walls and halls full of memories and beauty. A party with live music and good jokes, and pleasant conversations in every corner. You will be good and deep company for others and yourself.
This is why we need healthy, consistent spiritual practices. Spiritual practices are about life, about training ourselves to become the kinds of people who have eyes and actually see, and who have ears and actually hear, and thus experience ... not just survival but LIFE.

Self Encounter

• Think about who you were yesterday in terms of character, compared to who you are today. How would you fill in these blanks: "Today I am more ... and less ... than yesterday." Do the same related to a year ago, or ten years ago.
• What will your character be like in ten years, given your current trajectory?
• If your relationship with GOD was a marriage, how would you describe things to a marriage counselor? What would a better, happier marriage look like?