Daily Contemplative Pauses Readings
from last week
Sunday, March 31st with Catherine
Reading: "But Mary stayed outside the tomb weeping. And as she wept, she bent over into the tomb and saw two angels in white sitting there, one at the head and one at the feet where the body of Jesus had been. And they said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken my Lord, and I don’t know where they laid him.”
When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus there, but did not know it was Jesus.
Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” She thought it was the gardener and said to him, “Sir, if you carried him away, tell me where you laid him, and I will take him.”
Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni,”* which means Teacher.
Jesus said to her, “Stop holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
Mary of Magdala went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and what he told her." — John 20:11-17
Monday, April 1st with Tom
Reading: “Christianity was literally founded in the second body, by second bodies on fire and fully animated with the light of truth and truth of lightness that they received from their Risen Lord during those forty days. The Kingdom of Heaven, altering the world’s causality “from within” by the very force of its higher coherence and potency. Each of you also has a nascent second body—in many of you much farther developed than you are comfortable admitting. I know, I know, it sounds conceited and misguided, like claiming to be “permanently enlightened.” But it’s actually way simpler and more humble than that and, god knows, more serviceable. We are INTENDED to be well acclimated to it by the time we’re rounding toward the second half of life, and it is through this body—and only through this body—that the real causal energies—faith, hope, love, gentleness, joy, peace, courage, conscience, compassion, integrity, forgiveness—enter and change our world.” — Cynthia Bourgeault
Chant: Holy, Holy, Holy is God’s name (from J.M. Talbott song on the Magnificat)
Tuesday, April 2nd with Chris
Reading:
I am, you anxious one.
Don't you sense me, ready to break
into being at your touch?
My murmurings surround you like shadowy wings.
Can't you see me standing before you
cloaked in stillness?
Hasn't my longing opened in you
from the beginning
as fruit opens on a branch?
I am the dream you are dreaming.
When you want to awaken, I am that wanting:
I grow strong in the beauty you behold.
And with the silence of stars I enfold
your cities made by time.
— Rainer Maria Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God trans by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy, p.66
Chant:
Come to know the One in the Presence before you,
And everything hidden, all will be revealed.
Come to know the One in the Presence within you,
And everything hidden, all will be revealed.
Wednesday, April 3rd with Heather
Reading: "Before the coming of the Anointed One, no bread from paradise—that place where Adam had first been created—existed in this world. There were all manner of plants for the nourishment of the wild creatures, but there was no wheat for humanity who had only the food provided for all the rest. But when the Anointed came as the Completed Human, he brought bread from heaven so that humanity could be nourished with its own true food. The authorities imagined, of course, that it was through their own force of will they had provided it. Yet all along in secret it was the Sacred Spirit who had been energizing everything in whatever manner she desired. So then truth from its very beginning has been scattered everywhere. Many have watched it being sown, but few who have seen it have reaped it." — Analogue Eight, Gospel of Philip from The Luminous Gospels, trans. Ward J. Bauman
Chant: spirit of truth open my mind, soul of wisdom open my heart
Thursday, April 4th with Heather
Reading: "We seldom notice how each day is a holy place where the Eucharist of the ordinary happens." — John O'Donahue
"Wanderers Welcome" by Alfred LaMotte
Out beyond ChristianityMagdalene and Jesus are dancingin a garden where things grow wild,where things grow into what they are.Many paths lead here, not one,and the gates are always open.Over each gate there's a sign:'Wanderers Welcome.'Mary thinks Jesus is the gardener,and he is.They drink the wine that turnstemples into bodies again.She reaches out to take his hand:he lets her.There are three rules here:Yearn, Risk Everything, Connect.
Chant: Mercy
Friday, April 5th with Heather
Reading: "If we really understood what is at stake in this season-and what is spiritually possible during these exquisitely turbo-charged days-fasting would be a small enough price to pay. The window of opportunity is fairly narrow, but the opportunity itself is boundless.
Let me back up a bit and explain about fasting. A fast is not about penitence and beating up on yourself. That's a very medieval attitude that totally distorts the meaning of fasting. A fast is really training-exactly like athletic training—so that our whole embodied being can be tuned up to support a spiritual aim we wish to achieve. In the case of Eastertide, what's at stake-the aim we are striving for is our physical capacity to be available to truth at a subtle and much more intense level. Remember how Jesus, immediately after his baptism in the River Jordan, went into the desert for forty days of fasting? This was not a time of penitence and renunciation. He was actually "leaning out" his nourishment at the physical level so that his heart would be able to listen more deeply and his subtle energetic body might feast directly on the flesh and blood of the divine Word stirring to life within him.' He was fine-tuning his instrument so that he would be able to catch the more subtle drift of what was awaiting him up ahead.
I believe firmly that during these great fifty days of Easter, that same invitation is extended to each one of us: to catch the drift of what Jesus is really inviting us to and to deepen our capacity to receive the intense spiritual energy available to us during this sacred season as a catapult to our own transformation-rather than merely sloughing it off in partying and business as usual." — Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus, p. 126
Chant: We swim in Mercy as in an endless sea
Saturday, April 6th with Angela
Reading: "All disguises, illusions and false perceptions of ourselves and others and of God are spun by the ego. The ego is like a prism. The light of reality passes through it and is refracted. The shaft of pure light is split up into component parts and deflected from its true course. Meditation dissolves the prism. It reunites the fragmented pure beam of light. It enables us to enjoy the gift of our being without shame and fear, as a whole. It enables us, as sheer gift, to be wholly open to the wonder of God's oneness."
— John Main, Door to Silence: An Anthology for Christian Meditation
Sunday, April 7th with Heather