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

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