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Peter Lumsden
Приєднався 28 чер 2012
Connections
In response to failure, Peter repents, Judas despairs..... Despair - losing a sense of the possible, losing connection.
A focus in this meditation first on physical connection, with our own bodies.
Secondly on connection with others - and a loving kindness meditation directed towards others:
Picture in your mind’s eye, try to encounter as vividly as possible, someone for whom you feel deep love and unity. Let him or her be there with you as you express these desires.
May you be happy.
May you be blessed.
May you be free and peaceful.
May you be ever loved.
May you be always loving.
Now repeat the exercise, this time picturing someone you hardly know. Wish them the same loving desires.
Thirdly, connecting with the divine (God), which in the Israel of Jesus’ times, was implicit in the word "righteousness" - an energy-charged sphere of holy presence. To be “in the righteousness of God” (as Old Testament writers are fond of saying) means to be directly connected to this vibrational field, to be anchored within God’s own aliveness.
The beguine mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg (c. 1207-c. 1282) wrote about her experience of God’s passionate love and desire for connection. She records a dialogue between her soul and God:
The soul begins:
Ah, Lord, love me passionately, love me often, love me long. For the more continuously You love me, the purer I will be; the more fervently You love me, the more beautiful I will be; the longer You love me, the holier I will become here on earth.
God responds:
Because I Myself am Love, I will love you continuously.
Because I long to be loved passionately, My desire is to love you fervently.
Because I am everlasting and eternal, I will love you long…. [4]
When I shine, you will reflect my radiance,
When I flow, you will flow swiftly,
When you breathe, you draw into yourself My Divine Heart.
When you cry for Me, I take you into My arms.
When you love Me, we are united as one.
Nothing can separate us, for we abide together joyfully. [5]
Music from Taize - Nothing can ever come between us and the love of God...
Taize chant:
Nothing can ever come between us and the love of God,
Revealed to us in Christ Jesus
A focus in this meditation first on physical connection, with our own bodies.
Secondly on connection with others - and a loving kindness meditation directed towards others:
Picture in your mind’s eye, try to encounter as vividly as possible, someone for whom you feel deep love and unity. Let him or her be there with you as you express these desires.
May you be happy.
May you be blessed.
May you be free and peaceful.
May you be ever loved.
May you be always loving.
Now repeat the exercise, this time picturing someone you hardly know. Wish them the same loving desires.
Thirdly, connecting with the divine (God), which in the Israel of Jesus’ times, was implicit in the word "righteousness" - an energy-charged sphere of holy presence. To be “in the righteousness of God” (as Old Testament writers are fond of saying) means to be directly connected to this vibrational field, to be anchored within God’s own aliveness.
The beguine mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg (c. 1207-c. 1282) wrote about her experience of God’s passionate love and desire for connection. She records a dialogue between her soul and God:
The soul begins:
Ah, Lord, love me passionately, love me often, love me long. For the more continuously You love me, the purer I will be; the more fervently You love me, the more beautiful I will be; the longer You love me, the holier I will become here on earth.
God responds:
Because I Myself am Love, I will love you continuously.
Because I long to be loved passionately, My desire is to love you fervently.
Because I am everlasting and eternal, I will love you long…. [4]
When I shine, you will reflect my radiance,
When I flow, you will flow swiftly,
When you breathe, you draw into yourself My Divine Heart.
When you cry for Me, I take you into My arms.
When you love Me, we are united as one.
Nothing can separate us, for we abide together joyfully. [5]
Music from Taize - Nothing can ever come between us and the love of God...
Taize chant:
Nothing can ever come between us and the love of God,
Revealed to us in Christ Jesus
Переглядів: 5
Відео
Envy, despair and the light of Hope
Переглядів 414 днів тому
The passions not inherently evil - it's what we do with them, what we train our (instincts) towards, what we allow to dominate and dictate our responses that matters. Envy - the fear of being deprived of 'what belongs to me by right....' We think that if someone else is attracting admiration, or attention, or reward, and there is a limited amount of this commodity, then I must be getting less. ...
Avarice and desire
Переглядів 321 день тому
Avarice is an excessive or inordinate desire of gain; the longing for control over others, circumstances, and the future. Stems from a fear of being at the mercy of others, or fear of the future. It includes wanting be in control of the future. So…as a result…one is not open to the uncertainty of the future, but 'keeping myself safe' in fact blocks off 'receiving' life, since we try to control ...
