Good day good people,
I trust we are finding our way with creating sun in ourselves. As we continue with this aim of taking up an apprenticeship of the spiritual fruit (virtue, energy, substance, nutrient, element) we have chosen, Cynthia Bourgeault says that one of the ways we can do this is by conscious absorption. Conscious absorption, the process or action by which one thing absorbs or is absorbed by another, happens through ingesting and/or soaking in the presence of this spiritual nutrient.
How might we continue to feed ourselves this nourishing fruit, allowing our creaturely body as well as our more subtle imaginal body to digest it, taking the sustenance into our bloodstream and every cell? Together let us practice becoming sponges absorbing these element, drawing in the fortifying qualities into our Whole being and retaining them within our own structures. Not only this, but we can offer this good food to those we come into contact and interact with this season.
With love and trust,
Heather
Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses
Monday, November 18th with Joy
Reading: “There is no refuge from suffering: there's no place so innocent, there's no place so pure, there's no place so well ordered, there's no place so controlled. .. Suffering can, and eventually will find you. Including death finding you. So, there is no refuge from suffering, but the great insight is, is that suffering has no refuge from a deathless love that permeates the suffering unexplainably and all pervasively in all directions. So, there's this strange kind of alchemy, a kind of an intermingling of a love that utterly transcends even as it utterly permeates the intimate details of our suffering, so God's understood then as this presence that protects us from nothing, even as we're unexplainably sustained in all things, which is the peace that surpasses understanding...
“I think for all of us, we've all had fleeting moments where we've experienced this -- there's a moment, it can be very intense or very subtle. It comes in all kinds of ways. It is a moment of resting, and God resting in us. And in that moment, like, "What a fool I am to worry so, the way I sometimes do." It's … the realization that God is infinite presence that's pouring itself out, giving itself away, or presencing itself in and as our very presence. In and as the presence of others and of all things. And we momentarily rest, being intimately accessed by this all-pervasive oneness we could not explain.” — James Finley, excerpts from On Finding Peace in a Troubled World (CAC transcript)
Chant: Whether I live or die, I am the Lord’s (by Susan Latimer)
Tuesday, November 19th with Joy
Reading: “But the promise contemplative prayer makes is that if you show up, things will start to change. Not in the way you expect, of course, but change they will. That "thing" you embraced when you stopped fleeing will begin to quicken within you. And while everybody's journey is different, the general direction—as those contemplative elders made clear—is that rather than pulling you out of life, it will deposit you back in the midst of it, with a soft and warm heart and a deepening sense of wonder.
“The goal of contemplative life is unitive seeing: not so much "union with God" understood as wanting God to the exclusion of all else, but rather, gradually coming to realize that really, there is nothing that is not God. God is the higher and the lower, the dots and the spaces between the dots; nothing can fall out of God, and all is tenderly and joyously held. To see this is to behold the Kingdom here and now and to be in constantly renewed immediacy with the source of your own true abundance. The goal of the contemplative life, then, is to make "beautiful Christians": those with the insight and the inner flexibility to flow into life in any and all circumstances knowing that the fountainhead is love.” — Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening
Chant: We are held in love, we are one in love (by Joy Andrews Hayter)
Wednesday, November 20th with Joy
Reading: “Cynthia Bourgeault calls the realm closest to us, perhaps also called the Kingdom of Heaven, the imaginal realm. This term is not the same as imaginary. She says, of the imaginal realm:
The imaginal realm is collective and evolutionary; its ultimate purpose is to guide, shape, nourish, and, where necessary, offer course corrections to our entire planetary and interplanetary unfolding. …
Therefore, it is also and primarily supremely the realm of cosmic assistance. It is the “place” from which saints, teachers, masters, and all manner of abler souls reach out across the apparent divide between the worlds to support or where necessary modify earthly outcomes in tandem with willing and attuned hearts here below. (C Bourgeault, The Eye of the Heart)
“Willing and attuned hearts—these can be ours! We are not alone, we are partnered by realms of wholeness and support present with us, right here and now. This world — the visible and Newtonian as well as the invisible and hyper-relational — points to a vast, even playful signature of a loving, creative universe. And the confluence of the visible and invisible, the possibility of infinity and wholeness, lies within and around us. Where else would it be, in a highly relational, interwoven cosmic web? And this connection is not created by anything we do, and cannot be broken.” — Joy Andrews Hayter, The Cosmic Web: Hope For Our World Through Spirituality and Science
Chant: Willing and Attuned Hearts (by Joy Andrews Hayter)
Our willing and attuned hearts
Join with yours
Off’ring fruits of mercy
Love abounds
Joy abounds
Peace abounds
And Patience
Kindness
Goodness
Faithfulness
Gentleness
Self-control
Thursday, November 21st with Lacey
Reading: "...in true spiritual surrender, we must give ourselves in fullness; we must give all of ourselves, including our capacities to judge, discriminate, plan, decide, and act. Any surrender that offers only a passive shell or a limp body will always be partial. The paradox of spiritual surrender is that in giving oneself fully, one finds not passivity but intimate involvement, not restrictiveness but endless freedom, not blameless quietude but the deepest possible sense of responsibility. This understanding is reflected in the contemplative observation that as people progress in the spiritual life they become increasingly aware of their own weakness, fallibilities, and sinfulness. Their ability to "determine" God's will, which initially may have seemed rather blithe and straightforward, becomes more mysterious and more painfully delicate. To maintain an awareness of responsibility in the atmosphere of "not-knowing" is no easy thing. Yet this is what is called for in true surrender." — Gerald May, Will and Spirit
Chant: Attend to the living presence, here and now (by Darlene Franz)
November 22nd with Lacey
Reading: I am blooming as a flower,
I am fresh as the dew,
I am solid as a mountain,
I am firm as the Earth.
I am free.
Breathing in, breathing out,
I am water reflecting what
is real, what is true;
And I feel there is space
deep inside of me. I am free.
Chant: Attend to the living presence, here and now (by Darlene Franz)
Saturday, November 23rd with Catherine
Reading: “In times of turmoil and danger, gratitude helps to steady and ground us. It brings us into presence, and our full presence is perhaps the best offering we can make to our world.” — Joanna Macy
A Gratitude Practice by Colette Lafia
Allow your eyes to move around the space you’re in right now
and notice a person, place or thing
that fills you with gratitude
invite your eyes to settle on what you are drawn to
and with intention
breathe in gratitude for its presence in your life
notice what grateful seeing feels like
in your whole being (mind, body, emotions)
let yourself be filled
with the energy of gratefulness
for the gift of that person, place, or thing
in your life
breathe in gratitude,
and breathe out gratitude,
letting the presence of gratitude grow
within you and all around you
Chant: Come to know the one in the presence before you, and everything hidden, all will be revealed (by Darlene Franz)
Sunday, November 24th with Catherine
Reading: “But have you ever thought about gratitude not as a response but as a force in its own right; an initiating and healing energy that is not dependent on external circumstances but is rather an innate power of the human soul?
“Yes, it’s easy to be grateful when something good has been done for you (although, sadly, even this healthy human response seems increasingly under challenge nowadays in our escalating culture of entitlement and victimhood). But have you ever thought about gratitude not as a response but as a force in its own right; an initiating and healing energy that is not dependent on external circumstances but is rather an innate power of the human soul? When understood and wielded in this fashion, it has the power to liberate us from our self-imposed prisons of self-pity and envy and to actually change the energy fields (and hence, the outcome) of our circumstances.
“In plain words, we can actually change our reality by being grateful first; not as a response but as an innate way of being.” — Cynthia Bourgeault, How to Feel Truly Grateful
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