meditations: separation

Showing posts with label separation. Show all posts

Friday, 1 July 2016

Meditation: Nothing worthwhile is easy, 1 - Suffering

The holy seed is the stump of the felled tree.
Isaiah 6:13

We are born in pain

and blood and wailing.

Expelled from the world we know,

our warm salt cocoon,

to drown in cold air,

suddenly exposed outside the safe embracing walls.

We are born in shock, but in that shock, hope.

Do not expect easy answers:

you still try to see with your eyes

and listen with your ears

and think you understand with your minds.

But I say to you,

until you know with your hearts

you know nothing -

you see, but blurred forms you do not comprehend.

We learn our life each moment, but

we grow in surges.

Always in pain and danger and risk

we learn our important lessons,

learning in our hearts,

burning onto our souls

the lessons of who we really are.

Do not expect easy answers:

you still try to see with your eyes

and listen with your ears

and think you understand with your minds.

But I say to you,

until you know with your hearts

you know nothing -

you see only blurred forms you do not comprehend.

When we look on Jesus on his cross

our eyes see failure,

our ears hear jeering,

our logic sees the end of hope.

But only that ending

make possible our new beginning.

Do not expect easy answers:

you still try to see with your eyes

and listen with your ears

and think you understand with your minds.

But I say to you,

until you know with your hearts

you know nothing -

you see blurred forms you do not comprehend.

We die through our pain

and blood and wailing.

Expelled from the world we know,

suddenly exposed
outside the safe embracing walls.
We are reborn in shock, but in that shock, hope.

Suggestions for meditation

The exact words of the prayer are not important but you do need a firm intention to open yourself to God's input.

Read the mediation over slowly a couple of times.

Listen for the personal message for you. There will always be one word or phrase that will reach into your heart. Think of it as the personal meaning God has for you alone!

If you would prefer a more authoritative reading to focus your meditation, try Isaiah 6:9-13

And God said to Isaiah, “Go and say to this people:

‘Keep listening, but do not comprehend;
keep looking, but do not understand.’

Make the mind of this people dull,
and stop their ears,
and shut their eyes,
so that they may not look with their eyes,
and listen with their ears,
and comprehend with their minds,
and turn and be healed.”

Then I said, “How long, O Lord?” And he said:
“Until cities lie waste
without inhabitant,
and houses without people,
and the land is utterly desolate;
until the Lord sends everyone far away,
and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land.

Even if a tenth part remain in it,
it will be burned again,
like a turpentine tree, or an oak
whose stump remains standing
when it is felled.”

The holy seed is its stump.

Re-read the passage or the meditation - maybe read it slowly aloud.

Is there a word or phrase that jumps out to speak to you?

Why? Try to put yourself into those words. Maybe imagine Jesus speaking, and reply.

Then spend 5, or 10, or 15 minutes with your word from Jesus, or the word STRUGGLE.

You need a clear intention to empty your mind of random thoughts (you won't be entirely successful but you need the intention).

You might want to begin the meditation using the breathing exercise I suggest in We have two minds.

After a minute or two focused on your breathing, move your focus to the word/s you have chosen.

Each time your attention moves away from the word/s, push the distraction gently aside and return to the word ("without the intervention of analytical thought" as The Cloud of Unknowing puts it).

You may need a countdown clock.

At the end thank God, and return to your day.

Friday, 11 March 2016

Pilgrimage to Easter - Day 32

Meditation for Saturday 12 March
... from the readings of the day:

Then each went to his own house.

John 7:53

I stand bound to my brothers and sisters:

we thrive or fall together!

We think we stand alone: separate beings, separate
destinations, living solitary lives in separate houses.
We believe we think singly, make private decisions, and act alone, creating our own paths.

I stand bound to my brothers and sisters:

we thrive or fall together!

Too many stand alone, believing they are alone,
not understanding our unity in the incarnation, or our intimate connection as the body of Christ.
Even religious people think they are saved separately.

I stand bound to my brothers and sisters:

we thrive or fall together!

Pharisees manipulate words, people, history, thinking
they control events, believing they limit effects to
others, often too late in seeing that their own
house stands alone at the top of a house of cards.

I stand bound to my brothers and sisters:

we thrive or fall together!

Suggestions for meditation

Always begin by offering your time to God and asking for the grace to grow closer: something like "My loving God, I love you with my whole heart and above all things. I give you this time as I reach out to you, and ask that you guide me now, and each day, closer to you".

The exact words of the prayer are not important but you do need a firm intention to open yourself to God's input.

