Readings week of January 12th.
- Linda Lueng
- Jan 18
- 5 min read
Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses
*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*
Monday, January 12th with Tom
Reading: The Courage To Fully See
From Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life
Maybe, for the time being, we have to accept the many fluctuations between knowing and not knowing, seeing and not seeing, feeling and not feeling, between days in which the whole world seems like a rose garden and days in which our hearts seem tied to a millstone, between moments of ecstatic joy and moments of gloomy depression, between the humble confession that the newspaper holds more than our souls can bear and the realization that it is only through facing up to the reality of our world that we can grow into our own responsibility.
Maybe we have to be tolerant toward our own avoidances and denial in the conviction that we cannot force ourselves to face what we are not ready to respond to, and in the hope that in one future day we will have the courage and strength to open our eyes fully and see without being destroyed.
All this might be the case, as long as we remember that there is no hope in denial or avoidance, neither for ourselves, nor for anyone else, and that new life can only be born out of the seed planted in crushed soil. Indeed God, our Lord, "will not scorn this crushed and broken heart" (Psalm 51:17).
Tuesday, January 13th with Tom
Reading: Humid
By Steve Garnaas-Holmes
By sunrise the woods are too warm.
Heavy air moves slowly, weighed down,
carrying buckets of water on its head.
Every leaf and spider thread glistens and drips,
shines with secret color,
takes its place among glistening things.
Sunlight reaches through dense air slowly,
as if walking through mud, like the mind
rising from dream to wakefulness.
The atmosphere embraces me and I feel
the hot, soft flesh of its neck, the weight of
sweaty arms, firm chest breathing evenly.
The air makes no distinction between outside
and inside me, in the damp interval of my lungs,
where the air and I become one another.
I am this close to you, God murmurs in my ear.
The world is this dance with me, dripping with me.
The atmosphere is inescapable.
Move through me, breathe me,
sweating,
aware.
Chant: The Earth is Full (Darlene Franz)
Wednesday, January 14th with Tom
Reading: "In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the world's rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate or name, the substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil its power for evil, the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here.” - Annie Dillard
Chant: Rhapsody of Rest by Sarah Thomsen
Thursday, January 15th with LeMel
Reading: One Hundred Sixty (A Song of Praise)
Hallelujah!
I will praise You with all my soul,
My very being, my inside of me,
The core of all that You make holy.
Halleluja!
I will sing You the spirit’s song
Poured into me by Your hand,
Tuned by my chances and challenges.
Hallelujah!
I will bless You with common words
Turned to fire by Your listening,
Flames to heaven.
Hallelujah!
I will call You in my longing
For completeness, for shelter
Beneath Your embracing arms.
Hallelujah!
I will turn to You in faithfulness,
Drying my tears
On the surety of Your care.
Hallelujah!
I will praise You with all my soul,
Breath and being, time and future,
Aligned to You in holiness.
-- From Debbie Perlman in Flames to Heaven: New Psalms for Healing & Praise, former Psalmist-in-Residence at Beth Emet The Free Synagogue
Chant: Flames to Heaven
Blessing You with common words
Turned to fire by Your listening
Flames to heaven lifted up to You
Friday, January 16th with LeMel
Reading: Fifty-Four
For My Daughter
In this central core of me,
You mark my potentials;
You ignite the spark of eternity
You have placed within me.
I sometimes forget, Eternal God,
The me that lies buried beneath
The faces I must wear,
The duties I take for my own.
Uncover the center of me, O God;
Polish it and smooth it
Like old cherished silver
Handed down from mother to daughter.
I sometimes forget, Spark Maker
That I glow with Your light,
That I burn with passions
That sometimes frighten me to reveal.
Send fuel to these sparks,
That I might light a way to righteousness;
Let a steady wind fan these flames
That serve You in faithfulness.
Then will my mouth praise You
From the center of my being;
Then will I strip away artifice
To praise the Living God.
-- From Debbie Perlman in Flames to Heaven: New Psalms for Healing & Praise, former Psalmist-in-Residence at Beth Emet The Free Synagogue
Chant: Uncover the Center of Me
Polish, smooth, and cherish
Until drossed silver be
Shine I forth to ever serve my God
Oh…
Saturday, January 17th with LeMel
Reading: “What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.” -- Richard Bach
“Many thoughtful observers believe that our time is one of accelerated social and individual transformation… Albert Einstein remarked, ‘The atomic bomb has changed everything except our way of thinking.’ In a world teetering on the brink of nuclear holocaust, economic collapse, and ecological catastrophe, we are being challenged to examine ourselves. We feel we have to ask ourselves, ‘What are we after all, to have arrived at such an insanely dangerous impasse?’ It seems to me that two important conclusions are emerging with increasing certainty: (1) that the evolutionary transformation of society and of humanity must take place first in the individual, and (2) that the transformation of the individual requires a turning inward, toward self - not in narcissistic self-absorption but in aware self-confrontation.”
-- Ralph Metzner in The Unfolding Self: Varieties of Transformative Experience, p.2.
Chant: Cocoon Us Into Change
Cocoon us into change that we need to be
Oh, draw us ever nearer, nearer to thee
Help us to confront what needs to be
Drawn ever nearer to the image of thee
Sunday, January 18th with LeMel
Reading: “I remember discovering years ago what remains my favorite natural fact. When a caterpillar enters the cocoon, it turns completely to liquid before the butterfly-to-be begins to constellate. You don’t get to retain a few fat little caterpillar legs until you grow an elegant butterfly leg or two. You don’t get to hold onto your caterpillar brain while you sprout a wing or an antenna. You turn to mush.
Continuously inspired by this wonderful and terrifying portrait of transformation, years later I wrote this poem:”
In Impossible Darkness
Do you know how
the caterpillar
turns?
Do you remember
what happens
inside a cocoon?
You liquefy.
There in the thick black
of your self-spun womb,
void as the moon before waxing,
You melt
(as Christ did
for three days
in the tomb)
Conceiving
in impossible darkness
the sheer
inevitability
of wings.
--Kim Rossen in Saved By A Poem: The Transformative Power of Words, pgs 182-183
Chant: Praying For Wings
Praying for wings
Conceived in the darkness
To lift me to You
Ever lift me to You
Comments