Heather Ruce

WISDOM SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR

Pause Readings & Reflections

Readings week of January 19th.

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here * Monday, January 19th with LeMel Reading: Forty-One For Beginnings Open my eyes, O Eternal, to change; Fill me with longing for possibilities. Let my life before be stepping blocks To what you want me to become. Open my eyes, O Eternal, to change; Let me write beyond my narrow descriptions To begin a new narrative, Underlined with your name. Open my heart, O Eternal

5 days ago5 min read

Readings week of January 12th.

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here * Monday, January 12th with Tom Reading: The Courage To Fully See From Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life Maybe, for the time being, we have to accept the many fluctuations between knowing and not knowing, seeing and not seeing, feeling and not feeling, between days in which the whole world seems like a rose garden and days in which our hearts se

Jan 125 min read

Epiphanies in our own lives.

Dear Ones, Last Tuesday we marked the feast of Epiphany, the celebration of Christ’s incarnation revealed to the world—a revelation whose tide does not end in a single day, but continues to unfold. As we have been exploring together , our task of participation, our post, in the Ray of Creation during these seasons is the ongoing formation, birthing, and revelation of the Christic Realm— World 12 —within us, and through our own lives. From the perspective of World 48 and W

Jan 118 min read

Readings week of December 29th.

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here * Monday, December 29th Reading : Now God says to us What He has already said to the earth as a whole Through His grace-filled birth: I am there. I am with you. I am your life. I am your time. I am the gloom of your daily routine. Why will you not hear it? I weep your tears – pour yours out to me. I am your joy. Do not be afraid to be happy; ever since I wept, joy

Jan 45 min read

Christmastide and the Ray of Creation.

Dear Ones, The season of Christmastide is now upon us, carrying its quiet yet important invitation to be present to what has been birthed once again. If we turn to the Ray of Creation as a way of understanding what the “tide” of Christmas is truly about, we begin to glimpse the deeper significance of the Incarnation and its implications for our own lives and spiritual work. As Cynthia Bourgeault has taught, when God brought creation into existence, it was not fashioned a

Dec 29, 20259 min read

Readings week of December 15th.

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here * Monday, December 15th with Lacey Reading: “Come, Lord, Jesus,” the Advent mantra, means that all of Christian history has to live out a kind of deliberate emptiness, a kind of chosen non-fulfillment. This keeps the field of life wide open and especially open to the grace and to a future created by God rather than ourselves. This is exactly what it means to be “awak

Dec 22, 20256 min read

Deeper currents of gift giving and feasting.

Dear Ones, We are now in the third week of Advent, drawing closer to the celebration of Christmas. For many of us, this season is marked by familiar rituals with those we love, such as exchanging gifts and sharing a special meal or feast. On the horizontal plane of ordinary life—what Cynthia Bourgeault’s Christian Wisdom lineage names World 48 —these rituals matter deeply. They help weave meaning, belonging, and continuity into our lives. When, for any reason, we are unable

Dec 8, 20258 min read

Readings week of December 1st.

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here * Monday, December 1st Readings: “Advent is a journey towards Bethlehem. May we let ourselves be drawn by the light of God made man.” — Pope Francis “For outlandish creatures like us, on our way to a heart, a brain, and courage, Bethlehem is not the end of our journey but only the beginning – not home but the place through which we must pass if ever we are to reach

Dec 1, 20254 min read

The Sacrament of Advent begins.

Dear Ones, Today we begin the observance of Advent, the tender, expectant season leading us toward the celebration of Christ's birth and the opening of the liturgical year. Advent asks us to grow wider in heart and perception, to lean into the inherent metaphysical paradoxes at its core. We are asked to be present to what seems like opposites: that Holy Origin, Spirit, and Eternal Logos (Word) entered the world in human form as a vulnerable, preverbal infant, and that same di

Nov 30, 20257 min read

Moving beyond fear.

Dear Ones, Wisdom is calling us to know, rest in, trust, and embody down to the cellular level, our capacity to operate from the deeper self rooted in Origin, God, the Holy One. From this rooted and awake inner stance, we can move beyond our automatic fear and the aggression that often follows. There is a reason the most common charge in the ancient biblical texts is “Do not be afraid” or “Fear not.” Humans, like all other animals, experience fear as automatic, overwhelmin

Nov 23, 20259 min read

Readings week of November 10th.

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here * Monday, November 10th Chants: Sink into the taproot of your heart – Heather Ruce Mercy, Mercy, Mercy, deep within and all around – Henry Schoenfield Tuesday, November 11th Chant: Come be with me, all you who carry heavy burdens, I will give you rest, I will give you rest – chanted by Colleen Thomas Wednesday, November 12th Reading: " We succeeded in ta

Nov 10, 20253 min read

Rooted, awake, and skillfully responsive.

Dear Ones, In these times of great unraveling , when so much of what we have known is shifting beneath our feet, many of us sense a call to something deeper—not to escape the world’s pain, but to remain rooted, awake, and responsive within it. There is an call to hold our post with steadiness and love, to remember who we are beneath our small sense of self and all the noise, and to let that remembrance guide how we move, serve, and rest. Our post—as we have been exploring

Nov 9, 20256 min read

Readings week of October 27th.

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here * Monday, October 27th with LeMel Reading: 'Kindness' by Naoimi Nye Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you

Nov 2, 20258 min read

A deeper inner wellspring.

Dear Ones, How are we to move beyond simply managing crises to co-creating a new pattern of being that is adequate to the complexity and sacredness of the world? How do we stand rooted and firm—clear in mind, emotion, and body—as death/birth doulas, midwives, and shepherds able to see and act skillfully rather than be swept up in polarization or despair? We know that when basic human needs are threatened, the main survival strategies physiologically wired in us are fighti

Oct 26, 20256 min read

Rooted and awake.

Dear Ones, In the last email, we looked at the living map of the Ray of Creation and how it can be helpful to find ourselves within it, so as to inform the way we live. It is one way of framing the task that we are being invited to take up, the post we are to hold as participants in the divine exchange. We might consider this a map that describes and orients us more toward the vertical dimension of reality. Now, we will turn our attention more fully to the horizontal dimen

Oct 12, 20258 min read

Readings week of October 6th.

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 wells

Oct 7, 20254 min read