Lectio Divina 154

Teresa of Avila

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks with
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.

Lectio Divina 153

Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri, quoted in Hinduism Today, July/August/September 2013, 18.

Quotations there have been, in superabundance.  But what original commentary can you supply from the uniqueness of your particular life?  What holy text have you absorbed and made your own?  In what ways have these timeless truths renovated your nature?  Are you content to be a hollow phonograph, mechanically repeating the words of other men?

Lectio Divina 152

Richard Rohr, adapted from The Shape of God: Deepening the Mystery of the Trinity

Great science, which we once considered an “enemy” of religion, is now helping us see that we’re standing in the middle of awesome Mystery, and the only response before that Mystery is immense humility. Astrophysicists are much more comfortable with darkness, emptiness, non-explainability (dark matter, black holes), and living with hypotheses than most Christians I know. Who could have imagined this?

Lectio Divina 151

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Sufism: The Transformation of the Heart. The Golden Sufi Center, 1995.

Meditation creates an inner structure of consciousness that enables us to operate at a higher frequency. Through years of disciplined meditation we attune our whole being to the higher frequencies of divine love so that this intoxicating energy can flow through us. Faster and faster flow the currents of love, faster and faster spins the heart. If we resist this energy we could be dangerously battered. If we were not centered we would be thrown off balance. The ego cannot provide the stability and center we need. It must be surrendered so that we can stand on the rock of the Self. Surrender allows us to spin with the dance of total devotion. But as we learn to lose our mind in the empty spaces of the beyond, we also need to be able to come back to our everyday world. The inner world with its intimacy and freedom from restraints is intoxicating, and it can make the outer world seem a cold, alien prison. We carry the consciousness that we are exiles in this world. But one must not allow states of meditation to interfere with everyday life and work. One needs to be able to focus on the outer world and function on the level of the mind whenever necessary. 

Lectio Divina 150

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Sufism: The Transformation of the Heart. The Golden Sufi Center, 1995.

God calls us with the irresistible attraction of love, which we experience as longing. In order to fully hear God’s call we have to allow ourself to be dissatisfied and unfulfilled, rather than trying to fill this painful vacuum with another distraction. We have to allow the pain of longing into our life. Longing is both the pain that burns away the veils of separation and the thread that guides us deeper and deeper within, until we are able to enter the innermost chamber of the heart where God is waiting. 

Lectio Divina 149

Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times.  Shambhala, 2002.

Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing.  We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved.  They come together and they fall apart.  Then they come together again and fall apart again.  It’s just like that.  The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy…

Life is a good teacher and a good friend.  Things are always in transition, if we could only realize it.  Nothing ever sums itself up in the way we like to dream about it.  The off-center, in-between state is an ideal situation, a situation in which we don’t get caught and we can open our hearts and minds beyond limit.  It’s a very tender, nonaggressive, open-ended state of affairs.

To stay with that shakiness – to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge – that is the path of true awakening.  Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic – this is the spiritual path.

Lectio Divina 148

Saint Francis, quoted by Richard Rohr in an unpublished conference in Assisi, Italy in May, 2012.

Preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words.