Readings week of January 19th.

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses

*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*

Monday, January 19th with LeMel

Reading: Forty-One

For Beginnings

Open my eyes, O Eternal, to change;

Fill me with longing for possibilities.

Let my life before be stepping blocks

To what you want me to become.

Open my eyes, O Eternal, to change;

Let me write beyond my narrow descriptions

To begin a new narrative,

Underlined with your name.

Open my heart, O Eternal

To put you ever before me;

Help me discard the insubstantial

And replace it with Your words.

Open my life, O Eternal, to fulfillment.

Where before were shadows

Let Your truths live in my life,

Sustaining my actions.

Turn me back to You, O Eternal,

Back to long before I cannot remember

That beckon my soul.

Turn me back, O Eternal,

Opening to change.

-- From Debbie Perlman in Flames to Heaven: New Psalms for Healing & Praise, former Psalmist-in-Residence at Beth Emet The Free Synagogue

Chant: Whispering Open

All before are insubstantial shadows

Replaced now with Spirit filled words

Whispering me open to transformation

Tuesday, January 20th with Faye

Reading: "When we say the world has lost its sanity, what we may actually be saying is that the feedback loops that reinforced a prior balance of powers have collapsed, and the biases once ritualized into norms no longer hold the weight of truth.

“And when we long for sanity’s return, we often mean: bring back the predictability of yesterday’s arrangements, even if those arrangements were themselves complicit in quiet violences.

“Thus, the betrayal is not new. It isn’t a fall from purity, anymore than the right-ward swing of the pendulum is an affront to a grandfather clock. It is an unveiling of the fact that purity was never there.

“The "return to 1945" is hardly a return. The logic of predation was always there, lurking in the creases of dignified diplomacy, in the moral climate that governs the neurotypical subject. Rather than a return, I'd suggest that this is an exfoliation. A peeling back. A wound remembered. A crack showing what has always been beneath: the brutal genealogies of power, the erotic pull of empire, the myth of a moral center. What feels like descent may in fact be disclosure.

“And in this sense, the work is not to restore sanity, but to grieve it. To gather in the ruins of its architecture and listen for what still wants to live, what wants to be grown differently, from different seeds. Our work is not against individuals, but within mycelial fields of posthumanist desire. It is Eros we must meet. It is the trickster Exu we must convene around.

“This is not an anomaly. This is a reckoning.”

– Báyò Akomolafe

Chant: Christ near to all, the Light in all, the Seed sown in the hearts of all – words of Robert Barclay put to chant by Paulette Meier

Wednesday, January 21st

Reading: “Awakening to this world requires willingness to open our minds and hearts. Each issue is the result of multiple causes and conditions, and we must stay curious to understand cause and effect. Every protestor who goes into the streets is experiencing pain and rage. [Every ICE Agent, ]. Without condoning or allowing destructive actions, compassion allows us to connect with the protestors as fellow human beings.

“As Warriors for the Human Spirit, we have chosen an identity that gives us these capacities for discernment and compassion. We have chosen to protect the human spirit. We do not deny or withdraw from the pain of this world. We know it will get worse because we know the pattern of collapse, and because we pay attention. We are dedicated to serving this world as the pain and suffering intensify. This blessed identity calls us forward to a life of meaning and purpose, a true path of contribution.” — Margaret J. Wheatley, Who Do We Choose to Be?, p. 101

Chant: And God said I am made whole by your life, every soul, every soul completes me

— Marilyn Scott

Thursday, January 22nd

Reading: “Our Father, we are burdened with our recollections and we struggle beneath the weight of our memories. We seek how we may offer all to Thee in the quietness of our own inward parts, in the silence of this place. Brood over ourselves and our recollections with Thy spirit until at last there may grow up within us insight, wisdom, and new levels of sensitiveness that we may be redemptive in all that we do this day and beyond. Our need, O God, is great!” – Howard Thurman

Chant: Stilled and quiet is my soul, in [your] presence, I take my rest – Sister Helen Marie Gilsdorf, RSM via Catherine Regan

← Previous Post

Next Post →