Sunday December 1: Naked Love, Defiant Courage, Salty Grace

To Practice

• Prayerfully re-read these passages again in the manner of Lectio Divina, reading them aloud to engage more of your senses and feel the vibrations in your body. Gaze at the image. What do you receive for your journey now?
• Listen to this 17-minute audio recording of a talk Thomas Keating gave in 2007 on Advent and the curriculum the liturgy offers us. “… The Divine Love is the flowing of this stream of pure gratuitous love and goodness and beauty and truth. It’s in being immersed or being drawn into that immense stream of love that is the purpose of liturgy or of contemplation or of the whole spiritual life.  Advent then is about being drenched in the immensity of Divine Light as a first step in this immense course …” You may find a transcript of this recording here.
• Thank you to all who have donated to support The Word of the Week. If you have not yet donated and would like to support this free offering to a global community of 4800 practitioners, please do so here. Any and all donations are greatly appreciated.

If you would like to re-read this week’s email, you may do so here: https://mailchi.mp/coutreach/2024_word-of-the-week-dec1

“You do your best to reach out tenderly to touch and elevate as many people as you can reach. You bring your naked love and defiant courage and salty grace to bear as much as you can, with all the attentiveness and humor you can muster.”

Brian Doyle’s words brings to mind one of my foundational parenting phrases: do your best. Times are that my best, along with all the attentiveness and humor I can muster, means yesterday’s best/attentiveness may have been greater than today’s. Today, I lean into the humor. Tomorrow, I vow again to love my best, trusting God takes it and blesses it for my good and for the edification of as many people as I can reach. <3 linda

How true ..knowing i did my best, i am compassionate with myself . Knowing that about myself, i assume good will in others, even if they fail. Maybe assuming good will is a way to lead others into goodness.

During our Wednesday gathering this past week, the phrase ” The carnation continues in us, as us” , intermingling with the image took me to that very real and wordless place, at first myself, then all of us. Today I pause and wonder, does the depth of this  awareness and reality end with my/our last breath or does plumbing these depths continue in our forever home as a personal experience? a collective experience, no longer them and us? or ??????. This afternoon I simply rest as I am, as we are, open, consenting to morphing into … the Christ….

[Author]

Posts