We continue leaning into the mysteries and invitations of this Easter Time thin season in which we are working to, as Cynthia Bourgeault suggests, “acknowledge, explore, and live out of our second or kesdjan body." This second body can also be known as our imaginal realm/world 24 or Queen/King/Kin-dom of Heaven body. As we attempt to live out this invitation, we can continue to build the relationship between this body and our first or earthly/human/creaturely body.
We know by now that there is always, already a place within us that is rooted beyond our first body. We know this place. We may have dropped into it consciously or it has dropped into our awareness in a moment of pure gift. Our second body is right there within our first body and vice versa. Thus, there is a consciously loving relationship available between them within the ecosystem of our Whole self.
This week we might consider cultivating and practicing conscious love and relating within this internal ecosystem. We might begin to notice the climate of relating within. Specifically, noticing the ways our first body relates with our second body and how our second body relates with our first. We can allow there to be mutual recognition, forgiveness, care, tenderness, mercy, appreciation, truth, courage, trust, patience, and/or any other spiritual substances that may need to be exchanged between them so that those substances fill the atmosphere of our ecosystem nourishing both bodies. We can discover, as we grow our relationship between these bodies, that they can be partners rather than at odds with each other. This conscious loving relationship within can allow our Whole Self to work from a place that is steadier, more flexible, and more real more and more often.
Eastertide Love,
Heather
Daily Contemplative Pauses Readings
from last week
Sunday, April 7th with Heather
Chant: I have come into this world to see this, there is only one flesh to wound; Holy heart of love, Yeshua have mercy (by Epiphany Today)
Monday, April 8th with Heather
Reading: “To live the spiritual life means to give up personal sense and come into the understanding that we have no life of our own, but that that life which is ours is really God’s life expressed as our individual life or experience.” — Joel Goldsmith
Chant: I am a hole in the flute that the Christ's breath moves through listen to this music (words of Hafiz)
Tuesday, April 9th with Heather
Reading: “This is a living world; life is alive, and as expressions of life we, too, are alive and sustained by the characteristic vitality of life itself. God is the source of the vitality, the life, of all living things.
[God’s] energy is available to plants, to animals, and to our own bodies if the conditions are met. Life is a responsible activity. What is true for our bodies is also true for mind and spirit. At these levels God is immediately available to us if the door is opened to [God]. The door is opened by yielding to [God] that nerve center where we feel consent or the withholding of it most centrally. Thus, if a [person] makes [their] deliberate self-conscious intention the offering to God of [their] central consent and obedience, then [the person] becomes energized by the living Spirit of the living God.” — Howard Thurman
Chant: the soul ever dwells in the presence of the Holy One (by Pauletter Meier)
Wednesday, April 10th with Heather
Reading: “Who am I? It is a commonplace that each of us seems to have many selves. Of the numerous encounters the Master had with individuals, none is more dramatic than his meeting with a certain madman, who stood staring at Him out of eyes that reflected the agonizing turmoil within. From his wrists dangled broken chains. He was regarded by his community as possessed by devils; there were times when he became so violent that, as a measure of collective defense, he was seized and chained to rocks. Even then he could not be restrained when the turbulence within him leaped into muscle, bone, and sinew. The chains burst with the pressure and he would go shrieking through the waste places like a wounded animal. This was the creature who faced the Master. He cried out to be let alone. And with gentleness, tenderness, and vast compassion, soft words issued from the mouth of Jesus: "What is your name? Who are you?" And the whole dam broke, and he cried, "My name is Legion!" He might have said: "This is the pit of my agony. There are so many of me, and they riot in my street. If only I could know who I am—which one is me then I would be whole again. I would have a center, a self, a rallying point deep within me for all the chaos, until at last the chaos would become order."
Fundamental, then, to any experience of commitment is the yielding of the real citadel. It must be said again that the process may be slow and devious. Within us all are so many claims and counterclaims that to honor the true self is not easy.” — Howard Thurman
Thursday, April 11th with Faye
Reading: "Yes" by William Stafford
It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.Or sunshine, love, salvation.
It could, you know. That’s why we wake
and look out – no guarantees
in this life.
But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.
William Stafford's Last Poem:
You can’t tell when strange things with meaning
will happen. I’m [still] here writing it down
just the way it was. “You don’t have to
prove anything,” my mother said. “Just be ready
for what God sends.” I listened and put my hand
out in the sun again. It was all easy.
Chant: Be right here, in the heart of God (by Henry Schoenfield)
Saturday, April 13th with Lacey
Reading: "When I was in the monastery, the whole monastic life was carefully designed to protect us from distractions and enable us to experience God. But the world we live in isn’t like that, so we have to create a contemplative culture in our heart. We must vow to ourselves: I will not play the cynic. I will not break faith with my awakened heart. I know that in my most childlike hour, the cutting edge of the pain, the sweetness of the glance, the smell of the flower, I was graced by what transcends and permeates every moment of my life.
Therefore, we want to set aside a quiet time of availability to this. We have to stay with it. We have to be patient and be calm. We have to be receptively open to this way of being. And at the end of each rendezvous with the deeper place, we ask for the grace not to break the thread of that sensitivity as we go through the rest of our day. Although the thread breaks many times from our end, it never breaks from God’s end…."
— James Finley
Chant: I am here, Here I am, Let it be
Sunday, April 14 with Lacey
Reading: "Millennium Blessing" by Stephen Levine
There is a grace approaching
that we shun as much as death,
it is the completion of our birth.
It does not come in time,
but in timelessness
when the mind sinks into the heart
and we remember.
It is insistent grace that draws us
to the edge and beckons us surrender
safe territory and enter our enormity.
We know we must pass
beyond knowing
and fear the shedding.
But we are pulled upward
none-the-less
through forgotten ghosts
and unexpected angels,
luminous.
And there is nothing left to say
but we are That.
And that is what we sing about.
Chant: Be right here, in the Heart of God (by Henry Schoenfield)