Readings week of July 27th.

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses

*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*

Monday, July 27th with Faye

Reading: Thomas Merton is another contemporary mystic who in the final years of his life came to an acute appreciation of this state of “no-self.” [Here is a section of ] his brilliant but challenging reflection on fana (“self-annihilation” in Islamic mysticism), offered in the course of an ongoing correspondence with the Islamic scholar Abdul Aziz…

My prayer tends very much toward what you call fana [annihilation in God]. There is in my heart this great thirst to recognize totally the nothingness of all that is not God. My prayer is then a kind of praise rising up out of the center of Nothing and Silence. If I am still present “myself,” this I recognize as an obstacle about which I can do nothing unless He Himself removed the obstacle. If He wills, He can make the Nothingness into a total clarity. If He does not will, then the Nothingness seems itself to be an object and remains an obstacle. Such is my ordinary way of prayer, or meditation. It is not “thinking about” anything, but a direct seeking of the Face of the Invisible, who cannot be found unless we become lost in Him who is invisible.

— Thomas Merton, quoted in The Heart of Centering Prayer by Cynthia Bourgeault

Chant: Come now child, lay it down

Just breathe, just be — Alexa Sunshine Rose

Tuesday, July 28th with Faye

Reading: "It is hard to think of attention as anything other than “on.” We almost cannot speak the words “pay attention” without adding the “to,” so strong is the pull of this mysterious energy field to establish itself in a subject/object relationship. Traditional concentrative meditation methods know this well and give the mind a simple object to focus its attention on: breathing, a mantra, an icon.

But attention is not only a carbon arc shooting from subject to object. It is also an energy field in its own right—a subtle substance, some schools of inner work teach, of extremely fine vibration. And while the subject/object modality is its usual configuration, it can also be held inwardly and experienced as a vibrational field in its own right: a coiled latency, “quivering” (in the words of the poet Runi) “like a drop of mercury.” In this configuration, it does not “reflect on being,” but rather, directly reflects it: mirrors it like a still pond, shimmering with the same vibrant “I am” presence. It becomes a small, intensely concentrated reservoir of being within oneself, a fountain of “spondic” energy (as Beatrice Bruteau calls it) that does not need to be paid attention to, because it itself is the subject of attention, not the object. When one begins to get the knack of that experience, a sudden shift of direction occurs within, as one becomes viscerally aware of the difference between keeping one’s attention “on” and keeping it “in.”"

— Cynthia Bourgeault, The Heart of Centering Prayer, p.83

Chant: I AM

Within… — Faye Cox

Wednesday, July 29th with Chris

Reading: Quiet friend who has come so far,

feel how your breathing makes more space around you.

Let this darkness be a bell tower

and you the bell. [And] as you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.

Move back and forth into the change. 

What’s it like, this intensity of pain?

If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,

be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,

the meaning discovered there.

And if the world shall cease to hear you,

say to the silent earth: I flow.

And to the rushing water, speak: I am.

— Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, translated by Joanna Macy

Chant: Listen listen, Wait in silence listening, to the One from Whom the Mercy flows.

Thursday, July 30th with Chris

Reading: Wake up

I am deep in a dream

And there is a jolt.

Wake up!

The Earth looks me in the eye.

Takes my shoulders in her ancient, wrinkled, bony hands

And shakes me.

Hard.

Wake up!

My sleepiness is heavy

My eyes slowly meet hers

And I feel her energy course through me.

Wake up!

Every cell in my body now alive and vibrant.

Outside the window

the Full moon nods her head, agreeing.

Wake up!

I am here.

I am.

Awake.

— Chris Sanchirico

Chant: Be right here, in the Heart of God.

— Henry Schoenfield

Friday, July 31st with Chris

Reading: The Moor

I entered it on soft foot,

Breath held like a cap in the hand.

It was quiet.

What God was there made himself felt,

Not listened to, in clean colours

That brought a moistening of the eye,

In movement of the wind over grass.

 There were no prayers said. But stillness

Of the heart’s passions — that was praise

Enough; and the mind’s cession

Of its kingdom. I walked on,

Simple and poor, while the air crumbled

And broke me generously as bread.

— R.S. Thomas, Poems of R.S. Thomas, Fr. Michael Fish Newsletter, Aug 2026

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, put to chant by Paulette Meier

Saturday, August 1st with Joy

Reading: "But you, when you pray, enter into your inner room, and having shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly."

— Matthew 6:6, Interpretation, from Aramaic (The Peshitta, found at dukhrana.com) 

"When you pray, enter your inner sanctum, introduce your consent and contain your inner gate from anything that would break through or burst out, and join the Divine Indwelling in the Holy of Holies. And your Nourisher who beholds you and chooses you flourishes you and sets you free, removing the veil from your face, cherishing your true being in a secret embrace."

— You can find out more about this interpretation in the essay: An Invitation to Intimacy in the Aramaic Matthew 6:6  by Joy Andrews Hayter, found on Contemplative Outreach 

Chant: Be Right Here in the Heart of God 

— Henry Schoenfield

Sunday, August 2nd with Joy

Reading: "The light of the body is the eye. Therefore if thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light."

— Matthew 6:22, Interpretation, from Aramaic (The Peshitta, found at dukhrana.com) 

"The way to see is with the eye within, your mental and spiritual faculties, an opening to the One within you.  When your faculties are simple and clear, stripped of pretense and identifications, your whole body is radiant as Ultimate Reality shines through you."

Chant: With you is the well of life, and in your light we see light

— Susan Latimer

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