Night of the Soul

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The Center for Action and Contemplation_ Meditation Practice-

Week October 19 – 25, 2014

Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation

 

 
 

Night of the Soul Sunday, October 19, 2014
There comes to many seekers, at some time or a few times in their lives, a “dark night,” a period of seeming distance from God, from the ways in which we’ve experienced and understood God. The previous comforts have fallen away and we can no longer conceptualize God.

John of the Cross gave a map of sorts through these dark nights. He distinguished between the dark night of sense (in which all perceptions of God vanish) and the dark night of the spirit (in which we no longer graspideas about God). The goal of these times is to draw the self beyond ego into full transfiguration and union in God. John went through such a dark period during a time when he was imprisoned, tortured, and starved. He felt as if his Beloved had abandoned him.

After John miraculously escaped from prison, he composed his mystical poem “The Dark Night of the Soul.”  Almost a year later he wrote the commentary to the poem, which is also titled The Dark Night of the Soul. In her translation, Mirabai Starr writes:

“In the dark night, says John, the secret essence of the soul knows the truth, and is calling out to God: Beloved, you pray, please remind me again and again that I am nothing. Strip me of the consolations of my complacent spirituality. Plunge me into the darkness where I cannot rely on any of my old tricks for maintaining my separation. Let me give up on trying to convince myself that my own spiritual deeds are bound to be pleasing to you. Take all my juicy spiritual feelings, Beloved, and dry them up, and then please light them on fire. Take my lofty spiritual concepts and plunge them into darkness, and then burn them. Let me love you, Beloved. Let me quietly and with unutterable simplicity just love you.”

Gateway to Silence:
“Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover.” – John of the Cross
 

 
 

 

Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation

Luminous Darkness

Inexplicable Darkness Monday, October 20, 2014
St. John of the Cross writes, in his prologue to The Ascent of Mount Carmel:

“A deeper enlightenment and wider experience than mine is necessary to explain the dark night through which a soul journeys toward that divine light of perfect union with God that is achieved, insofar as possible in this life, through love. The darknesses and trials, spiritual and temporal, that fortunate souls ordinarily undergo on their way to the high state of perfection are so numerous and profound that human science cannot understand them adequately. Nor does experience of them equip one to explain them. Only those who suffer them will know what this experience is like, but they won’t be able to describe it.”

You can’t go forward by “knowing” in the usual way, but only byexperiencing. At some time in your life, I hope you are so ambushed by God, that God catches you by surprise. If you try to go by what you already know—John of the Cross makes it clear—you will pull God back into your pre-existent categories, and you won’t get very far. That is why most people stay with their childish faith.

When God leads you into a dark night, it is to deepen and mature your faith—which, by its very definition, “is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) The gift of darkness draws you to know God’s presence beyond what thought, imagination, or sensory feeling can comprehend. During the dark night the tried-and-true rituals and creeds of religion no longer satisfy or bring assurances of God’s love. (So you might get bored with church services for very good reasons too, but that is not the same as mere spiritual laziness or a lack of faith.)

God is calling you into deeper and closer intimacy, beyond anything you could achieve with your most sincere attempts, closer than you could even dream.  But you must learn to proceed without any guarantees from your feelings or your intellect. That’s the only real way to grow in faith and divine love.

Adapted from Intimacy: The Divine Ambush, disc 2 (CD, MP3 download)

Gateway to Silence:
“Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover.” – John of the Cross
 

 

 

Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation

Luminous Darkness

Surrendering in Stillness Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Mirabai Starr, who will be joining us for CONSPIRE 2015 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, writes of the dark night as one who has gone through it herself, like John of the Cross:

“The dark night descends on a soul only when everything else has failed. When you are no longer the best meditator in the class because your meditation produces absolutely nothing. When prayer evaporates on your tongue and you have nothing left to say to God. When you are not even tempted to return to a life of worldly pleasures because the world has proven empty and yet taking another step through the void of the spiritual life feels futile because you are no good at it and it seems that God has given up on you, anyway.

