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- Sunday July 31: The Grace of Inner Resurrection
To Practice
– Examen: What is my most precious story, the one I tell myself and others all the time – about myself, my life, my situation, my family, the world? What “songs” do I sing most frequently? Notice any sensations in the body as the answers come. Simple allow it all to come to Light, without resistance, without judgement. The Light heals. If moved to do so, allow a prayer or intention to arise.
– Pray the Welcoming Prayer throughout the week when emotions and sensations are triggered.
You can read the full email reflection here: https://mailchi.mp/coutreach/word-of-the-week-july31
this morning I am anxious about not attending mass . I feel caught between the institutional church and my journey with my God. I still want to know what is “right” be right, check all the boxes. In the end it is just God and I. In this moment, that is where my conscience leads me: to do the next best thing. Not knowing, no guarantees, just choosing to love the best I can.
“We will go halfway”. These words reminds me of Pope Francis’ recent trip to Canada. When he was given a traditional headdress, he put it on over his skull cap. One of the native women took offense, noting that -in order to commit to a new law – one must first take off the old law. One cannot live by two laws. One cannot be both a caterpillar and a butterfly. Choosing the butterfly is at once our destiny and our difficulty.
Sunday July 31: The Grace of Inner Resurrection
Today Father Keating verse resonates deeply:
God empowers our powerlessness
So that we may never despair
Of unconditional forgiveness and infinite mercy.
I’m powerless over an auto immune diagnosis. Instead of despair of what cannot be done I extend myself forgiveness and mercy, offering thanks to God for what I can do. Every minute of every day. <3 linda
Dear Linda: Bless you and bless your health and perseverance through difficulty. – Pamela
“We are born with an egoic operating system”. These words have troubled me all week. I keep thinking of the native peoples of Canada, how their children were sent off to boarding schools to strip them of a different “operating system”, a different way of seeing and being in the world. The colonization efforts of European settlers included an education into the either/or operating system. I doubt that the Africans, transported to the “new world” chained in slave ships, were born with the same either/or perspective of their captors. Being educated in Catholic schools, I can still remember believing that everyone was either Catholic or non And only the Catholics were eligible for heaven I don’t think I was born with that either/or belief system As this week’s message says, whatever perspective we were raised in, spending time in silence can open us to,a wider, deeper view
Come into Being as you pass away.
– Gospel of Thomas Logion 42All week i struggled to get past the examen question ” What is my most precious story?” All it seemed I could do was centering prayer and the welcome prayer, till this morning when the child of my ego self met my inner child. Long ago, perhaps forty years or so, during a guided mediation, God was this robust prairie willow on the edge of a prairie slough, and me, ( my inner child) was a very very small willow, oh so so, close to this robust prairie willow. Perhaps around the same time it was time for a new stage in my ego development, when I discover I have ( or am) an “i am”. This week I come face to face with the mirage exposing my “no such self”. Once again I am trusting the big I AM to empower my powerlessness as I continue to consent to ” coming into being”. In humble gratitude!
Dear Ones: this is the prayer Linda Jackim mentioned in the Wednesday Word of the Week prayer group:
Joe’s Prayer is adapted from a prayer of Teilhard de Chardin. It further illuminates these words (included in this week’s reflection):
Come into Being as you pass away.
– Gospel of Thomas Logion 42Now that I have found the joy of utilizing
all forms of growth to let you grow in me,
grant that I may willingly consent
to this last phase of communion
in the course of which I shall possess
you by diminishing in you.
When the signs of age begin to mark my body . . .
when the ill that is to diminish me or carry me off
strikes from without or is born within me . . .
When the painful moment comes in which
I suddenly awaken to the fact
that I am ill or growing old,
and above all that last moment
when I feel I am losing hold of myself . . .
O God, grant that I may understand
that it is you who are painfully
parting the fibers of my being
in order to penetrate to the very marrow of my substance
and bear me away within yourself.
A big thank you, Pamela, for sharing this post. Lately I find myself making decisions for a time I am not yet living. Words like “parting fibers”, “very marrow of my substance” are an anchor for the present moment. Blessings to all on the long long path of seeking/consenting and for those who share that precious nugget of grace and mercy, of ever so slowly “coming into being”.
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