Experience of Vertical Exchange

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Few weeks ago, I started a course “The Divine Exchange” with Cynthia Bourgeault and I have been really impressed with the material I am learning. This week, we learn about our life in different realms and how we move in the vertical and horizontal axis.

We had this question for our discussion:

  • When talking about vertical exchange, Cynthia describes that it goes both ways between realms: that not only are the branches dependent on the vine, but the vine is dependent on the branches. How have you experienced this two-way flow in your own life?

I have experienced this concept very vividly in a stage of my life; I felt that I was in total control of my life. I remembered I pushed to the maximum until my body resisted and I got sick and disable. Few years took me to figure out how wrong I was.  Few years took me to convince myself that I need to heal from the inside out.  Few years took me to decide to jump on the hands of God so He will use me as instrument. Then few years is taking me to learn to keep and maintain this flow. It is a life -long work.

My teacher assistant respond me so beautiful with these words by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:

Trust in the Slow Work of God

Above all, trust in the slow work of God
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability-
and that it may take a very long time. And so I think it is with you.
your ideas mature gradually – let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don’t try to force them on, as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow. Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

Mystical Hope

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Mystical Hope   
Thursday,  April 16, 2020

Hope is the main impulse of life. —Ilia Delio, OSF [1]

Because we are so quickly led to despair, most of us cannot endure suffering for long without some sliver of hope or meaning. However, it is worth asking ourselves about where our hope lies. My friend and colleague Cynthia Bourgeault makes a powerful distinction between what she calls ordinary hope, “tied to outcome . . . . an optimistic feeling . . . because we sense that things will get better in the future” and mystical hope “that is a complete reversal of our usual way of looking at things. Beneath the ‘upbeat’ kind of hope that parts the seas and pulls rabbits out of hats, this other hope weaves its way as a quiet, even ironic counterpoint.” She writes,

We might make the following observations about this other kind of hope, which we will call mystical hope. In contrast to our usual notions of hope:

  1. Mystical hope is not tied to a good outcome, to the future. It lives a life of its own, seemingly without reference to external circumstances and conditions.
  2. It has something to do with presence—not a future good outcome, but the immediate experience of being met, held in communion, by something intimately at hand.
  3. It bears fruit within us at the psychological level in the sensations of strength, joy, and satisfaction: an “unbearable lightness of being.” But mysteriously, rather than deriving these gifts from outward expectations being met, it seems to produce them from within. . .

[It] is all too easy to understate and miss that hope is not intended to be an extraordinary infusion, but an abiding state of being. We lose sight of the invitation—and in fact, our responsibility, as stewards of creation—to develop a conscious and permanent connection to this wellspring. We miss the call to become a vessel, to become a chalice into which this divine energy can pour; a lamp through which it can shine. . . .

We ourselves are not the source of that hope; we do not manufacture it. But the source dwells deeply within us and flows to us with an unstinting abundance, so much so that in fact it might be more accurate to say we dwell within it. . . .

The good news is that this deeper current does exist and you actually can find it. . . . For me the journey to the source of hope is ultimately a theologicaljourney: up and over the mountain to the sources of hope in the headwaters of the Christian Mystery. This journey to the wellsprings of hope is not something that will change your life in the short range, in the externals. Rather, it is something that will change your innermost way of seeing. From there, inevitably, the externals will rearrange. . . . 

The journey to the wellsprings of hope is really a journey toward the center, toward the innermost ground of our being where we meet and are met by God.
[1] Delio, Ilia, “Hope in a Time of Crisis,” The Omega Center, March 9, 2020, www.omegacenter.info/hope-in-a-time-of-crisis/ 

Adapted from Cynthia Bourgeault, Mystical Hope: Trusting in the Mercy of God (Cowley Publications: 2001), 3, 5, 9-10, 17, 20, 42. 
https://email.cac.org/t/ViewEmail/d/BEBFF876C5C032E02540EF23F30FEDED/01F5CC100F253DFD0F8C96E86323F7F9

Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation

From the Center for Action and Contemplation

From where, does Wisdom come?

