Wednesday, February 29, 2012

           

What to read for today.

Chapter 6: Pray for Your Own Discovery           

Questions for your personal reflection.

Who or what is the God that Merton refers to?  Is this a God that you can relate to?           

Sharing with others: What caught your attention or provoked your thinking today?

I can relate to Merton the poet who uses words that point beyond themselves as in his phrase “God uttering me like a word”. But sometimes the language becomes literal – too many verbs - and I cannot follow Merton whose God finds, looks, sees, discovers, empties, bridges, reveals, wills, etc. It was a relief to read in Merton & Sufism that Merton told novice monks, “Don’t speak to somebody else’s God, because somebody else’s Lord may be Satan for you if you don’t look out…one has to be terribly careful not to impose upon other people one’s own Lord, ones’ own idea of God.”

Posted by Genevieve

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

           

What to read for today.

Chapter 5: Things in Their Identity           

Questions for your personal reflection.

What is your reaction to Merton’s assertion that “your sanctity will never be mine and mine will never be yours”? If one accepts his assertion, how would a parish community be different?            

Sharing with others: What caught your attention or provoked your thinking today?

Such a provocative and rich chapter.  Merton’s injunction to scrupulous honesty is tough medicine.  Not only am I to seek my true identity, I am to do so with absolute integrity.  That includes allowing myself to be seen clearly by others whether or not they approve.  Now there’s a Lenten discipline:  giving up vanity instead of caffeine and dessert!

Posted by Genevieve

Monday, February 27, 2012           

What to read today. Chapter 4: Everything That Is, Is Holy

        

Questions for your personal reflection.
Does it seem possible that today (or any other day), as you go about the world, everything you meet and see and hear and touch could purify you and plant in you something more of contemplation and of heaven? To what extent would that require a change of attitude or orientation?
Sharing with others: What caught your attention or provoked your thinking today? 

I appreciate the way this chapter suggests an alternative to the judgment that is embedded in our social and public discourse, including social justice discourse. “[T]he saint is never offended by anything and judges no man’s sin because he does not know sin. He knows the mercy of God and…that his own mission on earth is to bring that mercy to all men.” As I read this, it suggests indiscriminate love instead of condemnation of others. So, I wonder, would that attitude modify our criticisms of the “one percent”?

Sunday, February 26, 2012


Pause Day

Saturday, February 25, 2012

What to read today. 

Chapter 3:Seeds of Contemplation

Questions for your personal reflection. 

“So much depends on our idea of God!...Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him.”

What does your idea of God tell you about yourself? 

Sharing with others: What caught your attention or provoked your thinking today? 

The notion of “consenting to God’s will” is to me equivalent to “saying an unqualified Yes to life”.   I appreciate Merton’s related insights about work, which happens to be one of my preoccupations. Merton says that I need merely be true to the task I am performing at the moment, and to act with love and respect for the nature of that task.  I remind myself that the task can have no monetary value, be mundane, even distasteful, not productive of anything etc.  This is a lesson that keeps presenting itself.     

Posted by Genevieve   

Friday, February 24, 2012


What to read today. 

Chapter 2: What Contemplation is Not

Questions for your personal reflection. 

Is your concept of contemplation evolving or changing in any way?

Having read to this point, can you say that you have engaged in contemplation at any point in your life? 


Sharing with others: What caught your attention or provoked your thinking today? 
Here Merton’s contemplation is sounding like Buddhist mindfulness and with all the same dangers, i.e. falling in love with the feeling.  “Contemplation is not trance or ecstasy.”  What a shame!  This reminds me Pema Chodron’s warning that mindfulness can be just another form of attachment.  It seems that there is no easy out.
Posted by Genevieve.

Thursday, February 23, 2012


What to read today.  
Chapter 1: What is Contemplation?

Questions for your personal reflection.   

In what ways was this chapter challenging?

How does Merton’s notion of contemplation differ from yours?


Sharing with others: What caught your attention or provoked your thinking today?
This was a troubling chapter; even assuming that I understand what Merton is talking about.  Does contemplation have to involve “faith”?  Must it imply an external and/or personal God who does things like create, call, will or give gifts?  Why isn’t it sufficient to speak of “spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being” without reference to a deity?
Posted by Genevieve.

Feb 22 - Ash Wednesday


Today's Reading 

Introduction by Sue Monk Kidd

Preface

Author’s Note


Questions for your personal reflection.

As you begin this Lenten discipline, what do the words “interior life” or “spiritual life” mean to you?

What are your hopes for this exercise in relation to your interior life, or otherwise?

What are your reservations?


Sharing with others: What caught your attention or provoked your thinking today?
Today I note in Merton’s Preface that contacts with other people “modified” his solitude and caused him to revise the book.  Input from others provoked Merton to think further and to develop new perspectives.  That’s what I anticipate in this reading study: being exposed to the interpretations and comments of others, and trying to be open to them. That is both appealing and frightening.  Mostly frightening. What if I have to give up my cherished notions and interpretations?