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- Sunday October 22: Love Is My Name
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To Practice
- Prayerfully reread these passages again in the manner of Lectio Divina, perhaps aloud so you can engage more of your senses. What becomes enlivened in you?
- As you engage in Centering Prayer, remember that, like the coin with Caesar’s image, you also bear the image of God within you. As you center yourself in prayer and silence do so with a desire that you might receive the Spirit’s grace to navigate the complexities of your life with wisdom, love, and compassion, balancing your earthly duties with your spiritual calling. In this way, your Centering Prayer practice can become a source of divine guidance and a reminder of your deeper purpose in the world.
- Watch this 7-minute video from Thomas Keating, “A Word About Service,” where he discusses serving versus helping, servant leadership and Jesus as our model, as well as what it means to serve the whole human race.
You may wish to re-read the full email reflection here: https://mailchi.mp/coutreach/word-of-the-week-oct22
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“Give to God what belongs to God.” All of creation, in its magnificence and mystery, is a gift. I return it to God by caring for it as something sacred. It is not mine to consume or corrupt. My time in silence allows me to care for my inner self. Emerging from the silence, I am prompted to care for my fellow humans along with the humblest of rocks and the loftiest of eagles. Let me learn from my indigenous brothers and sisters how to live in harmony with my world, inner and outer.
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These readings are so rich, but I have to limit myself to what struck me as in Lectio Divina. “To put it boldly, contemplation is the only ultimate answer to the unreal and insane world that our financial systems and our advertising culture and our chaotic and unexamined emotions encourage us to inhabit.” To which I would add the Internet and how it is used for great good and great evil. I have friends and grandchildren who are complete brainwashed by what they have read on the internet. It is like hypnosis where evil suggestions are inserted into the unconscious and folks don’t know why they are doing the crazy things they do. This leads to selfish, hateful and unloving acts. Is it any wonder that we seek contemplation to return to God fleeing all the idols of the world foisted on us by advertising, TV,movies and now Facebook, “X”, Tic Toc and Instagram. Thank God for CO. What a great gift Fr. Keating gave us. And CO generously follows his example to give it to the world using the Internet for good to overcome evil. Miracle of miracle, we know from the history of the world, since the beginning of time, good has always overcome evil, but always at tremendous sacrifice including the death of Jesus on the cross.
Why did I pick this quote? Because I have been formed to a great extent unconsciously not by the bombardment of love, joy and peace in my life, but by the modern day idols. They have formed “my chaotic and unexamined emotions.” Yet as the Psalm says, I can find peace and joy and God in the silence of my heart, in centering prayer. And then like Fr. Keating, I must share it. It is great that it changes me from selfishness to love, but do I then help good overcome evil as it has done down through history? That is my challenge to be like Fr. Keating. CO is the personification of Fr. Keating so his work goes on thank God. Not only to make each of us better, but to make the world better.
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We don’t possess our own lives. We are stewards of the life that God has given us, and for however long God continues to give us breath. This sentence popped into my awareness this week as I struggled through Visio Divina with the image and a recent dream that kept reoccurring. I am at a large gathering. I had settled into the seat that became mine. I keep doing this, then one time someone is in my seat, so I just move into another one quite near. This time I am seated dear someone whose suffering is quite evident. Non verbally my heart reaches out to him. The next time I re-enter the conference room after a break, the seat available in this section is his, so I take it. I am uncomfortable, but I seat myself in this chair. The next re-entry, there are no seats available. I try to appear unconcerned as I move farther and farther back. I slip into one of three seats available in one of the most obscure, out of the way seats, perhaps for someone auditing the sessions. In the Vision, I go down down through that inner opinging, seeking to go deep enough to become that person God is creating me to be. In another Visio I am coming up from an inner depth, coming, coming as the exterior envelops me as I consent to losing myself into a light-filled nothingness. I have spent years of my life becoming someone that God would love, only to be discovering this nothingness that I really am is what is happening as I consent to stewarting that that life whose name, who for a few chronos years is known as ADELINE. Stewarting is not auditing a life, it is giving it away according to the ONE who is fashioning it into a NO-THING. So, Adeline, more stewarting and less being someone!
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Adeline: Wow, such a profound witness. I bow to you as you swim the depths of nothingness. I love what you said: “Stewarding is not auditing a life; it is giving it away according to the ONE who is fashioning it into a NO-THING.” – Pamela
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Archbishop Rowan’s sentence enlivened me this past week. “To learn contemplative practice is to learn what we need so as to live truthfully and honestly and lovingly.” His words infer ongoing practice, as my experience has also confirmed. Always aiming to live thankfully, honestly, and lovingly despite all outward appearances to the contrary. Thank God for silence. <3 linda
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