Sunday February 11: God is With Me

To Practice

• Pray these passages again in the manner of Lectio Divina, speaking them out loud to engage your senses and affirm them in your being. Can you distinguish between hearing and listening? To what are you being asked to “obey” – to understand and respond?

• Try this simple prayer as you prepare for your Centering Prayer practice:

I need You.
I trust You.
I am listening.
Here I am.

• Reflect on the words of this song (3:05 minutes) and journal. Reread your reflection before or after your next Centering Prayer practice. “To be still and know/That You’re in this place/Please let me stay and rest/In Your holiness”
  • How does it feel to be still?
  • Do you have any human words for the holiness of God?
  • How does it feel to be cleaned?
  • What word might God be speaking to you?

If you wish, you may re-read the full email reflection here: https://mailchi.mp/coutreach/word-of-the-week-feb11

I noticed in today’s reflection on Guideline # 35 that where the original statement in OMOH read ” as God manifests HIMSELF in our lives; we now say ” the acceptance of God, as God manifests GODSELF in our lives.

If I’m reading it right, this evokes for me a deeper, mutual experience. We are beginning to unite with God,; we are no longer separate. The word GODSELF triggered some deep reflection, pondering.The path of Centering prayer goes EVER DEEPER!

Frank Pendola

 

 

 

 

 

“But indeed we exist solely for this, to be the place He has chosen for His presence, His manifestation in the world, His epiphany.” – Thomas Merton

In the stillness, a reflection on the infinite nature of God (Isaiah 57:15).

And so the love of God is with us in our journey now and continues into eternity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am being asked to “obey” – to listen and respond – to strengthening my discernment muscles. I get caught up in life’s weather. I think I have listened and heard, yet find instead I have, as Gerald May writes, “rushed ahead of grace”. God asks me to be still wait out the storms. With Jesus asleep in the bottom of my boat, storms are just weather. <3 linda

Interestingly, the first decade of my life as does entering the current decade began with Valentine’s day and Ash Wednesday on the same day. The image offered this week has drawn me this liminal space in tones of browns/oranges. The images of persons to the right represent my intervening decades, the observer, the curious one, the question asking one: “If you want to …. you can…?”, engaging in the response ” I want to, be clean”; rushing of into the decade connected by that brief touch of  eyes/hands. This week I keep returning to Visio/lectio- ing,  moving deeper in something abyss-like , being totally absorbed by,  Jesus bent over, eyeball to eyeball, his eyes penetrating mine, his enveloping hands covering mine, lingering. This enveloping abyss is totally opposite to the haunting abyss of despair; a lingering sh-sh-shush timeless moment.

In order to hone my capacity for discernment, I am being commanded to obey by listening and responding. The storms of life engulf me. Despite my best efforts, I seem to have “rushed ahead of grace” rather than listening and heard, to paraphrase Gerald May. God has told me to be calm and wait out the storm. Storms are merely weather as long as Jesus is sleeping in my boat.

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