Readings week of April 6th.

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses

*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*

Monday, April 6th

Reading: “Everyone who begins to study and know their own states is well aware that our experience is a constant dying and rebirth. We must not be frightened as we come to see this, although it really is a terrifying thing that we have no power to keep hold of our own life; that it has to be renewed or given back to us by something that does not come from ourselves.

But even when we do see the helplessness with which we fall into oblivion, at that moment when we are most trying to hold onto ourselves, we must learn to trust that there is something that calls us back, and will call us back. And if it calls us back from sleep at night. it will call us back from that other sleep into which we shall enter, the sleep of death.”

— J. G. Bennett, Resurrection

Chant: Whether I live, whether I die, I am the Lord’s  — Alana Levandoski

Tuesday, April 7th

Reading: “I have insisted that when we make sacrifices we must not look for a return. This does not mean that there are no results or that one cannot recognise them. The fruit of sacrifice is freedom. Freedom is a very wonderful state of existence, for it is no less than the possibility of a creative act. True freedom is so rare in our human experience that few people can even recognize its taste. When we are free we are master of the present moment: we are not tied by the consequences of the past or controlled by influences outside ourselves. Freedom is almost the most precious thing in life: but the word has been so misused and so debased in its meaning that we take freedom to mean being without external constraints. The state of the world today gives the lie to any such definition of freedom.

No one is free who is not inwardly free and this inner freedom comes in the moment of sacrifice. As our sacrifices are only partial sacrifices - that is involving the attachment of only a part of ourselves - the inner freedom we can get does not last long. But so long as it lasts it is unmistakable.” — JG Bennett, Transformation, p. 43

Chant: Be right here, in the Heart of God  — Henry Schoenfield

Wednesday, April 8th

Reading: “In a time of drastic change one can be too preoccupied with what is ending or too obsessed with what seems to be beginning. In either case one loses touch with the present and with its obscure but dynamic possibilities. What really matters is openness, readiness, attention, courage to face risk. You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going.

“What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope. In such an event, courage is the authentic form taken by love.” — Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

Chant: I am Present to the Presence, it is my only care, I am held by the Presence, the fountain of creative love — Kristy Christian

Thursday, April 9th 

Reading: “There are these small, quiet moments in a day when nothing is actually wrong. And yet, the mind often scrambles to fill the space — opening apps, checking messages, gaming, solving problems that don’t exist, hunting for something to fix or figure out. We reach for distractions almost automatically, as if stillness itself is a problem that needs managing.

But what if nothing is wrong?

What if there’s truly nothing to do, nothing to improve, nothing to know?

Imagine developing a relationship with “nothing.” Getting intimate with those pauses where the mind naturally settles, where life is simply happening without our interference. Many of us have an almost allergic reaction to “nothing” – to ease — as if calm, spaciousness, or quiet is somehow suspicious.

Still, what would it be like to rest in stillness when nothing is wrong?

This isn’t an invitation to deny the conditions of the world — there’s plenty happening that deserves our care and attention, and these times are undeniably challenging. But even in a hard world, our inner landscape is not constantly in crisis. Over 24 hours, there are countless micro-moments when life is not demanding anything from us.

I invite you to savor those moments.

Take a breath.

Relax your grip.

Soften into stillness, the simple presence of nothing being wrong.

If you let yourself enjoy that, even for a breath or two, it may become a resource — a place of preference — one you can return to even when things do go wrong.” — Ruth King

Chant: Just be here, let go be here, keep within, within your heart, just be here, let go be here, keep within, within God’s heart  — Heather Ruce

Friday, April 10th 

Reading: "The pillars that held up the usual are trembling under its weight. 

As the fires rage, we will not just need to fetch water, we will have to become water. We will not merely claim sanctuary, we will make sanctuary. We will braid with the threads of temporalities that do not travel forward…

We will host grief as an ally, our tears as regal emissaries of a world that exceeds clarity, and our falling to the ground as an invitation to listen to its forlorn music. 

