Readings week of May 12th.

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses

*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*

Monday, May 12th  

Reading: “Though we know one another's names and recognize one another's faces, we never know what destiny shapes each life.

The script of individual destiny is secret; it is hidden behind and beneath the sequence of happenings that is continually unfolding for us. Each life is a mystery that is never finally available to the mind's light or questions. That we are here is a huge affirmation; somehow life needed us and wanted us to be.

“To sense and trust this primeval acceptance can open a vast spring of trust within the heart. It can free us into a natural courage that casts out fear and opens up our lives to become voyages of discovery, creativity, and compassion. No threshold need be a threat, but rather an invitation and a promise. Whatever comes, the great sacrament of life will remain faithful to us, blessing us always with visible signs of invisible grace. We merely need to trust.” — John O'Donohue in To Bless The Space Between Us

Chant: And God said I am made whole by your life, every soul, every soul completes me — Marilyn Scott 

Wednesday, May 14th 

Reading:  “The outer work can never be small if the inner work is great. And the outer work can never be great if the inner work is small.”— Meister Eckhart, The Reinvention of Work 

Chant: Oh Mercy, we entrust ourselves to you, that we may be transformed — Suzanne Toolan RSM & Catherine Regan 

Thursday, May 15th 

Reading: ‘Never the Same’ by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Sometimes a person wakes

believing they are a storm.

It’s hard to deny it, what,

with all the rain pouring out

of the gutters of the mind,

all the gusts blowing through,

all the squalls, all the gray.

But by afternoon, it seems obvious

they are a garden about to sprout.

By night, it is clear they are a moon—

luminous, radiant, faithful.

That’s the danger, I suppose,

of believing any frame.

Let me believe, then, in curiosity,

in wonder, in change.

Let me trust how essential it is

to stumble into the trough

of the unknown, marvel how

trough becomes wings becomes

faith becomes math. Let me trust

uncertainty is a sacred path.

Chant: You don’t have to know the way, the way knows the way, You don’t have to plan the way, Trust the way, feel your way, The way knows, The way knows, The way knows the way — Lyndsey Scott

Friday, May 16th 

Reading: “We change the world not by what we say or do but as a consequence of what we have become.

“The truth of one's Self can be discovered in everyday life. To live with care and kindness is all that is necessary. The rest reveals itself in due time. The commonplace and God are not distinct.” — David Hawkins

Chant: Surrender to the beauty, become a mighty kindness 

Saturday, May 17th

Reading: “When the experience of working from a balanced awareness is touched—even fleetingly—something miraculous happens. The entire body is filled with a vital and harmonizing energy (“integral,” if you want to call it that.) And at the same time, a connection opens up to the two higher centers—higher emotional and higher intellectual—from which objective knowing and authentic feeling indeed pour forth. Once the three lower centers are trained and stable enough not to buckle in the face of this far more intense conscious infusion, you are at last (for the most part) a reliably “conscious human being” and are ready to take up your post in the cosmic dance of giving-and-receiving with authentic clarity and agency. You are no longer simply a consumer but a transformer of life force.” — Cynthia Bourgeault, Three Centered Awareness: Exploring Jean Gebser, Lession XV

Chant: I surrender — Heather Ruce

Sunday, May 18th

Reading: “You have to allow disruption in your life. You have to take account of the parts of yourself you would throw out. You have to look in the places you look away from. And this is so the divine comes into birth. The divine wishes to come into birth in every moment.

True love and prayer are learned in the moment when prayer has become impossible, and the heart has turned to stone.” —Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

Chant: Love one another, as I Love you,  Love one another, as I Love you — Henry Schoenfield

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