“This, says John, is the beginning of blessedness! This is the choiceless choice when the soul can do nothing but surrender. Because even if you cannot sense a shred of the Beloved’s love for you, even if you can scarcely conjure up your old passion for him, it has become perfectly clear that you are incapable of doing anything on your own to remedy your spiritual brokenness. All efforts to purge your unspiritual inclinations have only honed the laser of attention on the false self. Unwilling to keep struggling, the soul finds itself surrendering to its deepest inner wound and breathing in the stillness there.

“The only action left to the soul, ultimately, is to put down its self-importance and cultivate a simple loving attention toward the Beloved. That’s when the Beloved takes over and all our holy intentions vaporize. That’s when the soul, says John, is infused passively with his love. Though his radiance is imperceptible to the faculty of the senses and invisible to the faculty of the intellect, the soul that has allowed itself to be empty can at last be filled and overflow with him.”

From Mirbai Starr’s introduction to her translation of Dark Night of the Soul

by John of the Cross

Gateway to Silence:
“Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover.” – John of the Cross
 

 

 

Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation

Luminous Darkness

Ambushed by Love Wednesday, October 22, 2014
I wonder if the only way that conversion, enlightenment, and transformation ever happen is by a kind of divine ambush. We have to be caught off guard. As long as you are in control, you are going to keep trying to steer the ship by your previous experience of being in charge. The only way you will let yourself be ambushed is by trusting the “Ambusher,” and learning to trust that the darkness of intimacy will lead to depth, safety, freedom, and love.

Any use of fear techniques or trying to shame people into the spiritual journey is inherently counter- productive. It simply makes you more defensive and protective of your boundaries, but now at an unconscious level (I am afraid this is true of a high percentage of Christians, who were largely raised on fear of “hell” and social pressure). We need spiritual teachers like John of the Cross to help us see the patterns of the spiritual journey that actually work, so we can be a bit less defended, a bit less boundaried, with ourselves and with God. Only then can God do the soul forming work of seduction and union.

God needs to catch us by surprise because our very limited preexisting notions keep us and our understanding of God small. We are still trying to remain in control and we still want to “look good”! God tries to bring us into a bigger world where by definition we are not in control and no longer need to look good. A terrible lust for certitude and social order has characterized the last 500 years of Western Christianity, and it has simply not served the soul well at all. Once we lost a spirituality of darkness as its own kind of light, there just wasn’t much room for growth in faith, hope, and love.

So God has to come indirectly, catching us off guard and out of control, when we are empty instead of full of ourselves. That is why the saints talk about suffering so much. They are not masochistic, sadistic, negative, morbid, or oppositional. The mystics have seen the pattern and, as Teresa of Ávila says in one place, it is not that you are happy for the suffering—who would be, who could be?—you are happy for the new level of intimacy that the suffering brought you to. You only know this after the fact, perhaps days or weeks or even years later. One day you realize, “God is so real to me now. How did I get here?” All you know is that you did not engineer or even imagine this. You were taken there when you were off guard. John’s word for that is darkness.

Adapted from Intimacy: The Divine Ambush, disc 2 (CD, MP3 download)

Gateway to Silence:
“Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover.” – John of the Cross
 

 

 

Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation

Luminous Darkness

Holding the Darkness Thursday, October 23, 2014
When we try to live in solidarity with the pain of the world—and do not spend our lives running from necessary suffering—we will surely encounter various forms of “crucifixion.” Many say pain is merely physical discomfort, but suffering comes from our resistance to, denial of, and our sense of injustice or wrongness about that pain. This is the core meaning of suffering on one level or another, and we all learn it the hard way.

As others have said, pain is the rent we pay for being human, but suffering is to some degree optional. The cross was Jesus’s voluntary acceptance of undeserved suffering as an act of total solidarity with all the pain of the world. Deep reflection on this mystery can change your whole life. It seems there is an inherent negative energy or resistance from all of us, whenever we are invited to a more generous response. Yet this is the necessary dying that the soul must walk through to go higher, further, deeper, or longer. The saints called these dyings “nights,” darkness, unknowing, doubt. This is when you grow—but “in secret.”

