Readings week of October 6th.

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Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses

*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*

Tuesday, October 7th with LeMel

Readings: "Somehow we must keep hope alive - a hope that we can find a way to educate all, alleviate poverty, assuage anger, and live in harmony with the environment, with animals and with each other." – Dr. Jane Goodall

"In the practice of conscious love you begin to discover...a hope that is related not to outcome but to a wellspring... a source of strength that wells up from deep within you independent of all outcomes... It is a hope that can never be taken away from you because it is love itself working in you, conferring the strength to stay present..." – Cynthia Bourgeault, Love is Stronger Than Death

Chant: There is a love/hope begot in me which is endless by Paulette Meier

Wednesday, October 8th with LeMel

Readings: “Everything eats and is eaten,” Gurdjieff would often say (In Search of the Miraculous, p. 97). This stark phrase points us to our intrinsic responsibility. We are both recipients and participants in the vast cosmic ecology of reciprocal feeding. Heather Ruce in recent Exercise Circle material.

Becoming a Lamp

Forget the world, and so

   command the world.

Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder.

Help someone’s soul heal.

Walk out of your house like a shepherd.

Stay in the spiritual fire.

Let it cook you.

Be a well-baked loaf

   and lord of the table.

Come and be served to your brothers (and sisters).

You have been a source of pain.

Now you’ll be the delight.

You have been an unsafe house.

Now you’ll be the One

   Who sees into the Invisible.

I said this, and a Voice came to my ear,

   “If you become this, you will be That!”

Then silence,

   and now more Silence.

A mouth is not for talking.

A mouth is for tasting this Sweetness.

Rumi

Chant: A mouth is not for talking. A mouth is for tasting this Sweetness. Stay in the spiritual fire. Let it cook you. Be a well baked loaf. Come and be served to your siblings. A mouth is not for talking. A mouth is for tasting this Sweetness. - LeMel Firestone-Palerm

Thursday, October 9th with Lacey

Reading: "Contemplative prayer is a way of being present to God that transcends words. It is being lovingly present to the present moment, in which we experience the Presence that utterly transcends us and yet is closer to us than we are to ourselves." — Jim Finley

Chant: Come to know the one in the presence before you, and everything hidden, all will be revealed – Darlene Franz

Friday, October 10th with Joy

Reading: “At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is so to speak His name written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our sonship. It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely ... I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is every- where.”― Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

Chant: Don’t go away, come near, come to the root of the root of your Self by Joy Andrews Hayter

Saturday, October 11th with Lacey

Reading: Gospel of Thomas Logion 3:

"Yeshua says:If your spiritual guides say to you,  "Look, the divine Realm is in the sky," well then the birds will get there ahead of you.If they say, "It is in the sea," 

then the fish will precede you.

No, divine Reality exists inside and all around you.Only when you have come to know your true Self 

will you be fully known --realizing at last that you are a child of the Living One."

Chant: Draw us deeper into silence, draw us into you. Draw us deeper into stillness, draw us into you. – Henry Schoenfield

Sunday, October 12th

Reading: “Our purpose transforms to serving whatever is needed, not what we predefined as purposeful. We open to the world that is, curious to discover what is needed from us, willing to engage on the world's terms, not ours. 

“And then meaning finds us. Not in grand gestures and large-scale projects, but moment to moment when we are available and willing to stay present: to someone who needs to talk; in meetings when a heated atmosphere is cooled by our calm presence; in team sessions when we attend to how people are doing, not just what they do; in our families when we are more patient, more available; in processes where we create the conditions for thinking and reflection, refusing to leap into action before we have understood the problem.” – Margaret J. Wheatley, Who Do We Choose to Be?

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