Heather Ruce

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, October 12th Reading: Praise to you, Saint Francis of Assisi, brother to the sun and the moon, to birds and worms, fire and wind. Your unconditional love of creation excludes no one. When you embraced the leper, anything left between you and your God melted away. In our habitual grasping, we have lost the joy of letting go. Whisper in our ear, Francis. Let un

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, October 5th Reading: Poem of the Atoms O’ day, arise! shine your light , the atoms are dancing Thanks to Him the universe is dancing, overcome with ecstasy , free from body and mind I’ll whisper in your ear where their dance is leading them. All the atoms in the air and in the desert are dancing , puzzled and bemused to the ray of light, they seem insane. All

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, September 28th Reading: “A God who makes a world capable of its own becoming is a God who has taken a risk, who has let the other be, knowing the other might go astray. Theologians call this kenosis, the self-emptying of God. Usually it is read as a statement about the divine nature, but Paul describes an act, not a substance: God does not cling to Godhood. W

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, September 21st with Catherine Reading: I am circling silence the way a buzzard circles the dead, as if silence is something to be fed on, as if I might bring it into my body for nourishment. What if instead I let myself be consumed by silence? How might I live then? — Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer Chant: Oh Silence, I entrust myself to you that I may be trans

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, September 14th Reading: Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready-made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die. And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery any more. Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a little d

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, September 7th Reading: “As a young man, I was told to hurry up, if I wanted to win the race of greatness. Turned out it wasn’t a race but a maze. And finding no way out, my friends and I secretly wanted to be king of the maze because we couldn’t find the kingdom within, which time revealed as not the grit or fairy tale of castles, but the wild and gentle gras

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, August 31st Reading: “The ego is the interior movement we experience when we do not get what we want; it is also the experience of near uncontainable highs when we do get what we want. Obviously the ego is the experience of extremes—extreme feelings, that is—and for this reason it can easily imbalance the whole psyche or consciousness.... The ego is the exper

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, August 24th Reading: “Impressionistically, the imaginal penetrates this denser world in much the same way as the fragrance of perfume penetrates an entire room, subtly enlivening and harmonizing. . . The imaginal is the quality of aliveness moving through this realm, interpenetrating, cohering, filling things with the fragrance of implicit meaning whose lines

Good day, good people, First of all, I am ever grateful to you for joining the Daily Collective Contemplative Pauses. I find it essential to my daily rhythm to be co-creating and tuning into a palpable field of letting go with all of you. Whether you are practicing Centering Prayer or another form of quiet meditation, our shared intention to become open and available to the Divine Source supports us all. I also wanted to invite you to participate in Working with Gurdjieff

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, August 10th Chant: When were you ever made less by dying? Tuesday, August 11th Chant: Let the love that dwells in your hearts, shine forth in your deeds… — Poor Clare’s of Arundel Wednesday, August 12th Chant: You the One, One in All, say I Am, I Am You — The Oriental Orthodox Order in the West Thursday, August 13th Reading: “But give me the strength that w

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, August 3rd with Joy Reading: You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, your whole soul, your whole mind, and with all your strength: this is the first commandment. The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’. — Mark 12:29-30 One possible interpretation of this verse, from the Aramaic (The Peshitta, found at dukhrana.com) i

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, July 27th with Faye Reading: Thomas Merton is another contemporary mystic who in the final years of his life came to an acute appreciation of this state of “no-self.” [Here is a section of ] his brilliant but challenging reflection on fana (“self-annihilation” in Islamic mysticism), offered in the course of an ongoing correspondence with the Islamic scholar A

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, July 20th Chant: Created world, creative world, between two worlds a bridge (2x), be sure you understand this, be sure you understand, be sure you understand this, between two worlds a bridge (2x), you yourself, within yourself a bridge, between two worlds a bridge (2x), be sure you understand this, be sure you understand, be sure you understand this, between

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, July 13th Reading: “The transformative art of ripening occurs in the fundamental arenas of life. For example, when a young couple gets married, they look forward to what they hope will be a lifetime of love and happiness together. As the years go by, they ripen as they learn to surrender to a love that guides and fulfills their ongoing efforts to love each ot

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, July 6th Reading:“Our work is to cross a threshold into emptiness and stillness. It is like entering an empty room that proves to hold a great presence. The apparent emptiness of simple presence is richer than the crowded experience of ordinary personality. We can either be empty with Spirit or full of ourselves. “The barriers before us include our thoughts a

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, June 29th Reading: “Conscious struggle requires choice and acceptance. It must not be my state that dictates the choice. I must choose the struggle to be present and accept that suffering will appear. There is no struggle without suffering. Struggle is unacceptable to our lower nature; struggle upsets it. This is why it is so important always to remember what

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, June 22nd Reading: ”This thing you call your life, it is a living thing. Made of spirit and bone. Suppleness, softness, and severity. Notice the music of it. The air between notes. The silence in the breath of the melody. If you do not sing your life, it will not be alive. All living things are made of song and hunger for song. If you do not harvest your sorr

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, June 15th Reading: “What does the reflecting pool reflect when we look into its still waters? Does it reveal a people at peace within themselves or does it show a society broken and conflicted? Do we like what we see or is it a vision from which we turn away? These are questions to reflect upon. May Spirit give us the gift to see ourselves as we really are,

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, June 8th Reading: I am an inhabitant of this body. I dwell within it, deeply rooted in its nature, so much so that it is easy to think that we are one thing, yet it is more difficult to sense it because my awareness always separates itself from my sensation to one degree or another. And this is the moment when I bring them together here in the same pl

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, June 1st Reading: Eternal Source of Life, you are the core of our being. Flow through our bodies like a life-giving river. Wash and transform the negative conditions in our hearts, minds, bodies, and circumstances with light, love, and grace. — Ray Simpson Chant: I am Present to the Presence, it is my only care, I am held by the Presence, the fountain of

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, May 25th Reading: “Centering prayer as a discipline is designed to withdraw our attention from the ordinary flow of our thoughts. We tend to identify ourselves with that flow. But there is a deeper part of ourselves. This prayer opens our awareness to the spiritual level of our being. This level might be compared to a great river on which our memories, images

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, May 18th with Tom Guided Meditation by Debbie de la Cuesta Let's begin by arriving…. I invite you to close your eyes, take a long slow breath- Sensing how it infuses you… and a slow, unhurried breath out. Find a pace that allows you to arrive- Opening, allowing, settling like falling snow just letting yourself come here. On your next exhale, Let yourself rest

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, May 11th with Tom Reading: Ours is not the work of seeking You here or there or where we think you might be, But of opening the heart's door. And when we do this, You cannot resist coming in, since our opening and Your entering are one: You knock and wait, and when we open we find that You were there all along and will not leave us. — Meister Eckhar

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, May 4th with Tom Reading: I remember one morning when I discovered a cocoon in the back of a tree just as a butterfly was making a hole in its case and preparing to come out. I waited awhile, but it was too long appearing and I was impatient. I bent over it and breathed on it to warm it. I warmed it as quickly as I could and the miracle began to happen befo