Readings week of July 20th.

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses

*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*

Monday, July 20th

Chant: Created world, creative world, between two worlds a bridge (2x), be sure you understand this, be sure you understand, be sure you understand this, between two worlds a bridge (2x), you yourself, within yourself a bridge, between two worlds a bridge (2x), be sure you understand this, be sure you understand, be sure you understand this, between two worlds a bridge  — Epiphany Today

Tuesday, July 21st 

Reading: “When I work in the quiet, I do not let myself begin without an order being established around my center of gravity. I hold myself straight and in balance, supple and without tension. It is not physical relaxation I seek, but to abandon my persistent ego, which is always eager for authority and has not yet recognized its master. I must be seated not only in a different posture, I must be seated as a different person. When I am situated in my center of gravity, there is no ego that imprisons me. What is necessary to understand, above all, is a movement downward to become immersed again in the source, the wellspring of my life. I need constantly to return and submit to the force of life, the one true life, of which I am a part. I need to let the reality of Being emerge, to let the unity of what I am be created in me.” — Jeanne de Salzmann, Reality of Being

Chant: With you is the well of life and in your [life] we [are life]  — Susan Latimer

Wednesday, July 22nd

Reading: “Do not weep and grieve nor let your hearts remain in doubt, for his grace will be with all of you, sustaining and protecting you. Rather, let us give praise to his greatness which has prepared us so that we might become fully human.”

— from The Luminous Gospels by Bauman, Bauman and Bourgeault 

Chant: Keep your hearts free of doubting, grace be with all of you, sustaining, protecting, give praise to Great Love  — Joy Andrews Hayter

Thursday, July 23rd

Chant: Mercy, We live in Mercy … We move in Mercy … We breathe in Mercy … We breathe out Mercy — Faye Cox

Friday, July 24th with Faye

Reading: "… I have tried to suggest a new way of picturing hope. In this new positioning, the underlying sense of corporateness is physically real, for that “electromagnetic field of love” is the Mercy—and the Mercy is the body of Christ. Through this body, hope circulates as a lifeblood. It warms, it fills, it connects, it directs. It is the heart of our own life and the heart of all that lives.

Hope’s home is at the innermost point in us, and in all things. It is a quality of aliveness. It does not come at the end, as the feeling that results from a happy outcome. Rather, it lies at the beginning, as a pulse of truth that sends us forth. When our innermost being is attuned to this pulse it will send us forth in hope, regardless of the physical circumstances of our lives. Hope fills us with the strength to stay present, to abide in the flow of the Mercy no matter what outer storm assail us. [And our world.] It is entered always and only through surrender; that is, through the willingness to let go of everything we are presently clinging to. And yet when we enter it, it enters us and fills us with its own life—a quiet strength beyond anything we have ever known.

And since that strength is, in fact, a piece of God’s purposiveness coursing like sap through our own being, it will lead us in the right way. It sweeps us along in the greater flow of divine life as God moves…toward the fulfillment of divine purpose which is the deeper, more intense, more subtle, more intimate revelation of the heart of God."

— Cynthia Bourgeault, Mystical Hope

Chant: I AM within you

I am hope

I AM within you

I am love

I AM within you

I am peace

— Faye Cox

Saturday, July 25th with Tom

Reading:  In Step

Dancing around

and around this

invitation to a deeper

silence

and now this draw 

to face the Flame

and let the dancer

become the Danced

— Tom Amsberry

Chant: Return Again

Sunday, July 26th with Tom

Reading: The Inward Sea

There is in every person an inward sea

And in that sea, there is an island

And on that island is an altar

And standing guard before that altar

is the angel with the flaming sword.

Nothing can get by that angel to be placed upon that altar

unless it has the mark of your inner authority.

Nothing passes the angel with the flaming sword

to be placed upon your altar

unless it be a part of the fluid area of your consent.

This is your crucial link with THE ETERNAL.

— Howard Thurman

Chant: Deeply descend into I Am, deeply descend into One 

— The Oriental Orthodox Order in the West

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