Readings week of May 25th.
- Linda Lueng
- May 25
- 6 min read
Updated: Jun 1
Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses
*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*
Monday, May 25th
Reading: “Centering prayer as a discipline is designed to withdraw our attention from the ordinary flow of our thoughts. We tend to identify ourselves with that flow. But there is a deeper part of ourselves. This prayer opens our awareness to the spiritual level of our being. This level might be compared to a great river on which our memories, images, feelings, inner experiences, and the awareness of outward things are resting. Many people are so identified with the ordinary flow of their thoughts and feelings that they are not aware of the source from which these mental objects are emerging. Like boats or debris floating along the surface of a river, our thoughts and feel-ings must be resting on something. They are resting on the inner stream of consciousness, which is our participation in God's being. That level is not immediately evident to ordinary consciousness. Since we are not in immediate contact with that level, we have to do something to develop our awareness of it. It is the level of our being that makes us most human.
The values that we find there are more delightful than the values that float along the surface of the psyche. We need to refresh ourselves at this deep level every day. Just as we need exercise, food, rest, and sleep, so also we need moments of interior silence because they bring the deepest kind of refreshment.” — Keating, Open Mind Open Heart, p. 34
— Words of Gerard Guiton from Stillness, p. 23, put to chant by Paulette Meier
Tuesday, May 26th
Reading: The Fountain by Denise Levertov
Don't say, don't say there is no water
to solace the dryness at our hearts.
I have seen
the fountain springing out of the rock wall
and you drinking there. And I too
before your eyes
found footholds and climbed to drink the cool water.
The woman of that place, shading her eyes,
frowned as she watched-but not because she grudged the water,
only because she was waiting to see we drank our fill and were
refreshed.
Don't say, don't say there is no water.
That fountain is there
among its scalloped green and gray stones,
it is still there and always there with its quiet song and strange power
to spring in us,
up and out through the rock.
Chant: “Let all who are thirsty come, let all who wish receive the water of life freely. Amen, come Lord Jesus, amen come Lord Jesus.”
Wednesday, May 27th
Reading: “I tried to explain how, through so many endings, this young forest is just beginning to deepen itself, just beginning to rediscover what it truly is: a natural community enriched by change and defined by scars.... Over millennia, this forest has weathered storms, beyond counting, each time responding by becoming something new. This one will be no different...
“I wonder how many times the world will change before we learn that the world IS change.I wonder how long we will struggle against change like a fish on a line, rail against it like children, build fortresses of sand around ourselves only to see the waves of change dissolve them again and again. I wonder how long it will take for us to learn that stability is vulnerability, that resilience is strength...
“This is what it means to be resilient: to mourn a thousand endings and celebrate a thousand beginnings, to be as strong as steel and as soft as warm butter, to practice both resilience and acceptance, to cradle both life and death in our arms.“
— Ethan Tapper, How to Love a Forest
Chant: An invitation to hum
Thursday, May 28th
Reading: “Courage changes things and courage changes us. It's how we become. I have found that there is a "right-sized" fear inside any vision for change, and in taking courageous action we develop a part of ourselves that can talk back to and hold the fear without letting it lead... The courage we need is the courage to fail and stay... The courage to exit the safety of our dying delusions... The courage to surrender... The courage to love and be loved.” — Prentis Hemphill, What it Takes to Heal
Chant: I surrender
Friday, May 29 with Catherine
Reading: The Conference of the Birds.
The world had become dangerous and disordered. The birds were frightened. They felt leaderless. Everywhere they looked they saw confusion, conflict, vanity, greed, and instability. So they gathered together to decide what should be done.
The hoopoe bird, the wisest among them, told the others they must go in search of the great Simurgh, the divine king they believed could save them.
The journey would be difficult. To find the Simurgh, the birds had to cross seven valleys: the Valley of Search, the Valley of Love, the Valley of Knowledge, and the Valley of Detachment. Each valley took away another illusion. Some birds turned back because they preferred comfort. Others were overcome by fear. Some got distracted by beauty or status. Some could not let go of their ideas about themselves.
The journey slowly unraveled them. By the end, only thirty birds remained. Exhausted and transformed, they finally arrived before the Simurgh expecting to encounter a great divine being waiting for them in glory.
Instead, they found a mirror.
In that mirror they saw themselves.
“Simurgh,” in Persian, means “thirty birds.”
— Farid ud-Din Attar
…something sacred had grown within their own community through the hard work of traveling, letting go of illusions, suffering, and staying together.
[There is a common] hope that one powerful person will come to save us: the right politician, billionaire, technology, ideology, or strong leader.
But old wisdom traditions point us in a different direction. Real change happens in relationships. The Spirit … moves through communities that can listen, grieve, let go, and change together.
…Maybe the most important spiritual task right now is not to become more certain. Maybe it is to learn, slowly and imperfectly, how to stay. How to support each other through the valleys, even when we do not know what is waiting at the end.
The thirty birds did not find the world they expected. They found themselves, changed by the journey.
— Rev. Cameron Trimble
— The Oriental Orthodox Order in the West
Saturday, May 30th with Lacey
Reading: The code word for this inner gesture… is surrender. In the Wisdom lexicon it specifically denotes the passage from the smaller or acorn self into the greater or oak tree self brought about through this act of letting go. The word surrender itself means to “hand oneself over” or “entrust oneself.”It is not about outer capitulation but about inner opening. It is always voluntary, and rather than an act of weakness, it is always an act of strength.
A story from the Buddhist tradition… set during the Chinese Communist invasion of Tibet, makes this point very clear. A soldier bursts into a monastery cell and thrusts his rifle into the belly of a meditating monk. The monk goes right on meditating. “You don’t understand,” barks the soldier. “I have the power to take your life!” The monk opens his eyes briefly and smiles sweetly at the soldier. “No, it’s you who doesn’t understand. I have the power to let you.”
Far from an act of spiritual cowardice, surrender is an act of spiritual power because it opens the heart directly to the more subtle realms of spiritual Wisdom and energy. One hands oneself over, in the poet Dante’s beautiful image into “the love that moves the stars and the sun.” When the attitude of prompt surrender has become permanently engrained in a person while still in bodily life, that person becomes a powerful servant of humanity.”
— Cynthia Bourgeault, Wisdom Way of Knowing
Chant: I surrender
Sunday, May 31st with Lacey
Reading: A contemplative life is not withdrawal. It is an active engagement born of stillness. Contemplation allows the soul to breathe and to meet the world with presence rather than reaction. Silence is not empty, it is full of answers if we care to listen.
— Francis Weller, In the Absence of the Ordinary
Creation itself belongs to the divine. Our role is more a creative midwifery that has to do with intuiting the new patterns as they arise in the imaginal and helping birth them into form.
— Cynthia Bourgeault, Wisdom Way of Knowing
Chant: Draw us deeper into silence, draw us into you. Draw us deeper into stillness, draw us into you. — Henry Schoenfield
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