Readings Week of June 23rd.

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Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses

*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*

Monday, June 23rd with Catherine

The Little Prayer

Wednesday, June 25 with Tom

Reading: 'The Night I Fell in Love with the Whole World' by Rosemerry Whatola Trommer

It was the boy at baggage claim who started it. 

His elation! Each time a new bag would drop, 

he would point at the suitcase and squeal, 

then turn to his grandmother with incandescent delight. 

His grandmother deepened my joy. How she beamed 

at her grandson, praised him in Spanish, her words 

a bright blur I interpreted more through hunch 

than through certainty. And sooner than you’d think, 

I fell in love with every single person at baggage claim sixteen. 

Didn’t need to know their stories to know 

they were worthy of love. Every one a grandchild. 

Every one a light. It was like, how on these midsummer 

nights, the late sun shines long though the cities and fields 

and everything, everything is beautiful. 

Oh, people of Iran. Israel. Palestine. Ukraine. 

Russia. Somalia. Yemen. Maine. I will never know you, 

yet I honor how you carry inside you your own strange 

and beautiful spark. How each of you, too, is a grandchild. 

Each of you, too, longs to belong. No matter what our leaders do, 

the light is right to see how much, you, too, long to be safe,

to be seen, to be kind, to be loved, to be trusted, to be home.

Chant: The Lord is my Light — Taize

Thursday, June 26th with Chris

Reading: "In order to move closer to the heart of Jesus, we “lean back toward him” by sinking back into the depth of our own consciousness, sinking down toward the center of our being. Each deeper level that we sink to, position our sense of “I” in, brings us closer to the heart or center of Jesus, because it is bringing us closer to our own center.

The consciousness of Jesus, the interior of his heart, is becoming more and more available to us, known to us, familiar to us, because our own heart is sharing those same dispositions. We are coming to know the Sacred Heart from the inside, inside His consciousness, and inside our consciousness- We cannot know it as another, as something that stands opposite to us that we look at. That is why we do not face Jesus in order to move closer to Him, but rather back into Him. Were we to face Him we would always remain outside Him. “Looking at” would turn Him into an object. To know the subject, you have to enter into the subject’s own awareness, that is, have that awareness in your own subjectivity: “Let that mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 2:5) — Ilia Delio, Ed.,

Personal Transformation and a New Creation, p.175-6

Chant: Be right here, in the Heart of God — Henry Schoenfield

Friday, June 27th with Chris

Reading: 'I do pray that Love will move me' by Lee Van Laer

I immediately recognize here and now

that simply being within the body

is a sacred action

whereby I stand at the beginning

of an opportunity to fulfill my duties and obligations

as a human being

I have already in the creation of my cells

and even the creation of my molecules and atoms

been filled with sacred substances

that were created at great expense

by suns themselves.

And all of these particles of being

contain very fine energies

that have done tremendous amounts of work

to form a living community of individual tiny beings,

all of which have come together to support me here.

And so as I use the sensation

that is given to me through grace,

I cast my attention and my eyes down upon them

and I give thanks.

I give thanks in such a way

that the thanks itself is organic,

arising in the cells and this fine energy

and I give thanks not as a gesture

but as a sacrament

and I open my heart and my soul

and my mind

my sensation

and my feeling

as though my inner arms were spread wide.

And I offered myself to everything that flows in

with abundance from above.

And the sweet nectar,

the milk and honey of being here alive

begins to become more tangible.

It flows in right here and now,

supporting my existence.

And I acknowledge these great forces that flow into me from above

with an equal amount of thanksgiving.

I see that I am unequal to the task,

the task of becoming human.

And yet today, once again,

as I come to this life

and suffer my negativity and my foolishness,

I will try again to become a human being.

I will be still and hope that compassion is what moves me.

I will be still and hope that kindness is what moves me.

And as I am here within sensation in the midst of my helplessness,

I do pray that love will move me.

Chant: Fall fearless into love, fall fearless into love, fall fearless into love – Darlene Franz

Saturday, June 28th with Tom

Chant: Christ Near to All, the light in all the seed sown in the heart of alll by Paulette Meier 

Sunday, June 29th with Tom

Reading: 'Open Yourself to the Radiance'

So, you wish to know God? Look deep within

for the little spark that ever burns in your soul;

refuse what is outside of you, and open yourself

to the radiance of that inner spark.

Focus all your attention on that little spark,

which will be satisfied with nothing but God

and refuses simply to learn about God; if this

is startling to you, how much more astonishing

it is to realize that the radiant light within you

won't be satisfied with what God is toward you.

That inner light insists on knowing where God

comes from. Where is that? Look into the depths,

all the way to the simple ground, the still desert,

where all you think about God counts as nothing

and where everything is finally nothing but God.

– Sweeney and Burrows, Meister Eckhart's Book of Darkness and Light, p. 165

Chant: Pour out through me God of glory, God of grace, that all may see, thy eternal radiant facePour out through me – Darlene Franz

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