Readings 28 June 2024 St Anne's Church
Opening Prayer
Dear Lord thank you for bringing us together today to further understand our faith. Thank you for the Holy Spirit who guides us. Thank you for the mystics and Saints and those people of God who help show us the way to the Kingdom of God. Thank you for contemplation and allowing us to hear Your Word in our hearts. Amen The chief thing that separates us from God is the thought that we are separated from God - Thomas Keating
“Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him.”- Thomas Merton |
Readings
Thomas Merton
‘Contemplation is the highest expression of man’s intellectual and spiritual life…It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent and infinitely abundant source. Contemplation is, above all, awareness of the reality of that source… and the response to a call. It is the echo of God in us, and it is the result of the two levels of awareness: first, awareness of the question, and second, awareness of the answer. We cannot attain contemplation alone, by intellectual effort…..Contemplation is more than just a consideration of abstract truths about God. It is awakening, enlightenment, and the intuitive grasp by which love gains certainty of God's creative and dynamic intervention in our daily lives.’
Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
‘…the true contemplative is not the one who prepares his mind for a particular message that he wants or expects to hear, but who remains empty because he knows that he can never expect or anticipate the word that will transform his darkness into light. He does not demand light instead of darkness. He waits on the Word of God in silence…’
Thomas Merton, The Climate of Monastic Prayer
Lectio Divina is a contemplative way of reading the Bible. It dates back to the early centuries of the Christian Church and was established as a monastic practice by Benedict in the 6th century. It is a way of praying the scriptures that leads us deeper into God’s word. We slow down. We read a short passage more than once. We chew it over slowly and carefully. We savour it. Scripture begins to speak to us in a new way. It speaks to us personally, and aids that union we have with God through Christ who is himself the Living Word. Fr Christopher Jamison, former Abbot of Worth Abbey in Sussex, states “the text is seen as a gift to be received, not a problem to be dissected
https://www.anglicancommunion.org/media/253799/1-What-is-Lectio-Divina.pdf
Centering Prayer is a method of silent prayer that prepares us to receive the gift of contemplative prayer, prayer in which we experience God's presence within us, closer than breathing, closer than thinking, closer than consciousness itself. This method of prayer is both a relationship with God and a discipline to foster that relationship. It was discovered in 1974, by Father William Meninger in a book called The Cloud of Unknowing. It was soon refined by Fathers Thomas Keating and Basil Pennington. Centering Prayer is a form of silent prayer, wordless prayer. It is both a practice and relationship with God.
https://www.christianmeditationcenter.org/what-is-centering-prayer/
God’s Absence and Presence
God is “beyond,” beyond our heart and mind, beyond our feelings and thoughts, beyond our expectations and desires, and beyond all the events and experiences that make up our life. Still God is in the center of all of it. Here we touch the heart of prayer, since here it becomes manifest that in prayer the distinction between God’s presence and God’s absence no longer really distinguishes. In prayer, God’s presence is never separated from God’s absence and God’s absence is never separated from God’s presence. God’s presence is so much beyond the human experience of being together that it quite easily is perceived as absence. God’s absence, on the other hand, is often so deeply felt that it leads to a new sense of God’s presence. . . .
“My God, my God, why have you deserted me?” (Psalms 22:1). . . . When Jesus spoke these words on the cross, total aloneness and full acceptance touched each other. In that moment of complete emptiness all was fulfilled. In that hour of darkness new light was seen. While death was witnessed, life was affirmed. Where God’s absence was most loudly expressed, God’s presence was most profoundly revealed. When God, through the humanity of Jesus, freely chose to share our own most painful experience of divine absence, God became most present to us. It is into this mystery that we enter when we pray.
Reaching Out, Henri Nouwen
Introduction to Silence 30 minutes - followed by sharing
Blessing
A Blessing of Angels
May the Angels in their beauty bless you.
May they turn toward you streams of blessing.
May the Angel of Awakening stir your heart
To come alive to the eternal within you,
To all the invitations that quietly surround you.
May the Angel of Healing turn your wounds
Into sources of refreshment
May the Angel of the Imagination enable you
To stand on the true thresholds,
At ease with your ambivalence
And drawn in new direction
Through the glow of your contradictions.
May the Angel of Compassion open your eyes
To the unseen suffering around you.
