Our ongoing call.

Good day, dear ones,

Our ongoing task right now—to use the language of Cynthia Bourgeault—is to attune and stay anchored within our hearts. It is by way of our attuned hearts that we see differently, beyond the limits of our ordinary creature eyes. The heart, she says, is "the instruments of recognition," our "inner homing beacon" (The Wisdom Jesus, p.130). When we have located and keep within this inner beacon—this navigational system—we acquire the competence to recognize the unmanifest and latent Origin groping to come into form in each moment. We perceive the movement of and requirements for reciprocal feeding and maintenance along the entire ray of creation, the many "mansions" that are"interpenetrating and mutually permeable by love" (p.133). 

If we are to offer ourselves as cosmic servants—cosmic meaning the entire universe considered as a unified whole, encompassing all objects, phenomena, and processes—then our responsibility is to continually tune these instruments of recognition, our hearts. This allows us to read the subtle conditions of the moment with clarity and metis. And we must remember that we too have had a hand in shaping the waters we now navigate.

Like all instruments, our hearts require care. They must be tended to, cleaned, and regularly tuned to remain in good working condition, trustworthy, and effective. And, of course, every heart is unique, requiring a kind of care that honors its particular needs. Right now, if you pause and listen inwardly—how is your heart? What rhythms of life, practices, relationships, and Wisdom teachings are supporting you in tending to your inner homing beacon as well as staying anchored within it?

Let us do this work together—caring, tending, cleaning, and tuning—so that our hearts, as One Heart, may recognize and participate in the emergence of Origin, and the reciprocal feeding and maintenance along the ray of creation.

With Great Love,

Heather

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Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses

*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*

Monday, April 28th with Heather

Reading: "The wisdom walk with Jesus is at every step of the way a recognition drama. At each new level of subtlety something in us must be able to see, to find our way to who  he is now. So in these instances where there is difficulty recognizing him, Jesus is in fact holding the mirror before his friends to show them what stands in their way, what they will have to look at and work through in themselves in order to be able to see him through the light of their own hearts. Indeed, this seems actually to be the main purpose of sojourn among them. He has to take them through this drama of recognition yet one more time so that they will know beyond a shadow of doubt how to find him from the inside, how to recognize him hereafter and in all times and places when his fleshly appearance becomes yet more subtle.” — Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus, p. 129

Tuesday, April 29, with Chris

Reading: 11 But Mary stayed outside the tomb weeping. And as she wept, she bent over into the tomb 12 and saw two angels in white sitting there, one at the head and one at the feet where the body of Jesus had been. 13 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.” 

14 When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus there, but did not know it was Jesus. 15 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.” 

16 Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni,” which means Teacher. 

17 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.’” 

18 Mary of Magdala went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and what he told her. — John 20:11-18 New American Bible (Revised Edition)

Chant: Keep within. And when they say, ‘Look here or look there is Christ, go not forth, for Christ is within you. And those who try to draw your minds away from the teaching inside you, are opposed to Christ. For the measure’s within, and the light of God is within, and the pearl is within, though hidden. (by Paulette Meier)

Wednesday, April 30th with Chris

Reading: "On Peace" by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Let me learn this quiet art

of being still in a room alone.

There is so much I cannot do

to help the world,

but this—

let me learn to metabolize

silence as the alga in lichen

metabolizes light. Let me learn

to root and grow

in the sparest of places

as the fungus of lichen attaches

to the barest of rocks.

Let me learn to let the vastly different

kingdoms of myself serve each other

instead of warring,

the way alga and fungus

live together in lichen,

a symbiosis so stable we see

the two as one. This is how

I come to believe it is possible.

I have been sitting with lichen.

The quietest of sermons.

I cannot stop listening.

Chant: draw me/us deeper into silence, draw me/us deeper into you

Thursday, May 1st with Tom

Reading: "The reason why you don't see yourselves is that you take what you know as fixed and final. You think you know. You are certain you know what is good and bad. It is not merely your vanity that makes you think you know, but also your ignorance. From the standpoint of Higher Man we are all ridiculous, just like monkeys.

When you come in touch with this Work, you should begin, if you feel the Work, to realize gradually that you do not know and that you need to unknow.

If a person really felt he or she knew nothing, could he or she ever object to anything? But are not all of you continually objecting, finding fault, judging people, condemning people, and so on?

How marvellous it is when a person begins to unknow a little and not always know! How marvellous it is when a man or woman changes, becomes softer, quieter. How marvellous not to have to be what you think you are, to keep up this False Personality, this pseudo self! How extraordinary it is to move towards Real I, which is only moved towards by actual separation from false things in yourself, one by one." — Maurice Nicoll, "Unknowing” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 5, p. 1758-9)

Chant:  Open my eyes … Open my heart … Open our lives, etc.

Friday, May 2nd with Tom

Chant: Come to know the one in the presence before you, and everything hidden, all will be revealed (by Darlene Franz)

Saturday, May 3rd with Tom

Reading: "Open Yourself to the Radiance" from Meister Eckhart’s Book of Darkness and Light by Sweeney and Burrows, p. 165

So, you wish to know God? Look deep within

for the little spark that ever burns in your soul;

refuse what is outside of you, and open yourself

to the radiance of that inner spark.

Focus all your attention on that little spark,

which will be satisfied with nothing but God

and refuses simply to learn about God; if this

is startling to you, how much more astonishing

it is to realize that the radiant light within you

won't be satisfied with what God is toward you.

That inner light insists on knowing where God

comes from. Where is that? Look into the depths,

all the way to the simple ground, the still desert,

where all you think about God counts as nothing

and where everything is finally nothing but God.

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