Our raft-making won't stop the fires from flaring up, but it may teach us how to sit with the heat without burning away. Only then, at the threshold… will we realize that the world was never ours to fix, only to feel. That the trembling was not a sign of failure, but of fermentation. That the end of the usual is not catastrophe, but a stranger choreography where every collapse composes a new rhythm, a fugitive score for those willing to dance offbeat.

At that threshold… we might re-member how to dwell in undoing. How to speak without anchoring in mastery. How to love without arriving. And how to co-compose with the broken, the spored, the singed, and the strange.

There, we won’t rebuild what was lost. We’ll compost it. We'll make meals with the confetti once reserved to decorate the victories we imagined were exclusively important. 

We won’t find the future. We’ll feel for it, barefoot, with stories for soles.

And maybe, just maybe, in the midst of smoke and myth, we’ll learn that sanctuary is not a place, but a practice, a way to become-with a world that is never not broken.”

— Báyò Akomolafe

Chant: Speak through the earthquake the wind and the fire, oh still small voice of love 

— Darlene Franz

Saturday, April 11 with Tom

Reading: James Finley on The Heart Sutra

"With meditation, breath by breath, we dissolve the illusion that we’re separate from infinite Love." — James Finley 

"To say that emptiness is nothing other than the phenomenal world can be translated into Christian terms by saying that the phenomenal world is absolutely empty of anything other than the infinite love of God and the infinite love of God is absolutely empty of anything other than the phenomenal world. That the generosity of God is that God gives herself infinitely, utterly, and completely in and as the intimate texture of our bodies, our minds, and our hearts. To push the paradox here, God's infinite love is absolutely empty of being in anyway other than our worst moments of tragic pain, anyway other than the moments of our greatest foolishness, anyway other than the moments in which everything seemed lost, moments in which we found ourselves in the midst of things we knew we shouldn't have been in the midst of, things which cause pain to us and perhaps cause pain to other people . . . The oceanic fullness of the very reality of God is absolutely empty of being in any way other than that."

"We used to imagine that our foolishness, our infidelity, our brokenness were obstacles to the union we long for. But where are we to go when we discover that this very brokenness, this very weakness, this very infidelity is that which God has eternally fallen in love with? Infinite Love goes forth and merges with, becomes one with, sharing perfectly in that brokenness with us, revealing to us how invincibly whole we are in our fragmentation, how invincibly precious we are in all our wayward ways."

[Every-thing is a doorway to an Infinite Love Waiting for our return. The reason poverty is so helpful is that we are finally able to experience our original and continual need.]

"The task is to not rise above [our struggle and suffering] while [at the same time] still doing the best I can to rise above [how we struggle and keep ourselves and others suffering]."

"The meaning of my life is not resolved in any way whatsoever by the extent to which I succeed in these efforts. Rather the meaning of my life is found in the discovery of the absolute irrelevancy of the contingencies of my efforts. Knowing that regardless of how it goes, regardless of how it unfolds, God is right there perfectly, invincibly, and utterly abandoned over and given to me in and as the intimate texture of my own journey, my own beating heart, my own life." — James Finley 

Chant: Mercy, Mercy, Mercy, deep within and all around  — Henry Schoenfield

Sunday, April 12th with Tom

Reading: On the evening of that first day of the week,

when the doors were locked, where the disciples were,

for fear of the Jews,

Jesus came and stood in their midst

and said to them, “Peace be with you.”

When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.

The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.

Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.

As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,

“Receive the Holy Spirit.” (John 20: 19-23)

Now is the time to know

That all that you do is sacred.

 Now, why not consider A lasting truce with yourself and God.

 Now is the time to understand That all your ideas of right and wrong Were just a child's training wheels To be laid aside When you finally live With veracity And love.

 Hafiz is a divine envoy Whom the Beloved Has written a holy message upon.

 My dear, please tell me, Why do you still Throw sticks at your heart And God?

 What is it in that sweet voice inside That incites you to fear?

 Now is the time for the world to know That every thought and action is sacred.

 This is the time For you to compute the impossibility That there is anything But Grace.

 Now is the season to know That everything you do Is sacred. — Hafiz

Chant: Peace, Salaam, Shalom

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