Readings week of May 18th.
- Linda Lueng
- May 18
- 8 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses
*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*
Monday, May 18th with Tom
Guided Meditation by Debbie de la Cuesta
Let's begin by arriving….
I invite you to close your eyes, take a long slow breath-
Sensing how it infuses you…
and a slow, unhurried breath out.
Find a pace that allows you to arrive-
Opening, allowing, settling like falling snow
just letting yourself come here.
On your next exhale,
Let yourself rest fully into your chair.
Feel yourself rooted-
in your whole body,
Into the earth,
in the simple fact of being here.
Notice how the body knows how to arrive
Allowing our beloved mind to relax.
Begin to sense with your beloved body,
Presence around you, sensation, opening to the porousness we really are
Let life breath you
If your eyes have been closed,
gently open them now-
with a soft, inclusive gaze.
A gaze that gives and receives.
Let your eyes take in all of us here-
window to window
Seeing from the eye of the heart, sense the field here now, the breath and substance we share
As each of our essences ,
the visible and the invisible,
the formed and the forming.
Notice that you can sense what is immediate and concrete-
bodies, faces, sounds…
And at the same time, something more subtle-
moods, tones, aliveness, atmosphere.
Simply allow the unfolding and enfolding of our shared presence
To infuse you, to inform you, to invite you into this sacred presence we tend and share
Reading:
The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.
— Rumi
Chant: Be right here
— Henry Schonfield
Tuesday, May 19th with Tom
Reading: Kenosis is not the same as renunciation. Renunciation implies a subtle pushing away; kenosis is simply the willingness to let things come and go without grabbing on. For all intents and purposes it is synonymous with nonclinging or nonattachment. But unlike a more Buddhist version of this spiritual motion, kenosis has a certain warm spaciousness to it; to the degree one does not assert one's own agenda, something else has the space to be. The "letting go" of kenosis is actually closer to "letting be" than it is to any of its "non-" equivalents (nonclinging, nonattachment, nonidentification, and so forth); its flow is positive and fundamentally creative. Between the "let it be" of kenosis and the "let it be" by which biblical tradition envisions Creation itself as having come into existence, there is a profound resonance. — Cynthia Bourgeault, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene
Chant: “I am a hole in the flute that the Christ's breath moves through listen to this music”
I am the concert from the mouth of every creature,singing with the myriad chorus
— Hafiz
Love Drawn or Fear Driven?
Like the rain
dripping off
the clogged gutter
... this gentle
but persistent voice:
“Call her.”
The legal defense
shouting “no!”
crying “objection”
and producing
voracious legal documents
scripted in the black
ink of fear.
I smiled at the judge
in the rear-view mirror
then nimbly dialed
1-800-freedom
— Tom Amsberry
Wednesday, May 20th with Tom
Reading: A Blessing for the Inward Way
May you learn to dwell
Below the surface of the days
At home with the ebb and flow of
Your own heart’s tides.
May you find the womb space at the center of your Life,
There grow wise in the sacred rhythm
Of filling and emptying,
Emptying and filling.
There, held safe,
May you surrender to the unknown
As completely as the dark moon
Empties herself into the secret embrace of her Beloved, the Sun.
There may you cherish hope of renewal
As tenderly as the crescent moon
Cradles the dark in the curve of her arm,
Enfolding, quickening with life new born.
And may you always open to the flow of love
As voluptuously as the moon at full,
Until filled, overflowing, you pour
Love’s gifts out into the world.
So may you grow ever more intimate
With the inward way, the deepening way,
Where filling is emptying, emptying is filling ~
At one with the mystery, at one.
— Tracy Shaw
There is some kiss we want with our whole lives.
— Rumi
— Darlene Franz
Thursday, May 21st with LeMel
Reading: Lydia of Thyatira (Greek: Λυδία) is a woman mentioned in the New Testament who is regarded as the first documented convert to Christianity in Europe. The book of Acts records, "When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. 'If you consider me a believer in the Lord,' she said, 'come and stay at my house.' And she persuaded us." This implies that Lydia was in charge of the household, as she was able to persuade the household to be baptised, and had authority in the home to invite Paul and his companions to stay in her house. The Orthodox Churches have given Lydia the title "Equal to the Apostles", which signifies her importance and level of holiness. The Episcopal Church honors St. Lydia in its liturgical calendar on May 21.
Acts 16 describes Lydia as follows:
A certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, one who worshiped God, heard us; whose heart the Lord opened to listen to the things which were spoken by Paul. When she and her household were baptized, she begged us, saying, "If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house, and stay." So she persuaded us.
