Daily Contemplative Pauses Readings
from last week
Monday, June 17th with Catherine
Reading: Just For Now by Danna Faulds
Just for now, without asking how, let yourself into stillness.
lay down the weight you so patiently bear upon your shoulders.
Feel the earth receive you, and the infinite expanse of the sky
grow even wider as your awareness reaches up to meet it.
Just for now, allow a wave of breath to enliven your experience.
breathe out whatever blocks you from your truth,
Just for now, be boundless, free, with awakened energy tingling in your hands and feet.
Drink in the possibility of being who and what you really are -
so fully alive that the world looks different, newly born and vibrant, just for now.
Chant: Come to see the One in the presence before you, And everything hidden, all will be revealed (by Darlene Franz)
Tuesday, June 18th with Catherine
Reading: "The present moment is the intersection of time with eternity, and when our consciousness is stayed on this, it rests and finds peace…
“Sabbath consciousness in us means the conjunction of opposites, the balancing and harmonization of our polarized qualities, the integration of our erstwhile fragmented selves, the realization of our profound unity. But this profound unity, in which we participate in the unity of God, must be a unity beyond form. Only the Infinite, the Formless, can ground all forms. Sabbath consciousness is formless, like the God to whom it is united. This is why it is characterized by the cessation of works…"
— Beatrice Bruteau, The Easter Mysteries
Chant: Be still and know I am God
Wednesday, June 19th with Catherine
Reading:
We can make our minds so like
still water that beings gather about us,
that they may see their own images,
and so live for a moment with a clearer,
perhaps even with a fiercer life
because of our quiet.
— William Butler Yeats
Chant:
by Paulette Meier
Thursday, June 20th with Catherine
Praying with Jesus at Rest: A Guided Meditation
It is reported of Jesus that he would go out into the hills and spend the whole night “in the prayer of God” (Luke 6:12). This is how he got down to that foundation where meekness stands in balance, where he knows and is sure of his Father’s love for him and his Father’s powerful presence in him. Let us use our imaginations to join with him in this meditation.
The town is sleeping. The day’s work of preaching and healing and teaching is not yet begun. Very early, while it is still dark, Jesus slips away to the hills outside the village. He finds a flat spot with a bit of grass and a smooth rock behind for a backrest, where he can sit and see the stars. There is room enough for us and we sit nearby.
There is deep silence all around. He lets himself be quiet, just be there, look at the distant hills, the broad sky. We can feel the night wind and wrap a cloak around us. We are in a good place. On the earth, under the heavens. Inside God. Just be there.....
Feel the quietness in Jesus, the deep peace in him, the peace he gives us. Realize that it is rooted in his faith and knowledge of God, in his desiring only God’s loving will. He doesn’t bother making himself unhappy over the details of his life, though his life is full of challenges. He is full of confidence and strength. Let this faith, security, restfulness, peace, confidence, strength, seep into you. Catch his rhythm, resonate with his inner pulse.
It isn’t that we deny or push away anything that comes into our awareness. But his grace is stronger, more attractive to our attention, truer, more vital. It fills our consciousness with healing and hope.
After awhile, we become aware that praying is going on. The earth is praying, the rocks, the ground, the grass, the trees, the distant rivers and the sea. The heavens are praying, the slender moon and all the stars. The awareness of the reality, the presence and the dearness of God is becoming palpable. We are all feeling it - the heavens, the earth, Jesus, ourselves. The prayer of all the world lifts gently all around us, like a great heart beating, like a giant breath rising and falling in rhythm. The prayer penetrates and permeates us. We rest in it and let it fill us...
It is God’s love. God’s love in the earth, God’s love in the heavens, God’s love in Jesus and in us. This is what we are, all of us; we are made of God’s love, breathing and beating, living gently moment by moment.
We become keenly aware of being made by and out of this pulsating divine presence. It surrounds and cradles us as a Parent. We feel a profound reverence for it, a reverence that reverberates through the whole creation and includes all these presences of God - in the earth, the heavens, Jesus, ourselves. And the more we feel this reverence, the deeper grows our sense of reality, of sureness, security, and stability. We are resting on the groundwork of reality in God’s love.
Here is everything we desire. Here is where the heart finds rest and has no inclination to move to this side or to that.
The wind stirs softly, caressing our faces, sharing its breath with ours. God’s breath, God’s Holy Spirit, blowing through us, all about us, inside us, outside us....In and out, out and in...We in God, God in us.
— Beatrice Bruteau, The Easter Mysteries
Friday, June 21st with Lacey
Reading: The Bell and the Blackbird by David Whyte
The sound of a bellStill reverberating,or a blackbird callingfrom a corner of the field,asking you to wakeinto this life,or inviting you deeperinto the one that waits.Either waytakes courage,either way wants youto be nothingbut that self thatis no self at all,wants you to walkto the placewhere you findyou already knowhow to giveevery last thingaway.The approachthat is alsothe meetingitself,without anymeetingat all.That radianceyou have alwayscarried with youas you walkboth aloneand completelyaccompaniedin friendshipby every cornerof the worldcryingAllelujah.
Chant: Come to know the One in the presence before you, and everything hidden all will be revealed
Saturday, June 22nd with Lacey
Reading: The Opening of Eyes by David Whyte
That day I saw beneath dark clouds
the passing light over the water
and I heard the voice of the world speak out,
I knew then, as I had before
life is no passing memory of what has been
nor the remaining pages in a great book
waiting to be read.
It is the opening of eyes long closed.
It is the vision of far off things
seen for the silence they hold.
It is the secret conversing
speaking out loud in the clear air.
It is Moses in the desert
fallen to his knees before the lit bush.
It is the man throwing away his shoes
as is to enter heaven
and finding himself astonished,
opened at last,
fallen in love with solid ground.
Chants: Put the mind in the Heart, stand before the Lord with the mind in the Heart / In You is the well of Life and in Your Light We see Light
Sunday, June 23rd with Tom
Chants: When we are with you what fear of loss could we possibly have… We swim in mercy as in an endless sea, we swim in mercy as in an endless sea
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