Our secular world has almost no spiritual skills to deal with this now, so we resort to addictions, and other distractions to get us through our pain and sufferings. This does not bode well for the future of humanity. Only truly inspired souls choose to fully jump on board this ship of life and death. The rest of us waste our time blaming or playing the victim to our own advantage.

Without the inner discipline of faith (“positive holding instead of projecting”) most lives end in negativity, blaming others, or deep cynicism—without even knowing it. Jesus hung in the crucified middle and paid the price for all such reconciliation (Ephesians 2:13–18); he then invited us to do the same, and showed us the outcome—which is resurrection!

Adapted from Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi,

pp. 21-22

Gateway to Silence:
“Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover.” – John of the Cross
 

 

 

Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation

Luminous Darkness

A Bright Sadness Friday, October 24, 2014
“Because I die by brightness and the Holy Spirit.”
—Thomas Merton, “The Blessed Virgin Mary Compared to a Window”

There is a gravitas in the second half of life, but it is now held up by a much deeper lightness, or “okayness.” Our mature years are characterized by a kind of bright sadness and a sober happiness, if that makes any sense. There is still darkness in the second half of life—in fact maybe even more. But there is now a changed capacity to hold it creatively and with less anxiety. It is what John of the Cross called “luminous darkness,” and it explains the simultaneous coexistence of deep suffering and intense joy that we see in the saints, which is almost impossible for most of us to imagine.

Life is much more spacious now, the boundaries of the container having been enlarged by the constant addition of new experiences and relationships. You are like an expandable suitcase, and you became so almost without your noticing. Now you are just here, and here holds more than enough. Such “hereness,” however, has its own heft, authority, and influence.

One’s growing sense of infinity and spaciousness is no longer found just “out there” but most especially “in here.” The inner and the outer have become one. You can trust your inner experience now, because even God has allowed it, used it, received it, and refined it. As St. Augustine dramatically put it in his Confessions:

You were within, but I was without. You were with me, but I was not with you. So you called, you shouted, you broke through my deafness, you flared, blazed, and banished my blindness, you lavished your fragrance, and I gasped.

Adapted from Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life,

pp. 117, 119, 121-122

Gateway to Silence:
“Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover.” – John of the Cross
 

 

 

Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation

Luminous Darkness

Sabbath Meditation Saturday, October 25, 2014
Remember:
The goal of the dark night of the soul is to draw the self beyond ego into full transfiguration and union in God. (Sunday)
The gift of darkness draws you to know God’s presence beyond what thought, imagination, or sensory feeling can comprehend.(Monday)
“The only action left to the soul, ultimately, is to put down its self-importance and cultivate a simple loving attention toward the Beloved.” –Mirabai Starr (Tuesday)
God needs to catch us by surprise because our very limited preexisting notions keep us and our understanding of God small.(Wednesday)
Without the inner discipline of faith (“positive holding instead of projecting”) most lives end in negativity, blaming others, or deep cynicism. (Thursday)
“You called, you shouted, you broke through my deafness, you flared, blazed, and banished my blindness, you lavished your fragrance, and I gasped.” —St. Augustine (Friday)
Rest: Keep Praying

I came out of seminary in 1970 thinking that my job was to have an answer for every question. What I’ve learned since then is that not-knowing and often not even needing to know is a deeper way of knowing and a deeper form of compassion. Maybe that is why Jesus praised faith even more than love; maybe that is why Saint John of the Cross called faith “luminous darkness.”

That’s why all great traditions teach some form of contemplation, because it is actually a different form of knowledge that emerges inside of the “cloud of unknowing.” It is a refusal to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and finding freedom, grace, and comfort in the not needing to know, which ironically opens us up to a much deeper consciousness that we would call the mind of God. That’s because our small mind and lesser self is finally out of the way.

