Readings week of March 23rd.
- Linda Lueng
- Mar 23
- 3 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses
*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*
Monday, March 23rd
— The Oriental Orthodox Order in the West
Tuesday, March 24th
Chant: We surrender
— Heather Ruce
Wednesday, March 25th
Reading: We awaken in Christ's body
English version by Stephen Mitchell
Original Language Greek
We awaken in Christ's body
as Christ awakens our bodies,
and my poor hand is Christ, [Christ] enters
my foot, and is infinitely me.
I move my hand, and wonderfully
my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of [Christ]
(for God is indivisibly
whole, seamless in [Christ’s] Godhood).
I move my foot, and at once
[Christ] appears like a flash of lightning.
Do my words seem blasphemous? -- Then
open your heart to [Christ]
and let yourself receive the one
who is opening to you so deeply.
For if we genuinely love [Christ],
we wake up inside Christ's body
where all our body, all over,
every most hidden part of it,
is realized in joy as [Christ],
and [Christ] makes us, utterly, real,
and everything that is hurt, everything
that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
maimed, ugly, irreparably
damaged, is in [Christ] transformed
and recognized as whole, as lovely,
and radiant in [Christ] light
[Christ] awakens as the Beloved
in every last part of our body.
— Words of Robert Barclay put to chant by Paulette Meier
Thursday, March 26th
Reading: The Opening of Eyes by David Whyte
That day I saw beneath dark clouds,
the passing light over the water
and I heard the voice of the world speak out,
I knew then, as I had before,
life is no passing memory of what has been
nor the remaining pages in a great book
waiting to be read.
It is the opening of eyes long closed.
It is the vision of far off things
seen for the silence they hold.
It is the heart after years
of secret conversing,
speaking out loud in the clear air.
It is Moses in the desert
fallen to his knees before the lit bush.
It is the man throwing away his shoes
as if to enter heaven
and finding himself astonished,
opened at last,
fallen in love with solid ground.
— The Oriental Orthodox Order in the West
Friday, March 27th with LeMel
Reading: “Mercy, according to the Sufis, is God’s greatest and most powerful quality, which exceeds all other aspects of His Being; in the midst of the suffering that inevitably arises throughout material creation, it’s the one force made universally available to help alleviate the terrifying consequences of existence, with all that it implies. As the prime emanation of God’s true Being, it offers us a direct contact…
What irony, perhaps, that we have to come to it through the intellect. Yet beginning there, if the mind is sufficiently stilled, and we wait quietly in silence, intimately sensing our bodies as the sacred vessels they are—then some particle of mercy may touch us, no matter how lightly or swiftly, and remind us not just of our mortality, but the Grace which is always and forever available to support us.
If we’re even quieter, and more attentive, some tiny portion may stay to inform us as we move outward, back into our daily life.
This is the mustard seed; and from that seed great plants grow.”
— Lee Van Laer
Chant:
Seed of Mercy
Seed of Grace
In stillness, in stillness
My soul awaits
Saturday, March 28th with Tom
Reading: God is the One
who never says: where have you been?
Having been there.
God is the One
who never says: Why did you do that?
Except to awaken you.
God is the One
who never says: Hello,
but only: stay.
You pour yourself out to God
and, fearful, mutter: “Say when...”
But God is the One
who never says.
— Steven Garnass Holmes
Sunday, March 29th (Palm Sunday) with Catherine
Reading: The Shift
She wanted a little room for thinking.
With no room available,
she settled for a chair.
She sat there.
To anyone else, it might have looked
as if nothing was happening.
Inside her, whole foundations
were crumbling. Maps were
unmapping. Paths
were unpathing. A tornado
of doubt did its perfect work.
Somewhere there was light.
No one else could see the rubble
rising all around her.
Also in that wreckage,
her belief in fixing.
God, she was raw.
Now, now
there was room.
— Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Chant: Open my heart; open my heart
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