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- Sunday July 24: Because of Our Quiet
Practice:
- Elsewhere in Seeing Anew, Lehane Sheehan writes ‘Meditation, contemplation, stillness, and prayer are often adhered to as a kind of quick ritual so we can produce even more, be more effective, be more successful … [However] contemplative practice is more essentially about … self-surrender than self-fulfillment’. This week as a vestibule to your practice, renew your intention to simply consent to God’s presence and action in you and your life and let go of all expectations.
- “Because of our quiet”: As you move through daily life, intend for the love of Christ’s presence, pulsating at the heart of everything, to break through you.
You can view the full email reflection here: https://mailchi.mp/coutreach/word-of-the-week-july24
Sunday July 24: Because of Our Quiet
Pray. Surrender. Just be. We must be filled with still if we are to mirror others’ images to them “for a moment with a clear, perhaps even fiercer life because of our quiet.” This level of stillness comes from fidelity to the practice, “the contemplative’s way of door knocking.” Let me know via “this simple buy not easy practice” this week and always. <3 linda
As I participate in this historic “pilgrimage”, this week, the words: ASK, SEEK, KNOCK, SURRENDER plunge me into a deep abyss of listening with a “new heart”……….
Self-surrender not self-fulfillment: so clear. So difficult. Sue.
The meditation on ‘praying hard’ touched me. Yes, I have done that: and yes, it becomes all about my effort, about my trying to control an outcome. Less ‘praying hard’, more silence, approaching everything in my life from a contemplative stance – that is the gift of Centering Prayer for me. I learn to trust that God is already at work: my job, if you will, is to ask, seek, knock, and surrender.
“This ‘praying hard’ is exhausting. After a while on the spiritual journey most of us discover that our way of praying changes, that there is less ‘praying hard’ and more silence. [Praying this way] simply becomes a way of being, a way of seeing in the ordinary events of our lives, practicing a contemplative presence whereby we approach every encounter, every activity, every meeting from a contemplative stance, trusting that God is already at work in people’s lives…”
At the beginning of the week I found the image disgusting, upsetting, then this morning following an intense week of “walking with Pope Francis on his penitential pilgrimage”, the word peeling as the contemplative way of door knocking, is making sense if I consent to the presence and action. loved and mercy, of the great peeler.
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