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“As Christians, we might reflexively assert that our religion provides that place.  But, while I agree that it can, I wonder how much it really does.  The history of religion in general and of Christianity in particular has been checkered to say the least.  Indeed, the number of human beings slaughtered in the various names of God is too large to even fathom.  Or on a more parochial level, how often do we hear stories of clergy and congregations behaving badly—all while everyone is singing hymns of praise to God and reciting prayers for peace.  But all of this may not be the fault of religion per se or certainly of any of the great spiritual teachers whose lives and works gave rise to the various religious traditions; it may be more the result of our failure to live the lives to which they invite us.  The question, though, is why.  I will get to that.

Indeed, we may have the deep sense that Jesus himself embodied this Wisdom.  In fact it is true that the primary title given to Jesus was that of a moshelim, that is, a master of Wisdom, and he did teach in mashal, that is, parables and Wisdom sayings.  And he himself seemed the epitome of Wisdom, moving through life with a heart overflowing with compassion, generosity, and love.  Clearly, however, not everyone caught on to either his Wisdom actions or his Wisdom teachings.  Some of his listeners got it, but many more did not.  And even the people, who did at times seem to get a grasp of the Wisdom he was conveying, were not always able to maintain it.

By the way, I am not talking about moral uprightness here.  Although that was often the spin that others put on his teachings, Jesus’ Wisdom was never actually about that.  Jesus, the Wisdom master, did not so much implore his listeners to be better and more upright citizens; instead he coaxed and implored them to awaken.  Similarly, he never preached a straight and narrow moral life to be lived in this life in order to gain entrance into a heaven in the next life.  Instead, he invited his listeners to wake up to the kingdom of heaven right here in the present moment.  But while many were fascinated with his Wisdom teaching and drawn to his powers of healing, the sad truth is that he actually had mixed success in winning hearts.

The friends and followers who did seem to grasp the Wisdom of the master seemed to have done so because their level of being was raised—at least temporarily—to a point where they could resonate to the frequency of the Wisdom he was teaching and transmitting.  Maybe because their desperation drove them to an extreme point of openness and vulnerability, maybe because their desire was so great, maybe because they had somehow coaxed their hearts into a state of open receptivity—whatever the reason—his truth touched the very depths of their hearts.  From this higher level of being—like a tuning fork—they came to vibrate at same frequency as the Wisdom master, and they saw just as Jesus saw.  His teachings and his very presence provided a sort of divine alchemy that brought them into a deeply pervasive sense of union.  Through this experience they were transformed from the inside out.

But those people who approached Jesus with skepticism, criticism, and judgment—well, they didn’t get his Wisdom at all.  Instead of being able to match his level of being, they sought to bring Jesus down to their own level.   Consequently, they were blind and deaf to his teaching and even closed to his healing.  Because they were not able to rise beyond the strong gravitational pull of their own small-mindedness, they simply could not grasp Jesus’ Wisdom.

It seems, then, that openness to the full depth of the Gospel Wisdom requires the receptivity of a certain state of mind or a certain state of being.  Without that, the Wisdom of Jesus cannot be received.  We simply need to grow beyond the small mind—because unless or until we do, we will end up twisting and distorting this Wisdom substantially.  In fact, when you run the deep Wisdom truths of Jesus through the small mind alone, all you get is a deeper entrenchment in what you already believed in the first place.  Profession of a certain set of beliefs without accompanying transformation ends up not amounting to much at all.

Unfortunately, this understanding has become tragically overlooked and misunderstood here in the West.  Starting with the bitter doctrinal controversies of the third and fourth centuries, the Church has made our faith too much a question of mental belief, and our tradition has become far too influenced by creedal and doctrinal statements of belief and not steered by actual spiritual truth that is born out of experience.

Wisdom work, then, is an effort to correct this and to bring our Christian faith back to its essential experiential underpinnings.  It’s not that grace is being ignored, denied, or even undervalued; it’s more that, if we are to be instruments of the reception and transmission of God’s love, we have a responsibility to tune our instruments.