Epiphany
Переглядів 128 днів тому
the Feast of the Epiphany (Jan 6th) recalls the coming of the magi to the birthplace of Jesus. What did they expect to see? Who knows? But their reaction was one of joy and reverence - overwhelmed, they knelt and worshipped. And then they had to journey / return home. The poet TS Eliot captured something of their experience in his poem ‘The Journey of the Magi in which one, now an old man, refl...
Gluttony
Переглядів 6Місяць тому
Many early writers BEGIN an account of the passions, or the seven deadly sins, with gluttony - stemming from a belief that gluttony was the root of Adam's disobedience. Like others, we can make a distinction between what we WANT and what we NEED. Like others, such as pride, it's part of the pattern of rebelling against being dependent. Denying dependence can lead to a loss of relatedness to the...
Anger
Переглядів 4Місяць тому
The early Christian writers had a slightly soft spot for anger, recognising that it can be an energetic and transforming response to the failures of ourselves and our world, but, it can also take a pathological form that leads to hatred, and ultimately, to violence. Gwen Adshead, in this year's Reith lectures, explains that we need to recognise in ourselves the kind of anger that leads to a wis...
Pride
Переглядів 2Місяць тому
'We are because God is' says Rowan Williams; and pride is "the failure to accept our dependence, the refusal to breathe in and let God be what God is - which is the heart and focus of energy of our being." So we have to 'learn' the right kind of dependence. The New English Bible renders the first of the beatitudes as ‘Happy are those who know their need of God’. So we deal with pride, not by ar...
We are because God is
Переглядів 82 місяці тому
The idea of passions goes back a long way. In mapping the inner life, Plato used an image of two horses pulling a chariot. The one, pushing things away - keeping things 'out' of 'my space' - aggression; the other the opposite, the urge to consume; to make what is out there part of our own agenda, our reality - greed. These passions are not wrong or bad in themselves, it is when they get distort...
I am because we are
Переглядів 42 місяці тому
Early writers of the Eastern spiritual tradition noted that our habitual mental and spiritual condition is one in which our minds are skewed; we don’t know things as we ought to know them; we don’t see things as we ought to see them. Our passions (the topic of a book by Rowan Williams, which we will pick up through Advent) can lead us astray. Where humankind declines to follow the leading of Go...
Connectedness
Переглядів 42 місяці тому
Father Richard Rohr contends that 'beneath our present ills-political corruption, ecological devastation, warring against one another, hating each other based on race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or nationality- is our profound and painful sense of disconnection - from God, certainly, but also from ourselves (especially our bodies), from each other, and from our world'. When we’re sep...
Listening to others
Переглядів 33 місяці тому
Rabbi Ward-Lev again: "At its heart, the prophetic witness was a way of listening, listening beyond the social norms of the day, listening to the word of the liberating God. The prophets urged the people to listen to God’s word because the discourse of the king, princes, and wealthy landowners was too narrow and was limited to the interests of these elites it did not include the voices of suffe...
Inner listening
Переглядів 133 місяці тому
Rabbi Ward-Lev says that the living presence of God is still calling to us today: "The Living Presence also speaks within our lives, wordlessly calling us out into life, encouraging us to grow beyond our current limitations, to cross boundaries, to take the next step in our lives. Listening well to our inner lives is an important practice along the liberation journey. Having achieved some degre...
joy and sorrow
Переглядів 23 місяці тому
Sarah Bessey assures us that some of the things that some people want to 'fix' are the very things that are fixing everything. She talks of the moments of joy - birth of children, sleeping in same room as sister for years, early morning coffee. But also moments of pain and sorrow; regrets has had to grapple with, crying after loss of a baby, unanswered prayers, painful recovery after an acciden...
Mind games
Переглядів 63 місяці тому
Being able to control our minds, our thinking, and our reactions, is a part of what we are calling SPIRITUAL FORMATION. I think there are several aspects to this. a. Through our meditation we can practice stilling the mind, allowing thoughts to ‘roll on by’, as Billy Connolly says, rather than allowing them to occupy us, and we end up following a train of thought - often regret about the past, ...
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