Weekly Readings Newsletter

READINGS FOR 21/10/2012

An excerpt from John Main OSB, “The Present Christ” (April 1981), in MONASTERY WITHOUT WALLS: The Spiritual Letters of John Main, ed. L. Freeman (Norwich: Canterbury, 2006), p. 163. 

In the Resurrection we are absolved from the need to objectify God. No longer do we have to talk to God, to appease or petition him. “Your Father knows what your needs are before you ask him,” Jesus assures us.

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Readings for 14/10/2012

An excerpt from Laurence Freeman OSB, “A Theology of Experience” from MONASTERY WITHOUT WALLS: The Spiritual Letters of John Main (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2006), p. 232-3.

John Main [once] recounted about the response to a talk on prayer he had given to a Trappist monastery in Ireland. The abbot had made an impromptu request for an hour’s conference on contemplative prayer and led him into a stark church lined with two choirs of silent, hooded monks.

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Readings for 7/10/2012

From John Main OSB, “The Wholeness of God,” MOMENT OF CHRIST (New York: Continuum, 1998), p.83-85.

As we all know from our own sad experience we are so easily distracted. God’s love is given to each of us freely and generously and universally.  God’s love flows in our hearts in a mighty stream.

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Readings for 30/9/2012

An excerpt from John Main OSB, “Death and Resurrection,” MOMENT OF CHRIST (New York: Continuum, 1998), pp. 68-69.

[T]he whole Christian tradition tells us is that if we would become wise we must learn the lesson that we have here “no abiding city.” [We must hear] what the wise of ages past and present say to us: to have life in focus we must have death in [focus. . .].

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Readings for 23/9/2012

From “The Silence of the Soul,” by Laurence Freeman OSB in THE TABLET 10 May 1997.

[One] reason why silence is so disturbing to us [is this]: As soon as we begin to become silent, we experience the relativity of our ordinary everyday mind. With this mind we measure our space and time coordinates, we calculate probabilities and count up our mistakes and successes.

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Readings for 16/9/2012

From Fr. John Main, "Purity of Heart," WORD MADE FLESH (London: Canterbury Press Norwich, 2009), pp. 58-59.

. . . .We often think of freedom merely as the freedom to do what we want to do.  But even the most rudimentary experience of making contact with the power of Jesus in meditation shows us that freedom is not essentially the power to do but the liberty to be who we are

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Readings for 9/9/2012

An excerpt from Laurence Freeman OSB. “Dearest Friends,” WCCM International
Newsletter, Winter 2001.

Inner peace is hard to find at times of conflict and fear. We find it difficult to sit still when mind and feelings are in turmoil. It is easy to give up meditation at such times when it is most needed. So it helps to see that our meditation is not for ourselves alone.

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Readings for 2/9/2012

An excerpt from John Main OSB, "Straying from the Mantra," THE HEART OF
CREATION (London: Canterbury, 2007), pp. 9-11.

To learn to meditate we have to learn to be humble. . . . What does it mean to be humble? It means to begin to acknowledge that there is a reality outside of ourselves, that is greater than ourselves and that contains us.

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Readings for 26/8/2012

From Fr John Main, “Smashing the Mirror,” MOMENT OF CHRIST (New York: Continuum, 1998), pp. 50-51.

I do not think it is any exaggeration to say that original sin is self-consciousness, the hyper-self-consciousness of egoism, because self-consciousness gives rise to divided consciousness.

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Readings for 19/8/2012

An excerpt from Laurence Freeman OSB, “Dearest Friends” in Christian Meditation Newsletter, Vol. 35, No. 2, July 2011, P. 5.

We are all looking for something. Some have a clear sense of it, at least a conscious awareness of something missing. But much of the time and for most of us, it remains a dull ache and a vague longing that endures through good and hard times alike.

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