Weekly Readings Newsletter

Weekly Readings 18/11/2012

An excerpt from Laurence Freeman OSB, CHRISTIAN MEDITATION NEWSLETTER, Vol. 34, No. 3, October 2010, pp. 4-5.

The truly other is essential to the mystical and loving mind. Otherness stimulates the mind to let go of its fixed points and expand beyond itself, enlarging the view we have of the world and of ourselves within it.

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Weekly Readings 11/11/2012

An excerpt from Laurence Freeman OSB, “Dearest Friends,” WCCM International Newsletter, December 2007. 

In an age of stress and anxiety like ours the burden of time presses heavily upon us. Without meaning, the intolerable weight of time and, paradoxically, its fleeting disappearance become a crucifixion without a resurrection.

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Weekly Readings 4/11/2012

An excerpt from John Main, ESSENTIAL WRITINGS, ed. Laurence Freeman (Marynoll, NY: Orbis, 2002), p. 109.

The purpose of saying the mantra is that it becomes the focus of your attention. We are not thinking of anything nor are we pursing any insights that may come to us as we say the mantra. Read more »

READINGS FOR 28/10/2012

An excerpt from “Dearest Friends,” Laurence Freeman OSB in the Newsletter of the World Community for Christian Meditation, Vol. 32, No. 3, September 2008, p. 4.

When the force of faith is set free in the human person it impels us to experience reality beyond words, images, and ideas. We then discover that the filters of metaphor, however useful and necessary they may be at one level, can also (and need to) be deactivated if faith is to grow.

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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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