My contemplative sit every morning is an exercise in assured failure. It’s often only in the last 30 seconds that I begin to get a glimpse of freedom, but for the most part, my prayer is a continual practice of surrender, kenosis.I often turn to the words, “Lord, have mercy; Christ, have mercy; Lord, have mercy.” It is simply a confession of my incompetence and inadequacy. This confession leaves inside me an emptiness that becomes readiness. I realize I need help, I need more, I need love. I in my I-ness, my Richard-ness, I don’t know how to do this by myself, and that’s really okay. In fact, it is good because it realigns me with the truth of divine union.

The only people who pray well are those who keep praying. In the dark night, when all other practices and beliefs about God lose their meaning, keep returning to silent, contemplative prayer. It will keep you empty and ready for God’s ongoing revelation of an ever deeper love.

Adapted from Things Hidden: Scripture As Spirituality, pp. 38-39;

and Intimacy: The Divine Ambush, disc 9 (CD, MP3 download)

Gateway to Silence:
“Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover.” – John of the Cross
For Further Study:

Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi

Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

Intimacy: The Divine Ambush

(CD, MP3 download)

Things Hidden: Scripture As Spirituality

 

Transformatives movies

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Transformational movies reveal the astonishing
ways in which human beings can be changed
and set on a new path

http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/100%20Best%20Transformational%20Movies.pdf

Reflections on Lectio Divina (part 3)

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REFLECTIONS ON LECTIO DIVINA (part 3)

By Nancy Moran

 

In the next 3 sessions of the Contemplative Outreach e-course “Lectio Divina: Heart to Heart – Listening and Living with God”  we continue learning about the 4 Senses of Scripture.  The previous sessions covered the first  Sense of Scripture – the Literal sense and the second sense of Scripture – the Allegorical sense.

SESSION 7

The focus of session 7 is the Behavioral/Moral Sense – Oratio – Responding to the Word of God.

This 3rd sense of Scripture corresponds to the level of friendship in a relationship.  As we connect with the Christ-energy in Scripture we begin to experience new realizations and begin to live the Scripture message more and more in our lives.  Our hearts are touched and Oratio is our response to the promptings of the Spirit.  Our response could be positive and/or negative feelings.  Our response could be a question or a decision.  Our response could be an act – as in forgiving another.  During periods of dryness our response could be simply patient waiting.  Whatever our response is, Oratio is a heart-to-heart exchange with Christ.

 

SESSIONS 8 and 9

The focus of the next sessions is the 4th sense of Scripture – the Unitive Sense – Contemplatio – Resting in the Word of God.

This Sense of Scripture corresponds to the level of intimacy in a relationship.  Union is an experience of oneness where opposites are reconciled.  We are listening with our whole being, totally present to the text.  We are brought to a place of rest that allows us to experience the text at deeper levels of faith.  We are simply with God, in interior quiet and peace – falling into God’s embrace.

While resting or perhaps if we become distracted we may be drawn to one of the other moments of Lectio Divina – reading or reflecting or responding.  We are in a dance.  We are opening ourselves to being led by the Spirit. Our efforts are of no matter, but only an obstacle to the interior peace and work of God.

In “The Classic Monastic Practice of Lectio Divina,” Father Thomas Keating gives us a theological description of union with God:

“In the Trinity, the Eternal Word is always emerging from the infinite silence of the Father and always returning.  The persons in the Trinity live in each other rather than in themselves.  The Father knows himself only in the Son, the Son only in the Father, and the Spirit expresses their unity, bringing together into One relationships that are infinitely distinct.  The Trinity is the basis for the oneness and diversity that we see expressed throughout creation.  In this way of doing Lectio, one is recognizing the presence of the Word of God in all creation and in every occurrence, experiencing what the author of John’s gospel wrote in the prologue, ‘Without Him was made nothing that has been made.’  In contemplative prayer, we are in touch with the source of all creation; hence, we transcend ourselves and our limited world views.  As a result, we feel at one with other people and enjoy a sense of belonging to the universe.  The fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily in Jesus, according to Paul.  The Divinity begins to dwell in us bodily in proportion to our capacity to receive it as we grow in union with the Eternal Word.  This process needs to be nourished both by the interior silence of contemplative prayer and cultivated by Lectio Divina (in the sense of listening).  The awareness of the divine presence will also begin to overflow into ordinary activity.”

