Pray, Share and Chat Zoom Meeting October 23, 2020

 

Theme: Connecting with ourselves, our ancestors, our neighbors and our common humanity.

A.  Breath Meditation  

Music used.  

Practice: From Place to Ground From Sat, Oct 17, 2020 2:07 am Richard Rohr Daily Meditation.

As long as we are preoccupied with the sins of “the flesh,” those things we’ve done, said, and gotten wrong over the course of our lives, we will never find the courage to face the larger problems of “the world” and “the devil.” This gentle meditation exercise by mindfulness teacher Rhonda V. Magee invites us to connect with ourselves, our ancestors, our neighbors, and our common humanity. From that place of solidarity, we may be able to imagine our collective salvation and to work towards it.

Taking a position for a meditation practice, whether seated, standing, or lying down, bring your awareness to the position of the body in this moment. Feel the connection between the body and the ground. Take a few moments to ground yourself intentionally in the here and now. With a few very deep breaths, imagine the flow of the breath extending through the height of your body, from head to toe, and through the width of your body, from side to side.

On an in-breath, begin deepening awareness of who you really are.

Call to mind your connection to your parents, and through them, as best you can, your grandparents, and the great-grandparents whose names you know or do not know. And so on.

What do you know about your own ancestral heritage? What do you not know? . . .

What parts [of this story] have been hidden, denied, buried, or left out?

Breathe in, examining what you know and do not know about these aspects of your place in the social world. . . .

Now consider the actual community in which you live. For now, think of this as one aspect of your “place” in the world. Consider the fact that every person in that community is a member of a broad, rich lineage within human history. And see how those differences pale in comparison to the things the communities’ members share in common.

Take a moment to consider the ways that different histories reflect common experience as human beings.

Think of the peace and cooperation that silently exist in your community, to whatever degree they exist, and the ways in which your life has benefited from thousands of moments of participating in a community that practices “getting along.”

Now breathe in and out, feeling the deeper ground of your existence, and that which you share with us, with the rest of the world. Allow the awareness of your common humanity to infuse your sense of your place in the world in this very moment.

On the next in-breath, call to mind what you know about some one particular aspect of your lineage. And on the next out-breath, release what you know, and sense into the common experience of breathing that all human beings share.

Continue this cycle, breathing and alternately considering aspects of your place in the world and the deeper ground of your human existence, all held by the ocean of awareness.

When you’re ready, gently bring yourself back into simply sitting and breathing. Transition out of the meditation with gentle kindness.

 

 

Rhonda V. Magee, The Inner Work of Racial Justice: Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities through Mindfulness (TarcherPerigee: 2019), 59–61.

Image credit: Black Cross, New Mexico (detail), Georgia O’Keefe, 1929, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL. www.artic.edu

Unplanned music.  Water is Life for Standing Rock

B. Paula's handout January 2017 Meeting.

From  https://lulucooksandtells.blogspot.com/2017/01/sr-paulas-prayer-group-meeting-january.html\

https://lulucooksandtells.blogspot.com/2017/01/sr-paulas-prayer-group-meeting-january.html

The title of the beautiful handout prepared by Sr. Paula "trust in the slow work of God", brings to mind what Richard Rohr said in his Daily Meditations: 

The spiritual journey is a gradual path of deeper realization and transformation; it is never a straight line, but a back and forth journey that ever deepens the conscious choice and the conscious relationship.  It is growing up, yes, but even more it is waking up.

The title invites us to the idea of gradualism instead of instant conversion or discovery of ourselves.  We live not in our time but in God's time. 

May the Spirit of God bless you all and let us pray for each other in our journey.  As the last paragraph says, we are all one, we are in unity with God and the same Jesus Christ.  Peace, love, joy and patience.

C.  By Breath Song by Sara Thomsen

D.  Happy birthday Mary Cay segment moved to the beginning.