Weekly Readings Newsletter

July 24 Readings

From John Main OSB, “A Call to the Fullness of Life,” MOMENT OF CHRIST (New York: Continuum, 1998), pp. 110-111.

One thing we learn in meditation is the priority of being over action. 

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July 17 Readings

From Laurence Freeman OSB, “Letter Twelve,” WEB OF SILENCE (London: DLT, 1996), pp. 132-134.

Anyone who has ever sat down to be still immediately engages the first level of consciousness a little below the immediate surface of the mind’s daily functioning awareness. 

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July 10 Readings

Weekly Readings ImageAn excerpt from John Main OSB, MONASTERY WITHOUT WALLS: The Spiritual Letters of John Main (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 20o6), pp. 132-133.

[W]hatever we say about the mystery of God expanding in our life, or about meditation, misses the wholeness and the simplicity of the reality.

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July 3 Readings

An excerpt from John Main OSB, “Letting Go,” JOHN MAIN: ESSENTIAL WRITINGS, Modern Spiritual Masters Series (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002), p. 127.

One of the most difficult things for Westerners to understand is that meditation is not about trying to make anything happen. Read more »

June 26 Readings

WCCM LogoAn excerpt from John Main OSB, MONASTERY WITHOUT WALLS: The Spiritual Letters of John Main (Norwich: Canterbury, 200), pp. 127-28.

The gift of vision is the wonder of creation. We are empowered to see the reality within which we live and move and have our being. It is not a gift we can ever possess because it is one we are continuously receiving. 

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June 19 Readings

WCCM LogoFrom Laurence Freeman, OSB, “Love That Divinizes,” LIGHT WITHIN (New York: Crossroad), pp. 56-57.

We ask, “What is spirit?” and we find it less and less easy to answer. It would be easier to answer if one could make a clear opposition between those different aspects of our being, the aspects we encounter daily, in our relationships and in our reflection on the mystery of life, the dimensions of body, mind, and spirit.  [. . . ]

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June 12 Readings

An excerpt from Laurence Freeman OSB, “The Now of Loving,” THE SELFLESS SELF (London: Darton, Longman, Todd, 1993), pp. 36-37.

As long as you think you can do just enough meditation to get by or enough to achieve something, you have not really begun to meditate. When you realize that you have started a journey that will last until the end of your life, you have begun to learn. 

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June 5 Readings

An excerpt from “Dearest Friends,” A Letter from Laurence Freeman OSB, Christian Mediation Newsletter, Vol. 35, No. 1, April, 2011.

Today the pace, uncertainty and huge interconnectedness of the global tipping points—from food, soil and water to biodiversity and financial systems---confront us with the need for what Simone Weil called “a new holiness” as necessary to the world today as “a plague-stricken town needs doctors.” 

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May 29 Readings

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

[. . .]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. All images of ourselves coming as they do out of the fevered brain of the ego, have to be renounced and transcended if we are to become one with ourselves, with God, with our brethren—that is, to become truly human, truly real, truly humble. Read more »

May 22 Readings

WCCM LogoAn excerpt from Laurence Freeman OSB, “Dearest Friends,” The World Community for Christian Meditation International Newsletter, Winter 2000.

As many Christians today find their leaders regressing into a rigid sectarianism, they are learning to find in their ancient contemplative wisdom a truer expression of the teachings of Jesus.; It is not those who mouth “Lord, Lord: who “please the Father,” but those who “do the Father’s will.” 

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