| Cathleen Falsani

GODSTUFF:

BREAK FREE FROM SUMMER’S SPIRITUAL DOG DAYS

It’s as if God’s on vacation.
God isn’t, of course. At least that’s what most of our religious traditions tell us. God doesn’t like to take vacations, kind of like my friend Rick.

Work work work work work.

But when we hit these spiritual dog days of summer, and the city becomes something of a ghost town (especially on the weekends), it feels as if the universe is lollygagging, cutting out early from work while the boss is away at his cabin in the woods.

“The town was asleep; the pillars of the market threw great shadows; the earth was as grey as on a summer’s night.” At least that’s how Flaubert described it. Sounds like a lot of places in mid-July, especially on Sunday morning.

In Chicago, where religion is as much a sport as baseball, there’s more room in the pews and fewer services to go around. Sunday School has been adjourned (officially or otherwise) for the season in many congregations (replaced by Vacation Bible School at some and by sleep-away camp at others). And a lot of my clergy friends are taking a rare break from their flocks to put their feet up and read a different good book.

Even Cardinal Francis George was sitting on a pier somewhere in Michigan this week fishing with his grandnephews.

For many of us — not the cardinal, of course — it feels too hot and lazy to do anything, like, say, go to church.

So what can we do from the comfort of our fan-cooled or (excuse us, Madonna) air-conditioned abodes to exercise our spirits? Because nobody likes a flabby-looking soul hanging out of the proverbial spiritual bikini.

With that in mind, and in lieu of overindulging in the Seven Deadly Sins (sloth is so seductive when the heat and humidity both hover in the 90s), here are seven things we can do to move our spirits without breaking a sweat:

1) Give your mind a seven-minute vacation
I tried this on Thursday (though I’m sure there are folks who would argue that my old noodle is on sabbatical far more often). Surf on over to www.brainsync.com and take their free seven-minute audio guided meditation. Led by the mellifluous voice of Kelly Howell, founder of Brain Sync, the “leader in brain wave audio technology,” you’ll focus on your breath, relax, and center your mind while woo-woo New Agey music bounces back in forth in your headphones.

“With this technology, you can leverage the powers of your mind-body connection to attain optimal mental and physical performance,” Brain Sync’s site claims. “This new path uses sound waves that carry listeners into the higher frequencies of consciousness where profound transformations take place.”

I don’t know about that, but I did feel a heck of a lot more relaxed, and sitting completely still for seven whole minutes significantly decreased perspiration. Which is nice.

If you’re not into the whole ’70s space-rock headphone experience, you could scoot over to the Unity Church Web site, and read a guided meditation for July.

2) Pray, by yourself, with others, onlineThere are myriad Web sites where you can leave a prayer request, pick up someone else’s prayer request to pray for, be guided in prayer by clergy, or join in a prayer chain. Beliefnet.com has scads of different online prayer chat rooms where you pray with others for yourself, family and friends or strangers.

Among the more interesting Web-based prayer sites I found while killing some dog-day time earlier this week was Sacred Space, a site run by the Jesuit fathers in Ireland. At www.sacredspace.ie, the kind Irish priests will guide you through a 10-minute prayer session right at your computer, with on-screen cues and scripture passages chosen especially for each day. It’s free.

If you’re in the mood to pray for peace — and the way world events are going this week, the more the merrier on this one if you ask me — visit free-positive-thought.com/peace/ to join in a worldwide meditation/prayer for peace.

3) Read something that will inspire or challenge you

Everyone has different tastes, of course, but here’s what’s on my nightstand for the summer:
Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert.

Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America: An Evangelical’s Lament by Randall Balmer.

Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons by Frederick Buechner.

Brookland: A Novel by Emily Barton.

And The Catcher in The Rye by J.D. Salinger (because I’ve read it every summer since I was 10 and I find something new — about me or about Holden — in it every time I do).

4) Find a place to worship

Whether you’re on vacation (literally) and away from your home house of worship, or perhaps unenthused by your regular church/synagogue/mosque/ashra, or looking for something new — summer is a great time because there’s less competition for the seats so you don’t have to worry about running a few minutes late.

There are a bunch of Web sites that will help you find your house of worship of choice, no matter the flavor.

The smartypantses at Beliefnet have a “House of Worship Locator” with links to search engines for dozens of religious traditions — eastern and western — to help you find pretty much kind of spiritual experience you could imagine.

And here are a few other creed-specific sites:

*Find A Church.com

*Parishes Online

*Islamic City

*MyJewishLearning.com

*Tricycle Magazine’s Dharma Search

5) So now you have no excuse. Go worship somewhere.
And if you don’t want to leave the climate-controlled cocoon of your home and/or office, worship online. Lots of churches broadcast — and increasingly, podcast — their services.

6) Spend some time with the Man in Black

If you’re in the mood for some old-time religion, some Gospel in the best way possible, some straight-talking, hard-loving, angel-wrestling, chair-swinging experience, take the time to listen to the 49 tracks on “Personal File,” the posthumous album by Johnny Cash released a few weeks back.

Entirely enchanting and thoroughly moving at times, the album is a collection of recordings Cash made mostly in 1973 at his home studio. Just the man and his guitar. Talking about life and struggles and love and God. There are gospel and old country classics, some originals and the mournful Irish ballad (after which my mother named me), “I’ll Take You Home Again Kathleen.”

A pastor friend of mine says he’d believe in heaven just for the “Johnny Cash factor” alone because he’d finally get to meet the Man in Black.

Spending a couple hours listening to Cash talk and sing is better than church for some of us.

7) Bust a gut with the “Laughing Yogi”

Last but not least, if you want to get your blood pumping and your chakras unclogged while having a gut-twisting laugh in the process, Google “laughing yogi” and watch the video clip on one of the hundreds of sites it will invariably turn up of the orange-satin clad yogi explaining what “laughing yoga” is and then demonstrating in a bit of footage I defy you not to forward to everyone you know.

The fellow who laughs maniacally while chanting that “I’m so happy,” and waving his arms about his head, is Mahatma Anand Guru Yogi Ramesh, the self proclaimed “celebrity yogi” and founder of the Universal Temple of Yoga and Inner Peace in Paramount, Calif.

To learn more about laughter yoga — it’s a real thing, promise — visit Universal Yoga.

I know you’re trying not to get sweaty, but look busy.
There’s always a chance the boss might come back early from vacation.