Weekly Readings Newsletter

Readings for 5/10/2011

An excerpt from “Dearest Friends,” Laurence Freeman OSB in the Newsletter of the World Community for Christian Meditation, Vol 32, No. 3, September 2008, p. 4.

When the force of faith is set free in the human person it impels us to experience reality beyond words, images, and ideas. We then discover that the filters of metaphor, however useful and necessary they may be at one level, can also (and need to) be deactivated if faith is to grow.

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Readings for 30/10/2011

An excerpt from John Main OSB, "The Unreality of Fear," THE HEART OF CREATION (New York: Continuum. 1998), pp. 24-25.

As we read the gospel we see that a choice is set before us. The alternative is between love and fear. Fear is destructive and corrosive, whether it is the fear of disease, war or famine or whether it is fear of supernatural, angry vengeful gods who must be placated by compulsive rituals.

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Readings for 23/10/2011

From John Main OSB, “The Silence of Love,” WORD MADE FLESH (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2006), pp. 29-30.

Language is so weak in explaining the fullness of the mystery. That is why the absolute silence of meditation is so supremely important. We do not try to think of God, talk to God or imagine God.

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Readings for 16/10/2011

An excerpt from Laurence Freeman OSB, “Understanding Faith,” in FIRST SIGHT: The Experience of Faith (London: Continuum, 2011), pp. 12-14.

A new understanding of faith demolishes the prison of belief. It liberates religious people into a world of compassionate action expressed in the parable of the Good Samaritan.

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Readings for 9/10/2011

An excerpt from Laurence Freeman, OSB, “Dearest Friends,” Christian Meditation Newsletter, Vol. 33, No. 3, September 2009, pp. 3, 4, 5, 6.

It is practice not deprivation that drives the spiritual journey and pushes us to grow beyond our limits.

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Readings for 2/10/2011

An excerpt from Laurence Freeman OSB, “Understanding Faith,“ in FIRST SIGHT: The Experience of Faith (London: Continuum, 2011), pp. 9-10.

Instead of fingers pointing to the moon, doctrine or dogma bend backwards pointing to themselves. Anything that questions belief is then perceived as threatening and what is threatening can exude a kind of strangeness or threat which incites fear.

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Weekly Readings 25/9/2011

An excerpt from L. Freeman, FIRST SIGHT: The Experience of Faith (London: Continuum, 2011) pp. 7-8.

Christianity today has embarked on a radicalizing project: of recovering and updating the contemplative dimension in all aspects of life--dialogue with the secular and scientific worlds and with other religions, and also, at home, in its theology, morality, prayer, worship and social action.

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Weekly Readings 18/9/2011

From John Main OSB, “The Christian Crisis, “THE PRESENT CHRIST (New York: Crossroad, 1991), pp. 74-76.

The call to the modern person, the call to all of us, is to become spiritual, and to become spiritual we have to learn to leave behind our official religious selves—that is, to leave behind the Pharisee that lurks inside all of us—because, as Jesus has told us, we have to leave behind our whole self.

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Weekly Readings 11/9/2011

An excerpt from Laurence Freeman OSB. "Dearest Friends," WCCM International Newsletter, Winter 2001.

Inner peace is hard to find at times of conflict and fear. We find it difficult to sit still when mind and feeling are in turmoil.

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Weekly Readings 4/9/2011

An excerpt from Laurence Freeman OSB, “Dearest Friends” in Christian Meditation Newsletter, Vol. 35, No. 2, July 2011, P. 5.

We are all looking for something. Some have a clear sense of it, at least a conscious awareness of something missing.

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