
Daily Contemplative Pauses Readings
from last week
Monday, May 20th with Heather
Reading: “When the Spirit of Truth comes, [Spirit] will be the one to tell you. [Spirit] will be your one true spirit guide and will lead you down the path of truth. [Spirit] will fully represent me and will tell you only what I have told [Spirit]. The Spirit will show you what is coming on the road ahead. [Spirit] will honor me by making known to you everything I have shown [Spirit]. All that I am and all that I have comes from the Father. He has not held back one thing from me, and the Spirit will not hold back anything from you.” — John 16:13-15
Chant: Spirit of Truth open my mind, Spirit of Wisdom, open my heart
Tuesday, May 21st with Heather
Chant: remove from us these hearts of stone, and give to us a heart of flesh, pour out, pour out, pour out, pour it all out (by Alana Levondoski)
Wednesday, May 22nd with Heather
Reading: “Even though we so often pray, “Come, Holy Spirit,” the gift of the Spirit is already given. The Holy Spirit has already come. We all are temples of the Holy Spirit, equally, objectively, and forever! The only difference is the degree that we know it, draw upon it, and consciously believe it. All the scriptural images of the Spirit are dynamic—flowing water, descending dove or fire, and rushing wind. If there’s never any movement, energy, excitement, deep love, service, forgiveness, or surrender, we can be pretty sure we aren’t living out of the Spirit. If our whole lives are just going through the motions, if there’s never any deep conviction, we aren’t connected to the Spirit. We would do well to fan into flame the gift that we already have.
God doesn’t give God’s Spirit to those of us who are worthy, because none of us are worthy. God gives God’s Spirit in this awakened way to those who want it. On this Feast of Pentecost, quite simply, want it! Rely upon it. Know that it has already been given.” — Richard Rohr
Chant: Veni Sancte Spiritus
Thursday, May 23rd with Tom
Reading: We Awaken in Christ’s Body by Symeon the New Theologian
We awaken in Christ's body as Christ awakens our bodies, and my poor hand is Christ, He enters my foot, and is infinitely me. I move my hand, and wonderfully my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of Him (for God is indivisibly whole, seamless in His Godhood). I move my foot, and at once He appears like a flash of lightning. Do my words seem blasphemous? -- Then open your heart to Him and let yourself receive the one who is opening to you so deeply. For if we genuinely love Him, we wake up inside Christ's body where all our body, all over, every most hidden part of it, is realized in joy as Him, and He makes us, utterly, real, and everything that is hurt, everything that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful, maimed, ugly, irreparably damaged, is in Him transformed and recognized as whole, as lovely, and radiant in His light he awakens as the Beloved in every last part of our body.
Friday, May 24th with Heather
Reading: “The Spirit is always a gratuitous gift. It’s always an unmerited favor. It’s always pure grace. Like wind, it cannot be seen. Like smoke, it cannot be controlled. The Spirit is elusive, blowing where it wills. Yet like fire, the Spirit can be felt. The Spirit is experienced as the warmth of God’s love. And like blood, it is experienced as an inner vitality. The Spirit is supremely intimate, yet supremely transcendent.
To enter into relationship with the risen Christ, we have to let go of ourselves, surrender control of our lives, and let the Spirit be given to us. We think that we might lose our individuality, yet surrendering to God actually increases it. For once in our lives, we’re truly free to become ourselves rather than what others want us to be. The highest form of self-possession is the capacity to give ourselves away. By giving ourselves completely to God, we come to be possessed by God and in full possession of ourselves at the same time.” — Richard Rohr
Chant: I surrender
Saturday, May 25th with Joy
Reading: "Jesus then says, "Abide in my love." That can be seen as the practice of Centering Prayer, or other contemplative practice-whether it be a form of sitting meditation, or a daily prayer practice that can be done walking about in the day or sleeping at night, we are invited to abide, or rest deeply, in Love. The word "abide" in Aramaic, gevah, can also mean to wait, hope for, or expect, and even to continue, to endure.
But in typical Aramaic fashion where multiple levels of meaning can be found in one word or phrase, it also means to collect, to bind together.
This collection can be done in our own being, binding together as an integrated person, to use Teilhards word. Alive in all three centers and willing to remain present within, bearing with whatever state we find ourselves in, with whatever is before us, fully present in an embodied way. This affects the whole, as we continue, endure, as one coherent diamond jewel in the integrated net of the cosmos, reflecting all other jewels. That is part of the practice of abiding; as this integrated being we open up, let go to the greater Whole, radiating the fruits of the spirit, as nourishing food for the cosmos. The connection begins within our integrated, collected being, and extends to coming together in a single Wholeness: still unique, yet gathered as One." — Joy Andrews Hayter, The Cosmic Web
Chant: Mercy, Mercy, Mercy deep within and all around (by Henry Schoenfield)
Sunday, May 26th with Angela
Reading: “God and our true Self are not separate. Though we are not God, God and our true Self are the same thing.” — Thomas Keating, “Guidelines for Christian Life, Growth and Transformation” #3, Open Mind, Open Heart
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