Readings week of January 26th.
- Linda Lueng
- Jan 26
- 4 min read
Updated: Feb 2
Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses
*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*
Monday, January 26th
Reading: “They did not lash out in anger or grab the nearest microphone or collapse in victimhood. Instead, they went into silence. They refused to speak to the media and sought the gifts of grace only revealed in silent contemplation. This they knew well, the process they relied on in personal conversations and with hundreds of nuns at their assemblies. Take everything into the silence, open to the Holy Spirit, listen well, and discern right action. Share your individual discernments and attain collective knowing. This discipline has never failed them.
“As one of the leaders noted years after, "The decision to maintain a silent stance during the immediate time after the release of the mandate and a discrete stance throughout the journey of responding to the mandate came from a deep place of contemplation.”
…
“A few years prior, in another confrontive Vatican situation, one of them had responded to a challenge from a Cardinal who noted that they seemed unafraid. She voiced what later became their mantra: "We are faithful, therefore we are not afraid." Each time they encountered opposition, dealt with dismissal and mean spiritedness, were betrayed, became weary, it was their faith that supported them. And so it deepened and, in continuous contemplation, showed them the way forward.” – Margaret J. Wheatley, Who Do We Choose to Be?, p. 105-106
Chant: In love alone, I take my rest, I dwell, unafraid. In love alone, we take our rest, we dwell, unafraid – Kirsty Christian
Tuesday, January 27th
Reading: “Contemplation is not a spiritual vacation, not a way to numb ourselves or escape the world. We do not pray to get away from our lives. We pray in them, in our fear, our grief, our anger, our confusion, and we bring all of it into stillness.
“To sit in contemplation is to open ourselves to the Living Presence at the heart of everything, a quiet but insistent movement toward wholeness, toward justice, toward communion. This movement is not automatic. It longs to live through human bodies, human choices, human courage. It needs consent. And contemplation is where that consent is learned.
“That presence does not anesthetize us. It sharpens our sight. It breaks through denial. It refuses to let us make peace with what dehumanizes.
“Real contemplation clarifies rather than comforts. It trains us to see violence without becoming violent, to face lies without becoming cynical, to stay tender in the presence of suffering. It is subversive because it will not allow us to privatize our spirituality or turn prayer into a commodity for personal well-being. This is why real contemplation is dangerous.
“And still, it is not sufficient.
“Many stop here, assuming that clarity of heart will somehow produce change. It rarely does, because moral clarity alone does not dismantle systems built to outlast conscience.
“[The] priests I remember from my childhood understood this intuitively. They prayed. And I think they sensed that both prayer and action cannot be abstract or theoretical, that both must become presence among those being brutalized: workers on strike, families of the imprisoned.
“They became part of extended families, assisting households broken by violence, rather than standing at a distance and analyzing suffering in the abstract.
“They also understood that social change does not come from lone moral heroes, but from communities and movements acting together over time. From that shared life—from proximity and responsibility—they learned how change actually happens. That is why they organized, why they embedded their courage in shared social analysis of how power operates and in collective discipline, and why their witness carried weight.
“This is how contemplation enters history—not as private virtue, but as part of a shared ecology of action.” — Adam Bucko
Chant: Attend to the living presence, here and now – Darlene Franz
Wednesday, January 28th
Reading: “Centering Prayer is a preparation for action; in particular, action that emerges from the inspiration of the Spirit in the silencing of our own agitation, desires, and hang-ups. Such silence gives God the maximum opportunity to act.” — Thomas Keating, Open Mind, Open Heart
Chant: “Stillness, deep deep within us. From small beginnings it flows into the living waters. The ocean of God, through our stillness, God moves.” – words of Gerard Guiton from Stillness, p. 23, put to chant by Paulette Meier
Thursday, January 29th
Reading: “A restructuring of consciousness is the fruit of a regular practice of Centering Prayer - transformed hearts and minds that flow out as service to a world in dire need of love.” — Contemplative Outreach
Chant: Transform my heart, let it be an alter, that I may love freely in this world
– Heather Ruce
Friday, January 30th
Chant: Within our darkest night, you kindle a fire that never dies away, that never dies away – Taize
Saturday, January 31st
Reading: “The human brain is an extraordinary creation with its large frontal lobes. the cerebral cortex. This is the site of our most wonderful human capacities: clarity, compassion, patience, empathy, imagination, forward thinking, and thoughtful responses. Yet our present chaotic culture is so fearful, so threatening, that these finest qualities are shut down automatically. When threatened, we lose the essential human capacities most needed and, at the neurobiological level, we have no choice but to contract in fear.
…
“To respond rather than react, to [include but not be overridden by] our reptilian brain and engage our rich frontal lobe capacities, requires intention, discipline, and training. We have to want to use our fine human capacities; we have to want to be more open and less fearful. We have to want to be generous, creative, and kind-our human birthright.”
— Margaret J. Wheatley, Who Do We Choose to Be?
— Elizabeth Combs
Sunday, February 1st
Reading: “God has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord (Yahweh) require of you? To act justly and to love mercy (or kindness) and to walk humbly with your God" — Micah 6:8
Chant: What does the Lord require of you? Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly – Henry Schoenfield
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