Thus, much of Wisdom work involves growing beyond our smaller minds in order to enter our larger minds (or our hearts, really).  Indeed, the word for “repent” in the Gospel, more than meaning, “feel really sorry for your sins” means “transform yourself by coming into your larger mind” or heart. (Marcus Borg)

Or maybe all of this is better conceptualized by thinking of the operating system of your computer.  We’ve been chugging along using the more limited operating system of the smaller mind (also called the ego); but that operating system is only capable of specific operations on a certain level of life.  Great for choosing which kind of spaghetti sauce you want to buy at Wegman’s, but not so good for grasping the meaning of life’s wholeness.

The kingdom of which Jesus speaks requires us to employ another operating system that can perform operations of a different order entirely.  When this system is up and running—and, by the way, we all come fully equipped with this other operating system, which we may call the heart operating system—a whole new way of seeing is possible and higher levels of being are accessible.   But the work of Wisdom is not to cancel out the egoic operating system of the smaller mind; it is rather to help us to bring this other operating system on line and then to integrate the two.

All of that is pretty conceptual, I realize.  So let me be more practical.  How do we do this?

Wisdom work, as I have come to understand and experience it, has two major components: attention and surrender.  Attention methods help us to more deeply connect to the energy field within and around us.  Through specific practices we learn to see and experience life more accurately and more directly.  To do this we usually need to get out from beneath the dominant sway of our own personal story.  You see, the story of “me” always puts me in the middle and insists that everything be judged and evaluated in terms of how it affects me.  But that keeps us focused on the surface of things.  With attention practices, we learn to see and experience what lies underneath that.

Surrender is the practice that Jesus perfected in his life.  By refusing to clutch or grab anything in life and by declining to brace against anything, he allowed everything to come to him and flow through him.  In this counterintuitive approach he found the gateway to union with God.  Practice in surrender methods (which includes both meditation practices and other more active practices) we work to pattern this gesture of surrender into our very being.  And we discover that this gesture connects to that in us that lives beyond death.  And it is the surrender of Jesus that becomes the bridge that can take us there.  But it’s not that surrender in this moment brings us a resulting reward in the next.  The truth is in the gesture and the letting go movement itself.  Learn that gesture and bring it into multiple aspects in your life and you will have found a passageway to the kingdom.”

Extract from :

https://www.williamredfield.com/writing/2018/6/24/what-is-wisdom

By William Redfield

Healing Divisions- CP material March 21, 2020

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United in Prayer Day
 March 21, 2020

“Healing Divisions”

A day dedicated to whole-making in ourselves,
our relationships and our world

“Prayer is the energy of awakening to this radical presence of God.  It is the breathing of God’s Spirit in me that awakens me to the reality of my own existence.  As I awaken to my own reality, I awake to the reality of the whole of which I am part, the whole that is the universe itself. … As I am pulled into the power of God, my mind is filled with light and my being expands.  Such is the power of contemplation.

“Theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg describes the Spirit as a field in which one’s particular being exists. Each person is like a particle in a relational field in which the Spirit unifies the various fields of energy. If this analogy holds true, then the particularity of my existence depends on my energies of relatedness. Prayer expands my field of energies so that the more deeply I am related to God, the more expansive are my relationships which energize and unite, and thus contribute to the work of evolution.”
– Ilia Delio, ” Praying In Teilhard’s Universe,” The Omega Center Newsletter, January 14, 2020

+++

“The awakening of the inner eye of faith is the awakening of the contemplative process.  You begin to see the Divine Presence in everything without effort – even when the necessities of daily life require your full attention.  When the inner eye of faith is thoroughly opened, it is a fairly permanent state of mind. You see everything as it is, but you also see it in its Source which is the presence of God. … To see God in everything, however hidden, is an enormous enhancement of the capacity of perception. … The practice of silence allows God greater freedom to act in us as our interior life becomes freer from our predispositions and predetermined mindsets. …”

– Thomas Keating, God is Love: The Heart of All Creation companion book

+++

“For the Christian, the choice for wholeness is embedded in the gospel life, following the words of Jesus, ‘I have come so that you may have life and have it to the full.’ (Jn 10:10). We are to focus our minds and hearts on the whole and choose the whole for the sake of abundant life. …

“In a remarkable letter to the director of the Vatican Observatory, John Paul II wrote: … ‘Unity involves the drive of the human mind toward understanding and the desire of the human spirit for love.  … Unity is also the consequence of love. If love is genuine, it moves not towards the assimilation of the other, but toward union with the other. Human community begins in desire when that union has not been achieved, and it is completed in joy when those who have been apart are now united.’