Reflections on Lectio Divina (part 2)

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REFLECTIONS ON LECTIO DIVINA  (part 2)

by Nancy Moran

In the first 3 sessions of the Contemplative Outreach online e-course “Lectio Divina: Heart to Heart – Listening and Living with God”  we learned that the ancient prayer practice of Lectio Divina is a fluid 4 step dance with the Lord:  to read, to reflect, to respond and to rest.  This way of praying corresponds to a human relationship, relating with God in a natural, organic way and opening us to ever deeper levels of communication that ultimately disposes us to the gift of union.

In the next 3 sessions we learn about the “4 Senses of Scripture,” a term coined by the monks of the middle ages.  The 4 Senses of Scripture are literal, allegorical, behavioral/moral and unitive and they are reflected in the different moments of Lectio Divina:

The literal sense is Lectio

…I take the Word.

The allegorical sense is Meditatio

…I chew the Word.

The behavioral/moral sense is Oratio

…I digest the Word.

The unitive sense is Contemplatio

…I become the Word.

SESSION 4

The focus of session 4 is the Literal Sense – Lectio – Reading the Word of God.  This sense corresponds to the level of acquaintanceship in a relationship.

A text that we choose to read for Lectio Divina may have more than one literal sense, since literal understanding is affected by the literary conventions and the historical context of the time.  Authors may refer to more than one level of reality as poetry and parables so often do.

When reading a text we should not be concerned with how much we are reading but rather with the quality of the reading.  By reading deeply we allow the passage to open up to the levels of meaning.  We should not be concerned with mastering the text but with allowing the text to master us, and by putting aside critiques, analyses and problem solving thinking.  Instead, we read the Scripture with an attitude of humility, detachment and receptivity.  We read slowly, not rushing into reflective thoughts, but just sitting with the reading, letting it go to a deeper level within us.

 

SESSIONS 5 and 6

The focus of sessions 5 and 6 is the second sense of Lectio Divina – The Allegorical Sense – Meditatio –  Reflecting/Pondering the Word of God.  As we reflect on the text we become open to God guiding us.  Hidden meanings begin to emerge from the text and the symbols, metaphors, images and stories speak to us about our own life journey.

The Allegorical Sense of Scripture corresponds to the level of friendship in a relationship.  As our level of identification with Scripture deepens we are able to grow in trust and honesty in our relationship with God.  As we are confronted with our own attachments we can allow God’s necessary purification and healing process to occur.

Sister Maria Tasto, an author and retreat leader on the practice of Lectio Divina says in her book,  The Transforming Power of Lectio Divina,

 

“Listening to the Word of God challenges us to stoop down lower than we have ever stooped before.  In other words, we need to step out of our world and into the world of Jesus.  We need to come defenseless, ready to be influenced…vulnerable, open to learn, to change, and to be transformed.  This may entail a level of listening that we have never engaged in before. This is true receptivity to the Word – to take it in and let it speak to us.  This is the challenge of Lectio Divina.  It is about entering into relationship with the Word.”

Reflections on Lectio Divina (part 1)

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REFLECTIONS ON LECTIO DIVINA

By Nancy Moran

 

During the month of June  I took a 12 week E-Course offered by Contemplative Outreach and Spirituality and Practice titled:

“Lectio Divina:  Heart to Heart – Listening and Living with God.”   I found this E-Course to be quite helpful in understanding this great treasure from the Christian tradition.  I would like to review some of the material from the E-Course that stood out for me.

