Readings week of June 29th.
- Linda Lueng
- Jun 29
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 6
Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses
*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*
Monday, June 29th
Reading: “Conscious struggle requires choice and acceptance. It must not be my state that dictates the choice. I must choose the struggle to be present and accept that suffering will appear. There is no struggle without suffering. Struggle is unacceptable to our lower nature; struggle upsets it. This is why it is so important always to remember what we wish— the meaning of our work and our Presence. In going against a habit. . . or in trying not to express negative emotions, we are not struggling against the emotions themselves or struggling to do away with their expression. It is a struggle with our identification, to allow the energy otherwise wasted to serve the work. We struggle not against something, we struggle for something.” — Jeanne de Salzmann, Reality of Being, p. 18
— The Oriental Orthodox Order in the West
Tuesday, June 30th
Chant: Faith’s Hymn — Beautiful Chorus
Wednesday, July 1st
Reading: “Contemplation seems to supersede and to discard every other form of intuition and experience-whether in art, in philosophy, in theology, in liturgy or in ordinary levels of love and of belief. This rejection is of course only apparent. Contemplation is and must be compatible with all these things, for it is their highest fulfillment. But in the actual experience of contemplation all other experiences are momentarily lost. They "die" to be born again on a higher level of life.
“In other words, then, contemplation reaches out to the knowledge and even to the experience of the transcendent and inexpressible God. It knows God by seeming to touch [God]. Or rather it knows [God] as if it had been invisibly touched by [God].... Touched by [God] Who has no hands, but Who is pure Reality and the source of all that is real! Hence contemplation is a sudden gift of awareness, an awakening to the Real within all that is real. A vivid awareness of infinite Being at the roots of our own limited being. An awareness of our contingent reality as received, as a present from God, as a free gift of love. This is the existential contact of which we speak when we use the metaphor of being "touched by God." — Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 2
— Composed by Heather Ruce, inspired by words of James Finley
Thursday, July 2nd
Reading: “My whole struggle, the aim of my effort, is to come to a certain unity. I can have a more conscious state only at the moment when my centers are balanced and the links between them are maintained by the attention. The different parts of my Presence must learn to work together in the same direction, engaged toward the same aim, to receive the same impression. I see that my vision and understanding, my intelligence, depend on this state of Presence. When I am attentive to this Presence, I feel its life, a mysterious life that relates me with every living thing in the world. My vision of myself is related to the whole.”
— Jeanne de Salzmann, Reality of Being, p. 133
Chant: And God said I am made whole by your life, every soul, every soul completes me
— Marilyn Scott
Friday, July 3rd with Joy
Reading: Letting go means just what it says. It's an invitation to cease clinging to anything — whether it be an idea, a thing, an event, a particular time, or view, or desire. It is a conscious decision to release with full acceptance into the stream of present moments as they are unfolding. To let go means to give up coercing, resisting, or struggling, in exchange for something more powerful and wholesome which comes out of allowing things to be as they are without getting caught up in your attraction to or rejection of them, in the intrinsic stickiness of wanting, of liking and disliking. It's akin to letting your palm open to unhand something you have been holding on to.
…Letting go really refers to choosing to become transparent to the strong pull of our own likes and dislikes, and of the unawareness that draws us to cling to them. …Letting go is only possible if we can bring awareness and acceptance to the nitty-gritty of just how stuck we can get, if we allow ourselves to recognize the lenses we slip so unconsciously between observer and observed that then filter and color, bend and shape our view. We can open in those sticky moments, especially if we are able to capture them in awareness and recognize it when we get caught up in either pursuing and clinging or condemning and rejecting in seeking our own gain.
Stillness, insight, and wisdom arise only when we can settle into being complete in this moment, without having to seek or hold on to or reject anything.
— Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go There You Are
Chant: I surrender
— Heather Ruce
Saturday, July 4th
Chant: I am a hole in a flute that the Christ breath moves through, listen to this music, listen to this music
Sunday, July 5th
Reading: “Coherence comes from a deep center, which is the heart. Ultimately it‘s the heart of the human being connected to Infinite Spirit. When the self is connected to the heart, and the heart is connected to God, you have coherence. It‘s really that simple. The practice we call, the remembrance of God“ is the channel to that coherence.”
— Kabir Helminski, In the House of Remembering, p. 14
— Henry Schoenfield
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