— Acts 16:14–15 World English Bible (from Wikipedia)
Chant:
Open our hearts
To listen to You
May you dwell in us
Friday, May 22nd with LeMel
Reading: “On May 30, 1996, a fire ravaged Lama Mountain, home to many families in the hills of northern New Mexico, as well as to the Lama Foundation, a spiritual retreat center that had for years been a place of meditation and refuge for pilgrims from around the world. The fire was quick and furious. It destroyed dozens of homes and all but a few of the buildings at the retreat center. Three weeks after the fire, I walked the land with Owen Lopez, a close friend and director of the McCune Foundation in New Mexico. We were hoping, along with Bread for the Journey, to provide some emergency relief for the community, including quick restoration of water and electricity.
“Everywhere we looked we saw the color of charcoal, silver-gray-black, shiny, reflecting the light of the sun that filtered through charred and twisted branches. Just three weeks earlier, this was an inferno. But on this day there spread out before us a sea of green. Small oak seedlings, six to ten inches high, blanketed the forest floor. Without any human effort to clear or seed, already the earth was pushing out life. Creation creates life at every revolution; it is incapable of doing otherwise. Were we to reduce the planet to cinders, a holocaust of ignorance and greed, still the universe would create life from the ashes of our clumsiness.
“Sabbath is a day we walk in the forest, walk among the fruits of our harvest and the ruins of our desperations, and see what lives. On the Sabbath, we rest. And see that it is good.”
— Wayne Muller, Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives.
Chant:
Walk with us in the forest
Among the harvests and ruins
Help us see what lives
Help us rest into what is good
Saturday, May 23rd with Faye
Reading:
I have come here to this planet
to take in my life into my body and my being
as deeply as possible.
So I begin each day
searching for a way within
to reconnect to what is essential in me:
the way I sense,
the way I breathe.
And in order to conduct that search,
I begin by moving the whole of my being
closer to the great stillness
that exists at the heart of this life.
The stillness that is rooted in the place where it begins in secret.
Where it begins in sensation.
A place where the heart is more open to life itself.
For this place is my true home,
the place where I begin before anything happens.
And here at the root of the soul, there is a great
but at the same time very fine and gentle power
that suffuses me.
It arises deep within the tissues of being,
in every cell and molecule that is here.
All of them together
in the great community of being.
And here is where I wait for the goodness to flow into being,
for if I am attentive and present
it will find me
and deposit a single tiny golden particle of its nature
here at the root of being:
just enough each day
to bring what is necessary and sufficient
to help me take in my life more deeply.
To have more respect and compassion for each person and creature I encounter.
To remember that I wish to put love first before all things in my actions towards others.
I can only remember this if I am attentive.
And so here, in the midst of sensation,
dwelling within the gift of stillness,
I open my heart and my soul
to receive the goodness of being which flows in here.
— Lee van Laer
Chant: Every Cell of this Body
— Darlene Franz
Sunday, May 24th
Reading: Pentecost by Iris Crosnier
Before dawn, Jerusalem wore a robe of sorrow.
In the upper room, the disciples kept watch,
poor stars without a sky, living ashes awaiting an unseen promise.
Then Heaven gently tore open.
No thunder, no violent storm,
only the approach of a breath more intimate to the heart than blood itself.
A wind came,
the same wind with which God fashioned Adam.
It entered their breasts like an endless tide of gentleness.
And fire descended.
O living fire, smokeless fire, Burning cloud from the divine depths,
You placed a blazing star upon each brow.
Human tongues opened. Each word became a river, each sound a psalm,
and the peoples heard in their own flesh the forgotten music of Eden.
The walls vanished, and strangers recognized in unfamiliar voices the longing for their eternal homeland.
Mary remained there, crowned with roses,
before the tabernacle of the world.
She contemplated the Spirit covering the nascent Church, as it had once covered her womb.
Since then, Pentecost has never ceased.
It descends secretly into monasteries filled with incense,
into prisons where someone prays fervently, into the bread shared at the tables of the poor,
into the trembling throats of the dying who still murmur the name of Christ.
The Spirit is a traveling fire. It dwells in open wounds.
It makes of souls sanctuaries of love,
and of the human heart a burning bush that sings without being consumed.
Blessed is he who consents to burn.
For he will hear the invisible beating of the eternal doves around the fiery throne of God.
To the Lamb of God be the glory.
To the Lamb of God be the victory.
— Darlene Franz
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