Weekly Readings Newsletter

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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Weekly Readings 28/08/2011

An excerpt from Laurence Freeman OSB, “Dearest Friends” in the Newsletter of the World Community for Christian Mediation, Vol. 35, No. 2, July 2011, pp. 4-5.

We can let go of our worries and anxieties as Jesus advises us in his teaching on prayer. These anxieties are manifold, the daily glitches that pass with a good night’s sleep, the losses that are still awfully present when we awaken, the deeper patterns  of our character with their roots in pre-conscious memory.

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August 21 Readings

From Laurence Freeman OSB, “Patterns and Identities,” THE SELFLESS SELF (Norwich: Canterbury), pp. 47-48.

Faith does not make sense, it does not make reality, unless it is repeated, unless it perseveres.  What do we persevere in? And how is it that simple perseverance brings about an expansion in depth of life, consciousness and being?

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Weekly Readings 21/08/2011

From Fr. Laurence Freeman ‘ First Sight (Continum, 2011), pp. 34-35.

Faith is a way – a way of life, a way of behaving over time- by which we give.  But if we see it only giving, only as commitment and sacrifice, we will find it hard to grow in the many ways that faith enables us to become more fully human.

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August 14 Readings

From Fr. John Main, "Purity of Heart," WORD MADE FLESH (Norwich: Canterbury, 2009), pp. 58-59.

We often think of freedom merely as the freedom to do what we want to do.  But even the most rudimentary experience of making contact with the power of Jesus in meditation shows us that freedom is not essentially the power to do but the liberty to be who we are

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August 7 Readings

An excerpt from John Main OSB, "I Am as I Am," WORD MADE FLESH: Recovering a Sense of the Sacred through Prayer (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2009), pp. 40-41.

[I]f we can only learn the humility, patience and fidelity to say our mantra we can enter fully into everything there is. This is the present-ness of the mystery of God, who is, who is now, who is always, who is all. Read more »

July 31 Readings

An excerpt from Laurence Freeman OSB, “The Labyrinth,” JESUS THE TEACHER WITHIN (New York: Continuum, 2000), pp. 231-32.

If we are to embrace the eternity of the fullness of being (the “I AM” of God), we must first face the stark reality of impermanence and emptiness.

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