Weekly Pause & Ponder

The Earth Charter asked us to leave behind a period of self-destruction and make a new start, but we have not as yet developed a universal awareness needed to achieve this.  Here, I would echo that courageous challenge: “As never before in history, common destiny beckons us to seek a new beginning … Let ours be a time remembered for the awakening of a new reverence for life, the firm resolve to achieve sustainability, the quickening of the struggle for justice and peace, and the joyful celebration of life.” 148

Enclyclical Letter Laudate Si’, by Pope Francis.

Weekly Pause & Ponder

Contemplation invites us to become more conscious, more aware of what has shaped us. It opens us to greater ambiguity and paradox. Taking a “long loving look at the real” acknowledges that what we see is not necessarily the only view; rather we always see through a lens that is partial and too often cracked. In opening ourselves to the work of the Divine within us we are allowing ourselves to see how we judge, react, assume.  Contemplation invites us to see things as others see them and open ourselves to compassionate love which widens our vision rather than restricting our view.

Global Sisters Report, A project of National Catholic Reporter, May 16, 2015.

Weekly Pause & Ponder

The spirituality unfolding in today’s world is bottom-up spirituality; it is a spirituality of ‘hands on’, getting not just our hands, but our faces, dirty as we struggle at the coalface of the brutal and cruel world of our time. Struggle is a key word for a contemporary credible spirituality. It remains phoney and unreal if not rooted in the real issues of the human struggle to grow and to be wise, to learn and to love. In a special way it seeks to engage with the cultural, political and economic forces which fuel the fiercely competitive and manipulative world in which we live….

Reclaiming Spirituality by Diarmuid O’Murchu, p.117.  

Weekly Pause & Ponder

Love is the energy of union, the space between hearts where forgiveness, compassion, joy, thanksgiving and peace flourish in the birthing of oneness. I want to proclaim 2015 as the Year of Love because we are inwardly bone dry and it is time to return the deepest energy of life itself, namely, love. “Love,” Teilhard de Chardin wrote, “is the physical structure of the universe.” Love is present, he said, from the Big Bang onward: “Even among the molecules, love is the building power that works against entropy, and under its attraction the elements feel their way towards union.

National Catholic Reporter, Dec. 2014.  2015 The Year of Love by Ilia Delio.

Weekly Pause & Ponder

I believe that there is great wisdom in our species and in Western spiritual traditions, but that this needs a new birth and a fresh beginning. As a Westerner I must begin where I stand within my own culture and its traditions. This is where the Christian Mystics come in. We in the West must take these insights into our hearts on a regular basis, allow them to play in the heart, and then take them into our work and citizenship and family and community. This is how all healthy and deep awakenings happen; they begin with the heart and flow out from there.

Matthew Fox, Becoming Mystics Again, www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-fox/christian-mystics.