Readings week of August 24th.

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses

*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*

Monday, August 24th

Reading: “Impressionistically, the imaginal penetrates this denser world in much the same way as the fragrance of perfume penetrates an entire room, subtly enlivening and harmonizing. . . The imaginal is the quality of aliveness moving through this realm, interpenetrating, cohering, filling things with the fragrance of implicit meaning whose lines do not converge in this world alone but at a point beyond. 

As the Gospel of Thomas describes it:

I am the light shining upon all things,

I am the sum of everything, for from me, 

Everything has come, and toward me

Everything returns. Pick up a stone and there I am, 

split a piece of wood and you will find me there.”

— Cynthia Bourgeault, Eye of the Heart, p.18

Chant: Return again, return again, return to the [Realm of your Heart].

— Adapted from chant by Shlomo Carlebach, sung by Cantor Azi Schwartz of Park Avenue Synagogue

Tuesday, August 25th 

Reading: “Rest is the conversation between what we love to do and how we love to be. Rest is the essence of giving and receiving; an act of remembering, imaginatively and intellectually, but also psychologically and physically. To rest is to give up on the already exhausted will as the prime motivator of endeavour, with its endless outward need to reward itself through established goals. To rest is to give up on worrying and fretting, and the sense that there is something wrong with the world unless we are there to put it right; to rest is to fall back, literally or figuratively, from outer targets and shift the goal not to an inner, static bull’s eye, an imagined state of perfect stillness, but to an inner state of natural exchange.”

— David Whyte, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words

Chant: Come be with me, all you who carry heavy burdens, I will give you rest, I will give you rest  — Colleen Thomas  

Wednesday, August 26th with Tom

Chant: I Am, I Am Yours, I Am Yours whether I live or die — Michael Sciretti Jr.

Thursday, August 27th

Reading: “The template of rest is the natural exchange of the body breathing, the autonomic giving and receiving that forms the basis and the measure of life itself. We are rested when we are a living exchange between what lies inside and what lies outside, when we are an intriguing conversation between the potential that lies in our imagination and the possibilities for making that internal image real in the world; we are rested when we let things alone and let ourselves alone, to do what we do best, breathe as the body intended us to breathe, to walk as we were meant to walk, to live with the rhythm of a house and a home, giving and taking through cooking and cleaning. When we give and take in an easy, foundational way, we are closest to the authentic self, and closest to that authentic self when we are most rested. To rest is not self-indulgent; to rest is to prepare to give the best of ourselves, and to perhaps, most importantly, arrive at a place where we are able to understand what we have already been given.”

— David Whyte, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words

Chant: Come to me, you heavy burdened ones, and I will give you rest 

— Henry Schoenfield

Friday, August 28th

Reading: “In the first state of rest is the sense of stopping, of giving up on what we have been doing or how we have been being. In the second is the sense of slowly coming home, the physical journey into the body’s un-coerced and un-bullied self, as if trying to remember the way or even the destination itself. In the third state is a sense of healing and self-forgiveness and of arrival. In the fourth state, deep in the primal exchange of the breath, is the give and the take, the blessing and the being blessed, and the ability to delight in both. The fifth stage is a sense of absolute readiness and presence, a delight in and an anticipation of the world and all its forms; a sense of being the meeting itself between inner and outer, and that receiving and responding occur in one spontaneous movement.”

— David Whyte, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words

Chant: Come be with me, all you who carry heavy burdens, I will give you rest, I will give you rest  — Colleen Thomas

Saturday, August 29th with LeMel

Reading: Flute Playing

It is time to be silent and listen

so that the Giver of Speech may speak.

It is time to be silent and listen

so that we can hear God calling us all secretly in the night.

For in each lover’s heart there is a flute playing.

Its song is the melody of longing,

and even if that lover looks a little crazy,

that’s only because most ears are not tuned

to the music by which the lover dances.

— Rumi

Chant:

Listen to the heart’s flute

Playing longing’s melody

For You. Only for You.

— LeMel Firestone-Palerm

Sunday, August 30th 

Reading: “A deep experience of rest is the template of perfection in the human imagination, a perspective from which we are able to perceive the outer specific forms of our work and our relationships whilst being nourished by the shared foundational gift of the breath itself. From this perspective we can be rested while putting together an elaborate meal for an arriving crowd, whilst climbing the highest mountain or sitting at home surrounded by the chaos of a loving family.

“Rested, we are ready for the world but not held hostage by it; rested, we care again for the right things and the right people in the right way. In rest we re-establish the goals that make us more generous, more courageous, more of an invitation, someone we want to remember, and someone others would want to remember too.”

— David Whyte, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words

Chant: In love alone, I take my rest, I dwell, unafraid. In love alone, we take our rest, we dwell, unafraid  — Kirsty Christian

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