Weekly Pause & Ponder

Weekly Pause & Ponder

The Christian season of Advent has as its central theme the coming of the Christ-Star into the world. It is a time to remember how God’s Beloved came to restore harmony to a fractured world, to dispel whatever keeps love from shining through all beings. The Christ-Star, this Irresistible Love in us, this Radiant Goodness, is at the core of our souls. Advent reminds us that each of us has the light of this Shining Star within us. This special season assures us that we can radiate love and goodness to others.

The Circle of Life by Joyce Rupp & Macrina Wiederkehr, p. 279

Weekly Pause & Ponder

The thing the ecologically illiterate don’t realize about an ecosystem is that it’s a system.  A system! A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche. A system has order, flowing from point to point. If something dams that flow, order collapses. The untrained might miss that collapse until it was too late.  That’s why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.

Frank Herbert, Dune.  www.goodreads.com

Weekly Pause & Ponder

Contemplation, understood in the light of a hologram universe, is not a special gift. It is simply seeing from the perspective of oneness… It can indeed be practiced, and over time, with sincerity and persistence, it becomes an abiding state of consciousness. At times this unitive seeing may sweep you up in rapt adoration; at other times it simply deposits you powerfully and nakedly in the present moment. Either form is an expression of the same underlying consciousness. It is this consciousness itself that is the attained state of contemplation and it is neither infused nor acquired, because it was never absent – only unrecognized.

Cynthia Bourgeault.  Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening.  https://markvotava.com