[…]

“Jesus began his mission by announcing the dawn of a new age, a new humanity unified in the love of God and committed to the reign of God. He challenged the social patterns of exclusivity and sought to replace it with the values of compassion and mercy. His inner oneness with God became manifest on the level of community, where he sought to overcome divisions by giving priority to men and women as coequal in God’s reign and by empowering the poor, lowly and marginalized. The reign of God is not an abstract ideal, he indicated, but a concrete reality. It begins with a consciousness of God and a desire to live in accord with God’s law of love. Jesus’ deep oneness with God empowered … a non-dual consciousness of belonging to the whole and the whole belonging to God. He lived from this wholeness by going ‘all over Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing people from every kind of disease and sickness’ (Mt 4:23). He constantly challenged others to see, to awaken to the presence of God, and to be part of an undivided whole, the kingdom (or ‘kin-dom’) of  God, where Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, male and female are invited as equals to the divine banquet.”

– Ilia Delio, Making All Things New: Catholicity, Cosmology, Consciousness

+++

“In the Christian tradition love is the bottom line: ‘Love God with your whole heart, mind, soul and strength and your neighbor as yourself.’ The same God is in others as in us. All humans basically are equal and, if they consent, are inserted into the Mystical Body of Christ to serve each other and to build-up the Body of Christ in every possible way. …

“We belong to the human family and are developing and growing in breadth of perspective and in relationship to God. Christian non-duality then is this increasing merging of all our interests of body, soul, and emotions into the Body of Christ, the New Creation, who through the Spirit has given us the guidance of the Fruits and Gifts of the Spirit. …”

– Thomas Keating, That We May Be One: Christian Non-Duality

Incarnation

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Incarnation

Celebrating an Eternal Advent
Tuesday, December 24, 2019

In the first 1200 years of Christianity, the greatest feast was Easter with the high holy days of Holy Week leading up to the celebration of the resurrection of Christ. But in the 13th century, a new person entered the scene: Francis of Assisi felt we didn’t need to wait for God to love us through the cross and resurrection. Francis intuited that the whole thing started with incarnate love, and he popularized what we now take for granted as Christmas, which for many became the greater Christian feast. The Franciscans popularized Christmas. Maybe their intuition was correct.

Francis realized that if God had become flesh—taken on materiality, physicality, humanity—then we didn’t have to wait for Good Friday and Easter to “solve the problem” of human sin; the problem was solved from the beginning. It makes sense that Christmas became the great celebratory feast of Christians because it basically says that it’s good to be human, it’s good to be on this earth, it’s good to be flesh, it’s good to have emotions. We don’t need to be ashamed of any of this. God loves matter and physicality.

With that insight, it’s no wonder Francis went wild over Christmas! (I do, too: my little house is filled with candles at Christmastime.) Francis believed that every tree should be decorated with lights to show their true status as God’s creations! And that’s exactly what we still do 800 years later.

Remember, when we speak of Advent or preparing for Christmas, we’re not just talking about waiting for the little baby Jesus to be born. That already happened 2,000 years ago. In fact, we’re welcoming the Universal Christ, the Cosmic Christ, the Christ that is forever being born in the human soul and into history.

And believe me, we do have to make room, because right now there is no room in the inn for such a mystery. We see things pretty much in their materiality, but we don’t see the light shining through. We don’t see the incarnate spirit that is hidden inside of everything material.

The early Eastern Church, which too few people in the United States and Western Europe are familiar with, made it very clear that the incarnation was a universal principle. Incarnation meant not just that God became Jesus; God said yes to the material universe. God said yes to physicality. Eastern Christianity understands the mystery of incarnation in the universal sense. So it is always Advent. God is forever coming into the world (see John 1:9).