 

SESSION 1

Lectio Divina (Divine Reading)  flows out of an ancient Hebrew method of studying scripture called Haggadah.  Haggadah was part of the devotional practice of the Jews in Jesus time.  Lectio Divina was also practiced by the mothers and fathers of the desert in the 4th century and later in monasteries in the east and in the west.  Unlike scripture study, Lectio Divina is a prayer tradition and a contemplative practice.  In scripture study we explore the stories and teachings of a religious tradition through the analyses of its sacred texts.  In Lectio Divina we listen to God through a particular text of scripture.

There are 4 moments in Lectio Divina:  Reading, Reflecting, Responding and Resting.  Each of these 4 moments are interrelated with each other and to the center which is the Spirit of God speaking to our hearts through the text.  This receptive disposition enables the Spirit to expand our capacity to listen, and as we listen we allow ourselves to perceive a new depth of meaning to the text.  The monks listened not to analyze the text, but just to hear it without preconceived ideas.  This is a deep form of receptivity.  The fluid interaction between the 4 moments of Lectio Divina – reading, reflecting/pondering, responding from the depths of our heart and resting in God – puts us more and more at the disposal of the Spirit.

 

SESSION 2

Session 2 provides explanation and practice exercises for the first 2 of the 4 moments of Lectio Divina:  Reading and Reflecting or Lectio and Meditatio.

Reading – Lectio

A good time to pray in the manner of Lectio Divina is after spending time in Centering Prayer or another silent prayer practice.  After selecting a passage we read it out loud to ourselves letting the Spirit choose the amount of reading we do.  When we read out loud we are engaging more of our senses to help the text penetrate our consciousness.  We listen deeply and gently with the ear of our heart.  We let the text speak to us without expectations and resisting the urge to conceptualize and analyze.  In this way we allow the text to penetrate our being.

Reflecting – Meditatio

To enter the moment of Meditatio we let the text speak to us – slowly allowing ourselves to be drawn into one verse or one word.  We repeat the word or phrase several times so that it penetrates our being more deeply.  We don’t think about the word or phrase we simply sit with it and listen.  As our listening capacity expands we are opened to the deeper meaning of the text.

 

SESSION 3

Session 3 provides explanation and practice exercises for the 3 and 4th moments of Lectio Divina:  Responding and Resting or Oratio and Contemplatio.

Responding – Oratio

The moment of Oratio begins when we feel a response arising within us from the word or phrase we read, repeated and pondered.  We allow ourselves to move into conversation with God and a deeper relationship – letting God become the center of who we are.  It is a shift in being that inspires a desire to share the love we have received.  It is not uncommon to experience profound gratitude.

Resting – Contemplatio

This conversation with God moves to communion with God in interior quiet and peace.  In the silent awareness of God we consent to falling into God’s  arms and resting in God’s embrace.  This is Contemplatio. Our consent allows God to heal our wounds and heal the depths of our being.  We are transformed and refashioned into God’s image and likeness.

This period of rest comes and goes.  We may be drawn to reflecting on our word or phrase more deeply or moved to conversation (Oratio) or reading again (Lectio).  The movement from one moment to another is free flowing.  It helps to think of Lectio Divina as a 4 step dance with God.

Still My Soul Be Still

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Still My Soul Be Still       Lyrics by KEITH & KRISTYN GETTY
 
The most Wonderful Song! Still, my Soul Be Still…
I heard this at church and absolutely LOVE the song and lyrics.
Lyrics are attached and the link to listen to a choir sing and also a lady singing it.
Blessings, 
 Laura Stewart
Listen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9t5_ZNmaw
 <iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”//www.youtube.com/embed/iG9t5_ZNmaw” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>
 Lyrics: 
http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/still-my-soul-be-still-sheet-music/19495704 
 
STILL, MY SOUL BE STILL
Still my soul be still
And do not fear
Though winds of change may rage tomorrow
God is at your side
No longer dread
The fires of unexpected sorrowGod You are my God
And I will trust in You and not be shaken
Lord of peace renew
A steadfast spirit within me
To rest in You aloneStill my soul be still
Do not be moved
By lesser lights and fleeting shadows
Hold onto His ways
With shield of faith
Against temptations flaming arrowsStill my soul be still
Do not forsake
The Truth you learned in the beginning
Wait upon the Lord
And hope will rise As stars appear when day is dimming.

