Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses
Monday, October 21st with Chris
Reading: "Subtraction" by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
For months now, the days darken.
This signals the trees to stop making chlorophyll,
and, in its absence, other pigments in the leaves
can be seen. Yellow flavonols. Orange carotenoids.
Red anthocyanins. They adorn each tree
with such radiance, such honest treasure—a beauty that was always there,
concealed beneath the green.
Touch me, I want to say to the darkness.or perhaps more truly, I say to the self,
be touched, be touched as if you are a tree.
Let what you know of yourself break down.
What hidden gold might be revealed then?
What amber? What astonishing vermillion?"
Chant: The streams of my Father’s Love run daily through me, the streams of my Mother’s Love run daily through me, from the holy Fountain of Life, to the seed throughout the whole Creation. (by Paulette Meier)
Tuesday, October 22nd with Tom
Reading: “The immense difference that exists between hope and wishfulness is revealed in the remarks of a student who wrote: “I see hope as an attitude where everything stays open before me. Not that I don't think of my future in those moments, but I think of it in an entirely different way. Daring to stay open to whatever will come to me today, tomorrow, two months from now, or a year from now—that is hope. To go fearlessly into things without knowing how they'll turn out, to keep on going, even when something doesn't work the first time, to have trust in whatever you're doing—that is living with hope.”
“When we live with hope we do not get tangled up with concerns for how our wishes will be fulfilled. So, too, our prayers are not directed toward the gift, but toward the one who gives it. Our prayers might still contain just as many desires, but ultimately it is not a question of having a wish come true but of expressing an unlimited faith in the giver of all good things. You wish that…but you hope in….” ― Henri J.M. Nouwen, With Open Hands
Chant: Open our hands (hearts, lives)
Wednesday, October 23rd with Joy
Reading: “Once you've learned where to place your inner observer, you automatically discover what its real purpose is. It's there to connect the two worlds in you. It is not, as frequently assumed, a way of bailing out of your small self into your larger self, escaping the horizontal axis of your being in favor of the vertical. Rather, it lives at the intersection of the two axes, and its purpose is to bring them into meaningful alignment. As I said earlier, its job is to be simultaneously present, without prejudice, to both the contents of consciousness and the field itself." ― Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, p.130
Chant: Inner life of being, bearing life within me, Come (by Darlene Franz)
Thursday, October 24th with Joy
Reading: "It is commonly thought that the goal [of the inner witness] is to override or destroy the lower, or egoic, self and replace it with the higher self. But this is really not what is intended. What is intended is a marriage of the two, so that the lower with its essential uniqueness and the higher with its transpersonal brilliance come together as a true individuality. The witnessing presence looks compassionately in both directions, allowing us to see the whole picture and be the whole picture.
"Because of its primary function as connection, then, the witness is not about dissociation. It is not about "making a religion out of one's better moments," using the higher self to suppress the lower self. In fact, as virtually all genuine spiritual teachers insist, its real function is to bring you into a state of presence, to back you down out of your mind into a full embodiment of your being, so you can feel that the "I am" that courses through God and Jesus is coursing through you as well." Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, p.130-131
Friday, October 25th with Tom
Reading: "Creating moon, by working with whatever pattern we have chosen over these many weeks, has required a long period of self-observation.
"This kind of self-observation also brings with it the task of sacrificing our suffering. Red Hawk reminds us, “Inevitably, such observation leads to constant identification and results in suffering, because such ‘i’s’ begin slowly to see that they are helpless. This leads to an ever-deepening series of shocks, which gradually serve the function of awakening the unconscious Being within. Now a new force, from a different level, has entered the field of observation. The awakening of the Being provides new possibilities” (Self-Remembering, p.90-91).
"This is helpful news. As we are willing to sacrifice our suffering—identifications with “all self-pity, all self-cradling, vanity, secret, absurd fears, all self-sentimentality, all inner accounting, all pitiful pictures, all sighs, inner groans, and complaints”—they are “burned up in the fire of increasing Consciousness” (Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p.1090). This is the sacred alchemy that we participate in, thus we needn’t be disturbed by what we see in our unconscious center of gravity or moon but rather can be grateful that the seeing provides the material that continues to feed the conscious center of gravity or inner moon." — Collective Contemplative Pauses 10/20/24 from Heather Ruce
“The hardest work we may ever do is simply to see.” — Tom
Chant:
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
that saved a soul like me,
I once was lost but now am found
was blind but now I see.
Saturday, October 26th with Tom
Reading: "How Can I Possess You?"
Do not be content with the God
you think about, for when this
thinking comes to an end you lose
the one you thought about as God.
Trust that you already have God
in your heart, for God is always
already there, and in that trust
you will find God shining out
To you in everything in your life.
— Meister Eckhart’s Book of the Heart, by Sweeney and Burrows, p.124
Chant:
Be the one
when you walk in
whose blessing flows
to the one
who needs it most.
Even if you haven’t been fed
be bread, be bread.
Even if you haven’t been fed
be bread, be bread.
— Rumi (ala Tom)
Sunday, October 27th with Joy
Reading: "Then Jesus said to his disciples, “whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life with lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” — Matthew 16:24-25
One interpretation from and Aramaic lens (looking at the Peshitta New Testament in Aramaic, in which one root word often has many meanings):
Whoever deeply desires/ consents to be my disciple should purify their appetite/will / accept mercy and forgiveness, and receive being comforted / lifted up as whole, and follow me.
"However, whoever wants to preserve their own life, or appetites and identifications, will cause it to be lost, and whoever is willing to let go of / surrender their identifications and desires etc for my sake/ on my behalf, will find their inner being, in the sense of uncovering hidden treasure."
Chant: Leave all things behind, come and follow me (by Darlene Franz)
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