Read the mediation over slowly a couple of times.

Listen for the personal message for you. There will always be one word or phrase that will reach into your heart. Think of it as the personal meaning God has for you alone!

If you would prefer a more authoritative reading to focus your meditation, try this from one of today's readings, John 7:45-53

So the guards went to the chief priests and Pharisees,
who asked them, “Why did you not bring him?”
The guards answered, “Never before has anyone spoken like this man.”
So the Pharisees answered them, “Have you also been deceived?
Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him?
But this crowd, which does not know the law, is accursed.”
Nicodemus, one of their members who had come to him earlier, said to them,
“Does our law condemn a man before it first hears him
and finds out what he is doing?”
They answered and said to him,
“You are not from Galilee also, are you?
Look and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.”

Then each went to his own house.

Focus on a significant word or phrase in this passage or the meditation for a few moments.

Is there a word or phrase that jumps out to speak to you?

Why? Try to put yourself into those words. Maybe imagine Jesus speaking, and reply.

Then spend 5, or 10, or 15 minutes with your word from Jesus, or the phrase ONE or UNITY.

You need a clear intention to empty your mind of random thoughts (you won't be entirely successful but you need the intention).

You might want to begin the meditation using the breathing exercise I suggest in We have two minds.

After a minute or two focused on your breathing, move your focus to the word/s you have chosen.

Each time your attention moves away from the word/s, push the distraction gently aside and return to the word ("without the intervention of analytical thought" as The Cloud of Unknowing puts it).

You may need a countdown clock.

At the end thank God, and return to your day.

Tuesday, 23 February 2016

Pilgrimage to Easter: Day 15

Meditation for Wednesday 24 February

... from the readings of the day:

"Whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave.

Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Matthew 20:27-28

The glory of position and recognition

are traps of our evolved mind,

indicating only successes in conflict

and possible priority in reproduction!

But they are hard-lost mirages based on

a million hints and expectations from our world.

I am who I am - no more than a child

standing head bowed before my God,

human rank a phantom, a distant daydream.

See the fever dream of separation and rank

resolve into wholeness, connection and peace.

Our joy is in unity, not winning; community, not rank:

a single choir singing the harmony of Creation.

Suggestions for meditation

Always begin by offering your time to God and asking for the grace to grow closer: something like "My loving God, I love you with my whole heart and above all things. I give you this time as I reach out to you, and ask that you guide me now, and each day, closer to you".

The exact words of the prayer are not important but you do need a firm intention to open yourself to God's input.

Read the mediation over slowly a couple of times.

Listen for the personal message for you. There will always be one word or phrase that will reach into your heart. Think of it as the personal meaning God has for you alone!

If you would prefer a more authoritative reading to focus your meditation, try this from one of today's readings, Matthew 20:24-28

But Jesus summoned them and said,

“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and the great ones make their authority over them felt. But it shall not be so among you.

Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave.

Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Focus on a significant word or phrase in this passage or the meditation for a few moments.

Is there a word of phrase that jumps out to speak to you?

Why? Try to put yourself into those words. Maybe imagine Jesus speaking, and reply.

Then spend 5, or 10, or 15 minutes with your word from Jesus, or the word ONE or UNITY.

You need a clear intention to empty your mind of random thoughts (you won't be entirely successful but you need the intention).

You might want to begin the meditation using the breathing exercise I suggest in We have two minds.

After a minute or two focused on your breathing, move your focus to the word/s you have chosen.

Each time your attention moves away from the word/s, push the distraction gently aside and return to the word ("without the intervention of analytical thought" as The Cloud of Unknowing puts it).

You may need a countdown clock.

At the end thank God, and return to your day.

Tuesday, 13 October 2015

Meditation: Family Synod: it's about love, not sin!

Rome, Italy, Oct 13, 2015 CNA/EWTN News.

In a wide-ranging and hard-hitting interview with EWTN Germany, Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki of Poznan, president of the Polish bishops' conference, said that were we to cease to recognize sinfulness, then Christ's Incarnation would be rendered “void of its meaning.”

“We void the meaning of the whole work of the incarnation because we say that Christ has not come to us; however, beyond Christ, there is no salvation or redemption,” Archbishop Gadecki told EWTN's Robert Rauhut in an interview which took place shortly before the Synod on the Family began.

We are obsessed with sin: some people
who should know better think Christ's

Incarnation is made meaningless by sin.

God is love.
Judge not.
Leave your gift outside the Church if you realise