The Path of Descent

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Almasgiving, Fasting, Prayer

The Rohr Institute’s first guided library study!

Please check this website:
Explore three downward movements of the spiritual journey

Meeting the St. Paul You Never Knew. Webcast (1)

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Notes from the Webcast February 25, 2014 (1)

(First 30 min. Josefina Fernandez.
Please continue on Gretchen Tucker notes  for the second part of the webcast)

 Fr. Rhor is presenting a Core of ideas about the worldview that St. Paul tries to clarify.
-Paul is the outsider that takes the inside. He is a critic of the religion of Judaism and the new religion of Christianity.
– He is the founder of the Church: Jesus proclaims the reign of God and he comes with a vehicle to communicate this message.
– He talks more about the Christ.
– He took the courage to take the Roman Empire in his quest.
– All his experience started on Damascus where he meets Christ and no Jesus. He meets this Great Spirit on the world and it is the same kind experience we have.
– He writes letters as a way of pastoral teaching and his way is very dialectic. He makes very strong contrast trying to bring higher synthesis. He is leading to a new awareness that he calls the Mystery of Christ.
– He was not one the 12 disciples.
– He did not know Jesus on the flesh.
– He is a Jew that rejected his own traditions in many ways. Jews are monotheist and Paul was talking on his teachings of God the Father, God the Holy Spirit and Jesus as the son of God. He was very comfortable talking with this vocabulary. It took 3 centuries to understand that Paul was talking about the Holy Trinity.
-Where does Paul’s get this authority? He gets it from the encounter of this new kind of God.
– He did not reject Judaism by the contrary he concentrated and went to preach at the synagogues. After 10 years of rejection he started thinking that this message is not for Judaism and it is for everybody.
 
 Universal messages for everybody. He presents a cosmic Christ: Christ is the pre-existing blueprint (Colossian and Ephesians letters). He is the one that identify Christ with humanity at its lowest level, most humiliating state and what he calls the mystery of the cross. Then he states that Christ is the final goal of history and it is what he calls the image of the risen Christ. So Christ is the one that pulls all the meaning of reality together. When Paul talks about Christ he is talking about everything. He is talking about that Christ is the pattern of the universe. We did not understand Paul in this mystical way.

Much later, we put Christ as (privatized) a private ownership and control.

This much-devolved notion of salvation is totally individualistic.

Paul is not an individualistic thinker. He is a cosmic mystical thinker. If you do not have this frame you will misinterpret what he says.

Paul keys phrase by which you can tell that he is talking about this mystical template by which all reality is explained is “In Christ “ .

Paul is a Greek speaking Jew who come from outside Israel . He is from Tarso (Turkey). He did not grow up on the Jewish ghetto so he does not have a ghetto mentality. He is a cosmopolitan person so he decided that his message belongs to all people. When the Jewish people took him in arrest he told them that he was a roman citizen so he had to be judge by roman tribunal.

He wrote most of his letters in Greek and that was the language of the elite at that time. He knew some Hebrew and Aramaic but was not his primary languages.

Paul gives shape and structure to Jesus message.

Jesus is the great proclaimer of the mystery. Jesus did not found the church, as we know it. He was just proclaiming the mysteries at higher level and Paul try to bring them to a practical pastoral level where they can happen. We know now that Paul’s communities in Corinth, Philippians, Ephesus, were not more than 40 to 45 people.

In these pagan communities that were decadent, Paul’s wanted to create small living schools. When these groups started having problems he wrote to them moralistic letters so they did no came a part and be discredit by bad behaviors these groups of people were very important for the transmission of the message and Jesus will not be trusted. When we read his letters, we think that he is talking at a moralistic level.