We’re always waiting to see spirit revealing itself through matter. We’re always waiting for matter to become a new form in which spirit is revealed. Whenever that happens, we’re celebrating Christmas. The gifts of incarnation just keep coming. Perhaps this is enlightenment.

Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation

Adapted from “An Advent Meditation with Richard Rohr” (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2017), https://vimeo.com/246331333.

Art and the Power to Transcend

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I received a contemplating practice today, Contemplating Art, and I was totally immersed on the experience that I had.

Some of the great modern philosophers, Schelling to Schiller to Schopenhauer, have all pinpointed a major reason for great art’s power to transcend. When we look at any beautiful object (natural or artistic), we suspend all other activity, and we are simply aware, we only want to contemplate the object. While we are in this contemplative state, we do not want anything from the object; we just want to contemplate it; we want it to never end. We don’t want to eat it, or own it, or run from it, or alter it: we only want to look, we want to contemplate, we never want it to end.

In that contemplative awareness, our own egoic grasping in time comes momentarily to rest. We relax into our basic awareness. We rest with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. We are face to face with the calm, the eye in the center of the storm. We are not agitating to change things; we contemplate the object as it is. Great art has this power, this power to grab your attention and suspend it: we stare, sometimes awestruck, sometimes silent, but we cease the restless movement that otherwise characterizes our every waking moment. . . .

Think of the most beautiful person you have ever seen. Think of the exact moment you looked into his or her eyes, and for a fleeting second you were paralyzed: you couldn’t take your eyes off that vision. You stared, frozen in time, caught in that beauty. Now imagine that identical beauty radiating from every single thing in the entire universe: every rock, every plant, every animal, every cloud, every person, every object, every mountain, every stream—even the garbage dumps and broken dreams—every single one of them, radiating that beauty. You are quietly frozen by the gentle beauty of everything that arises around you. You are released from grasping, released from time, released from avoidance, released altogether into the eye of Spirit, where you contemplate the unending beauty of the Art that is the entire World.

That all-pervading Beauty is not an exercise in creative imagination. It is the actual structure of the universe. That all-pervading Beauty is in truth the very nature of the Kosmos right now. . . . If you remain in the eye of the Spirit, every object is an object of radiant Beauty. If the doors of perception are cleansed, the entire Kosmos is your lost and found Beloved, the Original Face of primordial Beauty, forever, and forever, and endlessly forever. And in the face of that stunning Beauty, you will completely swoon into your own death, never to be seen or heard from again, except on those tender nights when the wind gently blows through the hills and the mountains, quietly calling your name. [1]

[1] Ken Wilber, The Eye of Spirit: Integral Art and Literary Theory (Shambhala: 1997), 44.

A Prayer of Gratitude

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Prayer is sitting in the silence until it silences us, choosing gratitude until we are grateful, and praising God until we ourselves are an act of praise. Mature prayer always breaks into gratitude. This week’s practice is a body prayer from Beverly Lanzetta. Adapt the movements to your body’s needs so that you’re comfortable. Focus simply on the feeling of gratitude and, as you are able, do the following as you read through the stanzas: bow, kneel, lie down, rise, put your hands over your heart, place your hands together, bow your head, and open your arms wide.

Holy Earth, Holy Cosmos,
I bow before you
With my whole being.

Holy Creatures, Holy Nature,
I kneel upon the earth
In honor and thanksgiving
Of your blessed bounty.

Holy Waters, Holy Mountains,
I lay my body on your temple
In gratefulness for nurturing
My tender soul.

Holy Passion, Holy Longing,
I rise up before you
A devotee of truth,
Following wherever you lead me.

Holy Silence, Holy Solitude,
I place my hands over my heart
Breathing in serenity,
Breathing out your peace.

Holy Sorrow, Holy Suffering,
I close my hands in prayer
May I bear every wound
With compassion and nonharm.

Holy Humility, Holy Emptiness,
I bow my head before you
I have become open,
For your All to shine in my soul.

Holy Freedom, Holy Rejoicing,
I open my heart to the world
Offering myself to this day,
In joyfulness and gratitude.

