Readings week of November 2nd.
Updated: 4 days ago
Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses
*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*
Monday, November 2nd with Tom
Reading: There is no effort that we can make to still ourselves. True stillness comes naturally from moments of solitude where we allow our minds to settle. Just as water seeks its own level, the mind will gravitate toward the holy. Muddy water will become clear if allowed to stand undisturbed, and so too will the mind become clear if it is allowed to be still.
— Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao: Daily Meditations
Chant: We Swim in Mercy (Silence)
Tuesday, November 3rd with LeMel
Reading: The Man Born to Farming
The Grower of Trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,
whose hands reach into the ground and sprout,
to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death
yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down
in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.
His thought passes along the row ends like a mole.
What miraculous seed has he swallowed
that the unending sentence of his love flows out of his mouth
like a vine clinging in the sunlight, and like water
descending in the dark?
— Wendell Berry
Chant:
— LeMel Firestone-Palerm
Wednesday, November 4th with Tom
Reading: “The jagged, binary nature of this realm of existence, a reality attested to by all the great spiritual traditions… arrived through no human fault or error but as the precise conditions required to make possible a particular kind of divine self-disclosure. Only at this particular density, within these sharp edges and term limits (the ultimate one, of course, being death), do the conditions become perfect for the expression of the most tender and vulnerable aspects of divine love. Built right into the deep structure of this realm, then, is a "Planck's Constant" of darkness and density. It belongs to the warp and weft of creation itself, and to dissolve it is to cancel the very conditions through which this realm makes its uniquely important contribution to the divine fullness.” — Cynthia Borgeault
Chant: Bind my Head and my Heart to You, O Holy One
Thursday, November 5th with LeMel
Reading: Sometimes When We Read a Poem Together
I feel how the poem moves through us,
less like a needle and thread that pierces
and binds us, though that, too,
but it’s more that the poem moves
through us the way a wind
swirls through a garden and carries
the scent of each flower,
charging the air with a perfume
created by the whole,
an ephemeral, alchemical sweetness
that honors the essence of everyone there,
how they bring to the moment the full
spectrum of their own unique experience,
and knowing it will never ever again
be like this, I trust, too, that it will
always and forever be like this,
trust we will gather and listen and feel
and become that ineffable, inevitable
fragrance, will become the honest
scent of shared aliveness, trust
that in every moment, every
single bloom in the garden matters.
— Rosemary Wahtola Trommer
Chant:
— LeMel Firestone-Palerm
Friday, November 6th with Catherine
Reading: Stranger
When no one listens
To the quiet trees
When no one notices
The sun in the pool.
Where no one feels
The first drop of rain
Or sees the last star
Or hails the first morning
Of a giant world
Where peace begins
And rages end:
One bird sits still
Watching the work of God:
One turning leaf,
Two fallings blossoms,
Ten circles upon the pond.
— Thomas Merton
Chant: Stillness, In the stillness God moves
Saturday, November 7th with Tom
Reading: Whether your usual political inclinations trend red or blue, I think most of us know that what was really at stake in this election was more than specific political platforms, it was the moral fiber of America itself. By whatever combination of grace and grit, that fiber has reasserted itself at the grass roots level. It is indeed a new playing field, a collective reawakening to the principles of compassion, decency, truthfulness and courage.
Here at Wisdom Waypoints, it is supremely a time for rolling up our sleeves. In Introductory Wisdom schools we’ve learned for years how the great underground stream of Wisdom tends to come above ground either during times of great planetary crisis or at the headwaters of a quantum leap forward in the evolution of human consciousness. It is clear that our world for several decades now has been careening toward precisely this junction point. How we collectively play out the new hand so decisively dealt by the American electorate last night will likely have a disproportionate influence on the future course of our history, and of our planet itself.
With a resounding voice Americans have proclaimed they are tired of the lies, the polarization, the callous cruelty and flagrant dismissal of basic ethical principles that have characterized the political climate in recent years. They want a return to a collective morality grounded in truth and mutual respect. They want to live at a higher level of human integrity more honoring of the image of God written in each person. And they are hungry for the insights and tools that allow them to actually walk the talk.
Insights and tools: from time immemorial, that is what Wisdom Schools have been all about. Grounded in the principle of three-centered awareness (head, heart, body), they have held firm to the wisdom understanding that the key to skillful right action lies in the practices that allow our minds and hearts to gradually become wise, spacious, and forbearing.
— Letter from Cynthia Bourgeault, November 6, 2026
Chant: Come O Child Lay it down, just breath, just be
— Alexa Sunshine Rose, The Arms of Love
Sunday, November 8th with Joy
Reading: “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven." — Matthew 5:14-16 [NKJV]
One possible way to interpret this verse, from the Aramaic (interpretation by Joy):
You are all shining radiance, flowing together with other sparkling beams of light, in time outside of time, in the heart of the One. A radiance such as we are isn’t meant to be hidden by our thoughts of what we think we are or should be, or our beliefs, but set out as a witness to God’s presence and love in the world. Reclaim the light that is within and among us from the beginningless beginning, that we may perceive with our hearts the fruits of the spirit honoring our author and nourisher, from whom it all flows forth and to whom it all returns.
— Joy Andrews Hayter
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