His letters in general were not moralistic. His concern is you to the picture of the Christ Mystery: God identification with history and humanity at its lowest most humiliating suffering level and that is what Paul’s means with Folly of the Cross or the Mystery of the Cross . So he creates the mystical foundation for Christianity. The other place we found this is in John Gospel.  And it is a Mystery. It is not something that you achieve by performance; it is something that you are already participating in it and you do not know it. And that is true today. This is what is going on.  This is what is happening. This Christ consciousness, this Trinitarian flows of life and love that we all are already flowing in. His job was to tell you that this is already the truth. It is not a new truth. It has been always been truth but we are a living in a time that we can talk about it. We can give words. We can give significance.

Another idea presented in Paul that we are unable to develop in this short lecture is the that he takes the Jesus notion of the reign of God, the kingdom of God, the big picture and he really politicized

Please continue on Gretchen Tucker notes  for the second part of the webcast)

Josefina Fernandez

Transformative Suffering

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I am presenting a summary of the daily meditations that Fr. Rhor presented this week.

1. If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it. (Sunday)

2. Jesus is not observing human suffering from a distance; he is somehow in human suffering with us and for us. (Monday)

3. Don’t get rid of the pain until you’ve learned its lessons. (Tuesday)

4. Suffering is the only thing strong enough to destabilize the imperial ego. (Wednesday)

5. The cross is always unto resurrection. (Thursday)

6. Transformed people transform people. (Friday)

 

 

E-Course by Contemplative Outreach Sessions 12,13 and 14

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E-Course by Contemplative Outreach
 
Session 12:  Companions in Grace
Session 13:   The Lord Is Near to All Who Call
 
These sessions focus on The Spiritual Journey and Centering Prayer – the prayer of consent to be totally taken over by the divine goodness,  to grow in humility, self knowledge and divine love.  This consenting to God’s presence and action within is the essence of the Centering Prayer practice.  We are encouraged to reflect on where we are with our daily spiritual practice.
 
“Sitting comfortably and with eyes closed, settle briefly and silently introduce the sacred word as the symbol of your consent to God’s presence and action within”
 – Centering Prayer – Second Guideline
 
A Lenten Meditation
 
“I am totally present now,
with the whole of my being, 
in complete openness, in deep prayer.
The past and future –time itself –are forgotten.
I am here in the presence of the Ultimate Mystery.
Like the air we breathe,
this divine Presence is all around us and within us,
distinct from us, but never separate from us.
I sense this Presence drawing me from within, 
as touching my spirit and embracing it, 
carrying me beyond myself into pure awareness.
 
I surrender to the attraction of interior silence,
tranquility ad peace.
I do not try to feel anything,
reflect about anything.
Without effort, without trying,
I sink into this Presence,
letting everything else go by.
Let love alone speak:
the simple desire to be one with the Presence, 
to forget self,
and to rest in the Ultimate Mystery.”
 – adapted from Thomas Keating, Open Mind, Open Heart
 
E-Course by Contemplative Outreach
 
Session 14:  A Heart Illumined
 
As we move closer to Holy Week we reflect on the process of purification and illumination which according to Fr. Thomas is both an upward and downward movement of grace.   This session includes a 14 minute video of Fr. Keating from the film Invitation from God  entitled  The Spiral Staircase and the Paschal Mystery.  
 
“There are two spiral staircases you might say.  One seems to go down in humiliation (purification) and one seems to rise in ever deepening levels of freedom, of affirmation, of transformation (illumination) and …they become one in some way…love and humility become the same thing…freedom into an inner resurrection.”
 – Thomas Keating, Living the Paschal Mystery:  Hope and Redemption
 
The beautiful Frederick Franck art reflection is Station XI Jesus is Nailed To The Cross.  We continue our practice of seeing/drawing this image on our hearts.  We are asked what does the image teach us about moving through the darkness, what does this image teach us about surrender?