Amen. [1]

[1] Beverly Lanzetta, “Canticle of Praise,” A Feast of Prayers (Blue Sapphire Books: forthcoming 2019). Used with permission. Dr. Beverly Lanzetta is a theologian, spiritual teacher, and the author of many groundbreaking books on emerging universal spirituality and new monasticism as well as a vowed monk of peace living in the world. For more information on Lanzetta and her work, visit her website beverlylanzetta.net.

Retreat Reflexion: the Universal Christ

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Having the responsibility to prepare material for the retreat that Nancy Moran and I lead on June 15 at Laurel Lakes, gave me the opportunity to be an online participant of the Universal Christ: Another Name for Every Thing conference, to read the book and listen the conferences several times.

The material from the conference touched me very deeply in my heart. Each presenter had special way to transmit crucial concepts and reading the book The Universal Christ by Fr. Richard Rohr gave a more solid experience. I do not have the right way to express my gratitude to Fr. Rohr for the gift he has provided me, helping to be more centered in my Christian roots.

Probably when you read the book, The Universal Christ, and /or watch the video presentations of the conference could signify for you new ideas, more theory and theology and you may consider them. This Christ Mystery needs to rewire you on the physical, neurological and the cellular level in order you experience reality in a new way. We need to experience our Christian faith at this new label of awareness.  This is to start enjoining a Christ consciousness.

Telling people is always ineffective. Telling is not training. We need to offer actual training in how to practically rewire our responses. We need practices that teach how look out from ourselves, and to be aware.

Do we want to change? We need to find a prayer form, a practice that actually invades our unconscious. Contemplative Outreach is given us some tools to prepare our body for this new way of seeing. The practice of Centering Prayer is a prayer form that teach us to learn to sit in silence and observe how our mind works. The simple experience of being exposed to the constant thoughts during the prayer time and learn to let them go and the pure intention of being in the presence of God during the prayer give us the assurance that whatever is happening inside is handling by this Christ Mystery.

The Welcoming Prayer is other tool that is used to learn how our false self-works. By observing the external and internal body reactions of our human interactions through the five senses help us to know how really, we are. The Welcoming Prayer allows to add a pause in our reactions, so we may able to take a conscious response in our daily life.

Another practice that teach us to look from ourselves is the use of short phrases or sentences that you may repeat during the day. It is called the use of an active prayer sentence or phrase. Sometimes are called mantras, sayings or whatever you may call these short sentences.

Some samples are:

“I am nothing, I have nothing, I desire nothing except the love of Jesus”.  

 “ Everything is a grace. Everything. Everything. Everything.”

“Christ is in my though, Christ is in my lips, Christ is in my actions all day long”.

We need to embody these phrases, so we need to repeat them daily for certain period of time until you notice that the phrase comes very easily to your mind. You may notice that when you have a conflict on your mind, the introduction of this phrases calm you and give space to be present to the action of this Christ Mystery in your life.

Unity and Diversity

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Unity and Diversity

June 2 – June 7, 2019

Unitive consciousness—the awareness that we are all one in Love—lays a solid foundation for social critique and acts of justice. (Sunday)

In the Trinity, the three must be maintained as three and understood as different from one another. Yet the infinite trust and flow between them is so constant, so reliable, so true, and so faithful that they are also completely one. (Monday)

Gravity, atomic bonding, orbits, cycles, photosynthesis, ecosystems, force fields, electromagnetic fields, sexuality, human friendship, animal instinct, and evolution all reveal an energy that is attracting all things and beings to one another, in a movement toward ever greater complexity and diversity—and yet ironically also toward unification at ever deeper levels. (Tuesday)

People can meet God within their cultural context but in order to follow God, they must cross into other cultures because that’s what Jesus did in the incarnation itself. —Christena Cleveland (Wednesday)

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s observation that eleven o’clock on Sunday mornings is the most segregated hour in America still stands to challenge each congregation to examine the difference in its midst and to develop a higher capacity and moral compass to embrace it and to celebrate it. —Jaqueline Lewis (Thursday)

Nothing exists without these three interdependent energies that emerged from the first flaring forth over 13.8 billion years ago: differentiation or diversity; subjectivity, interiority, or essence; and communion or community and interconnectedness. —Joan Brown (Friday)

Practice: You Belong

At the Center’s spring conference, The Universal Christ, we read the following call and response with 2,000 people gathered in Albuquerque and thousands more online. Later we heard from so many people that this litany of welcome was powerfully moving. Read it aloud to yourself and feel truly welcomed—all of you, even the parts that culture or church have denied. Are there pieces of you not named here that you would like to recognize? Consider sharing your own welcome statement with your faith community and invite others to collaborate in making this vision more complete and actualized.