May the Angel of Wildness disturb the places
Where your life is domesticated and safe,
Take you to the territories of true otherness
Where all that is awkward in you
Can fall into its own rhythm
John O’Donohue, Benedictus
Thomas Merton
‘Contemplation is the highest expression of man’s intellectual and spiritual life…It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent and infinitely abundant source. Contemplation is, above all, awareness of the reality of that source… and the response to a call. It is the echo of God in us, and it is the result of the two levels of awareness: first, awareness of the question, and second, awareness of the answer. We cannot attain contemplation alone, by intellectual effort…..Contemplation is more than just a consideration of abstract truths about God. It is awakening, enlightenment, and the intuitive grasp by which love gains certainty of God's creative and dynamic intervention in our daily lives.’
Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
‘…the true contemplative is not the one who prepares his mind for a particular message that he wants or expects to hear, but who remains empty because he knows that he can never expect or anticipate the word that will transform his darkness into light. He does not demand light instead of darkness. He waits on the Word of God in silence…’
Thomas Merton, The Climate of Monastic Prayer
Lectio Divina is a contemplative way of reading the Bible. It dates back to the early centuries of the Christian Church and was established as a monastic practice by Benedict in the 6th century. It is a way of praying the scriptures that leads us deeper into God’s word. We slow down. We read a short passage more than once. We chew it over slowly and carefully. We savour it. Scripture begins to speak to us in a new way. It speaks to us personally, and aids that union we have with God through Christ who is himself the Living Word. Fr Christopher Jamison, former Abbot of Worth Abbey in Sussex, states “the text is seen as a gift to be received, not a problem to be dissected
https://www.anglicancommunion.org/media/253799/1-What-is-Lectio-Divina.pdf
Centering Prayer is a method of silent prayer that prepares us to receive the gift of contemplative prayer, prayer in which we experience God's presence within us, closer than breathing, closer than thinking, closer than consciousness itself. This method of prayer is both a relationship with God and a discipline to foster that relationship. It was discovered in 1974, by Father William Meninger in a book called The Cloud of Unknowing. It was soon refined by Fathers Thomas Keating and Basil Pennington. Centering Prayer is a form of silent prayer, wordless prayer. It is both a practice and relationship with God.
https://www.christianmeditationcenter.org/what-is-centering-prayer/
God’s Absence and Presence
God is “beyond,” beyond our heart and mind, beyond our feelings and thoughts, beyond our expectations and desires, and beyond all the events and experiences that make up our life. Still God is in the center of all of it. Here we touch the heart of prayer, since here it becomes manifest that in prayer the distinction between God’s presence and God’s absence no longer really distinguishes. In prayer, God’s presence is never separated from God’s absence and God’s absence is never separated from God’s presence. God’s presence is so much beyond the human experience of being together that it quite easily is perceived as absence. God’s absence, on the other hand, is often so deeply felt that it leads to a new sense of God’s presence. . . .
“My God, my God, why have you deserted me?” (Psalms 22:1). . . . When Jesus spoke these words on the cross, total aloneness and full acceptance touched each other. In that moment of complete emptiness all was fulfilled. In that hour of darkness new light was seen. While death was witnessed, life was affirmed. Where God’s absence was most loudly expressed, God’s presence was most profoundly revealed. When God, through the humanity of Jesus, freely chose to share our own most painful experience of divine absence, God became most present to us. It is into this mystery that we enter when we pray.
Reaching Out, Henri Nouwen
Introduction to Silence 30 minutes - followed by sharing
Blessing
A Blessing of Angels
May the Angels in their beauty bless you.
May they turn toward you streams of blessing.
May the Angel of Awakening stir your heart
To come alive to the eternal within you,
To all the invitations that quietly surround you.
May the Angel of Healing turn your wounds
Into sources of refreshment
May the Angel of the Imagination enable you
To stand on the true thresholds,
At ease with your ambivalence
And drawn in new direction
Through the glow of your contradictions.
May the Angel of Compassion open your eyes
To the unseen suffering around you.
May the Angel of Wildness disturb the places
Where your life is domesticated and safe,
Take you to the territories of true otherness
Where all that is awkward in you
Can fall into its own rhythm
John O’Donohue, Benedictus
Our next meeting will be 10.30am on Friday 26th July at St Mary’s Church, Market Road, Plympton, PL7 1QW