Lectio Divina - One hundred and twenty-nine

Richard Rohr, adapted from Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer, pp. 17-19.

How do we find what is supposedly already there? How do we awaken our deepest and most profound selves? By praying and meditating? By more silence, solitude, and sacraments? Yes to all of the above, but the most important way is to live and fully accept our reality. This solution sounds so simple and innocuous that most of us fabricate all kinds of religious trappings to avoid taking up our own inglorious, mundane, and ever-present cross.

Living and accepting our own reality will not feel very spiritual. It will feel like we are on the edges rather than dealing with the essence. Thus most run toward more esoteric and dramatic postures instead of bearing the mystery of God’s suffering and joy inside themselves. But the edges of our lives—fully experienced, suffered, and enjoyed—lead us back to the center and the essence.

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Lectio Divina - One hundred and twenty-eight

Lal Ded, translated by Coleman Barks in Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women, ed. Jane Hirshfield, Harper Perennial, 1995, p.121.

The soul, like the moon,

is new, and always new again.

And I have seen the ocean

continuously creating.

Since I scoured my mind

and my body, I too, Lalla,

am new, each moment new.

My teacher told me one thing,

Live in the soul.

When that was so,

I began to go naked,

and dance.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and twenty-seven

Lal Ded, translated by Coleman Barks in Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women, ed. Jane Hirshfield, Harper Perennial, 1995, p.126.

On the way to God the difficulties

feel like being ground by a millstone,

like night coming at noon, like

lightning through the clouds.

But don’t worry!

What must come, comes.

Face everything with love,

as your mind dissolves in God.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and twenty-six

Thomas Keating and Contemplative Outreach, Intentions for the Coming Year

Led by Thomas Keating, we have set forth intentions for the coming year. These are the measures that we aspire to and will return to . . .

• To heed the call to be transformed and then to rely on God to enable us to pass on the mercy, forgiveness, compassion and love to all humanity that we have received.
• To create a context in which the transformation of humanity can take place.
• To make the practice of Centering Prayer and the conceptual background readily available.
• To see Christ as present in everything and everyone.
• To acknowledge that any good accomplished is the work of the Holy Spirit.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and twenty-five

Richard Rohr, Adapted from Preparing for Christmas with Richard Rohr, pp. 31, 11-12.

We tend to manage life more than just live it. We are all overstimulated and drowning in options. We are trained to be managers, to organize life, to make things happen. That is what built our First World culture. It is not all bad, but if you transfer it to the spiritual life, it is pure heresy. It is wrong. It doesn’t work. It is not gospel.

If Mary was trustfully carrying Jesus during this time, it is because she knew how to receive spiritual gifts, in fact the spiritual gift. She is probably the perfect example of how fertility and fruitfulness break into this world.

There is a great banquet that utterly relativizes and situates all our daily emotions, hurts, addictions, and plans. When you abide in your true Godself, as Mary did, the small self is always seen as limited, insecure, and surely good—but still passing away. We must eat from this big table to know who we really and finally are.

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Lectio Divina - One hundred and twenty-four

The Essential Rumi, trans. Coleman Barks, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994, p.22.

Quietness

Inside this new love, die.

Your way begins on the other side.

Become the sky.

Take an axe to the prison wall.

Escape.

Walk out like somebody suddenly born into colour.

Do it now.

You’re covered with thick cloud.

Slide out the side. Die,

and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign

that you’ve died.

Your old life was a frantic running

from silence.

The speechless full moon

comes out now.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and twenty-three

Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, p. 191.

Pain teaches a most counterintuitive thing—that we must go down before we even know what up is. Suffering of some sort seems to be the only thing strong enough to destabilize our arrogance and our ignorance. I would define suffering very simply as “whenever you are not in control.”

All healthy religion shows you what to do with your pain. If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.

If we cannot find a way to make our wounds into sacred wounds, we invariably become negative or bitter. If there isn’t some way to find some deeper meaning to our suffering, to find that God is somehow in it, and can even use it for good, we will normally close up and close down.

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