Readings week of April 21st.

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses

*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*

Monday, April 21st - Eastertide begins - with Catherine

Reading: “Way of the Cross - Way of Justice” by Leonardo Boff 

The risen Jesus penetrates the entire cosmos

pervades the whole world,

And makes his presence felt in every human being.

The resurrection is a process that began with Jesus

and will go on until it embraces all creation.

Wherever an authentically human life is growing the world,

Wherever justice is triumphing over the instincts of domination,

Wherever grace is winning out over the power of sin,

in their social life together,

Wherever love is getting the better of selfish interests

and hope is resisting the lure of cynicism or despair,

There the process of resurrection is being turned into reality.  

Chant: With you is the well of life and in your light we see light (by Susan Latimer)

Wednesday, April 23rd with Heather

Reading: “I am dead because I lack desire. I lack desire because I think I possess. I think I possess because I do not try to give. In trying to give, I see that I have nothing. Seeing that I have nothing, I try to give of myself. In trying to give of myself, I see that I am nothing. Seeing that I am nothing, I desire to become. In desiring to become, I begin to be.” — René Domale, Mount Analog

Chant: Take o take me as I am, summon out what I shall be, set your seal upon my heart, and live in me

Thursday, April 24th with Heather

Reading: “We must not have any attitude of blame towards people for what is occurring; this is a cosmic event, this is what Gurdjieff called Solioonensius, (in Beelzebub’s Tales) a state of tension when people – all people – become intensely dissatisfied with the situation in which they find themselves and they react to this state of dissatisfaction differently….

“…this is a very great opportunity, even if the smallest number of people can manage to preserve a constant state of compassion and abstain from criticism. This does not mean putting away one’s critical faculty which is quite a different thing; it does not mean seeing that mistakes are made. All this we have to do. It is to not criticize people for doing what they can’t help doing; not to find fault where people are being carried along by a stream without any possibility of changing the course of events. If the course of events is to be changed as I believe it will, and I am not a pessimist, not an alarmist about the situation; in fact I am more optimistic than almost anyone can be because I have complete conviction that there is a higher power working in human life at this time, with far greater wisdom and far greater resources than we have any notion of. But this confidence does not mean that I think that human beings can help and put the situation right. And as I have said over and over again in the past year or two, our task is, to my mind perfectly clear: to do everything we can to make ourselves into instruments for the higher wisdom channels through which this wisdom can flow, putting aside our worn wisdom, putting aside any belief in our own powers, to allow the higher power to work through us. Perhaps very wonderful things will happen.

“So, this is the message that I have given again. Perhaps there is greater urgency just now because perhaps the period of maximum tension is now approaching, and it will be very, very alarming for quite some time to come.” — This Time We Are In by John G. Bennett May 16, 1970   12 days after Kent State shootings

Friday, April 25th with Lacey

Reading: “Simeon the New Theologian, a Greek Orthodox spiritual master of the late tenth century describes what he called “attention of the heart” in his essay “Three Forms of Attention and Prayer,”… Presence, or as Simeon calls it, “attention of the heart,” is the capacity to be fully engaged at every level of one’s being: alive and simultaneously present to both God and the situation at hand. Developing attention of the heart is all-important, Simeon maintains, because without it, it is impossible to acquire sufficient inner strength to fulfill the beatitudes…. Only when the mind is “in the heart,” grounded and tethered in that deeper wellspring of spiritual awareness, is it possible to live the teachings of Jesus without hypocrisy or burnout. The gospel requires a radical openness and compassion that are beyond the capacity of the anxious, fear-ridden ego concerned with fulfilling its programs for happiness (power/control, esteem/affection, survival/security.)” — Cynthia Bourgeault, The Heart of Centering Prayer

“The heart is the innermost axis of the self where the divine life and our life are one life.” — James Finley, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere

Chant: Sink into the taproot of your heart (by Heather Ruce)

Saturday, April 26th with Lacey

Reading: “The heart is first and foremost an organ of spiritual perception. Kabir Helminski gives a succinct description of the heart as it has been understood in the Western inner spiritual tradition:

We have subtle subconscious faculties we are not using. Beyond the limited analytic intellect is a vast realm of mind that includes psychic and extrasensory abilities; intuition; wisdom; a sense of unity; aesthetic, qualitative, and creative faculties; and image-forming and symbolic capacities. Though these faculties are many, we give them a single name with some justification because they are operating best when they are in concert. They comprise a mind, moreover, in spontaneous connection with the cosmic mind. This total mind we call “heart.”

“In this beautiful definition, emphasis is placed on the heart’s capacity to create spontaneous inner alignment between the human individual and the “cosmic mind,” or God. Its job is to look deeper than the surface of things, deeper than that jumbled, reactive landscape of ordinary awareness, and to beam in on that deeper, ensheltering spiritual world in which our being is rooted. As the heart becomes strong and clear and you are able to follow its promptings reliably, you come into alignment with divine Being and are able to live authentically out of your true self.” — Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening 

Chant: Sink into the taproot of your heart (by Heather Ruce)

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