We would like to let you know that you belong. . . .

People on all parts of the continuum of gender identity and expression, including those who are gay, bisexual, heterosexual, transgender, cisgender, queer folks, the sexually active, the celibate, and everyone for whom those labels don’t apply. We say, “You belong.”

People of African descent, of Asian descent, of European descent, of First Nations descent in this land and abroad, and people of mixed and multiple descents and of all the languages spoken here. We say, “You belong.”

Bodies with all abilities and challenges. Those living with any chronic medical condition, visible or invisible, mental or physical. We say, “You belong.”

People who identify as activists and those who don’t. Mystics, believers, seekers of all kinds. People of all ages. Those who support you to be here. We say, “You belong.”

Your emotions: joy, fear, grief, contentment, disappointment, surprise, and all else that flows through you. We say, “You belong.”

Your families, genetic and otherwise. Those dear to us who have died. Our ancestors and the future ones. The ancestors who lived in this land, in this place, where these buildings are now . . . we honor you through this work that we are undertaking. We say, “You belong.”

People who feel broken, lost, struggling; who suffer from self-doubt and self-judgment. We say, “You belong.”

All beings that inhabit this earth, human or otherwise: the two-legged, the four-legged, winged and finned, those that walk, fly, and crawl, above the ground and below, in air and water. We say, “You belong.”

Adapted from “Diversity Welcome,” Training for Change, https://www.trainingforchange.org/training_tools/diversity-welcome/.

Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation

From the Center for Action and Contemplation

Summary: Week Twenty-three

Unity and Diversity

June 2 – June 7, 2019

The Universal Christ: Contemplative Retreat June 15, 2019

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Nancy Moran and I have been working together to lead this retreat. Our intention is to bring the message of the Universal Christ in a contemplative environment. We really give thanks to Contemplative Outreach Northeast Ohio for allow us to plan this retreat, to the Center of Action and Contemplation for the use of the videos from the latest conference on March 28-31, 2019 and to Laurel Lakes retirement Community for allow us use this place and for all help provided to make this event free of charge for our community.

The Universal Christ: Another Name for Every Thing
Saturday, June 15, 2019
Contemplative Retreat
What if Christ is a name for the transcendent within of every “thing” in the universe?
What if Christ is a name for the immense spaciousness of all true Love?
What if Christ refers to an infinite horizon that pulls us both from within and pulls us forward, too?
What if Christ is another name for every thing—in its fullness? —Richard Rohr
Christ is more than Jesus’ last name. Jesus is a person whose example we can follow. Christ is a cosmic life principle in which all beings participate. The incarnation is an ongoing revelation of Christ, uniting matter and spirit, operating as one and everywhere. Together—Jesus and Christ—show us “the way, the truth, and the life” of death and resurrection.
On June 15, join Contemplative Outreach Northeast Ohio for Centering Prayer, contemplative teachings and practices, and reflection with 3 videos featuring Richard Rohr during the March 28 – 31, 2019 Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Registration required for lunch planning. NO FEE. Free will offering will be accepted. Date and Time Saturday, June 15, 2019 9:00 am to 4:00 pm (8:30 am to 9:00 am Registration. Please arrive early so we can start promptly at 9:00 am) Location and Directions Laurel Lake Retirement Community  200 Laurel Lake Dr. Hudson, OH 44236 Contact Information To RSVP for this event, please contact Nancy Moran at email nancymoran94@gmail.com, no later than June 12. For further information: contact Josefina Fernandez at email fucsina@mac.com Retreat leaders Nancy Moran and Josefina Fernandez
More Information Click here for more information about the schedule on the website of Contemplative Outreach Northeast Ohio.