Message of the Day
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Note to those who are filing complaints with aweber.com (our listserve) about Daily Spiritual Seed: kindly unsubscribe yourself instead of complaining. You subscribed yourself, and an unsubscribe link can be found at the bottom of each newsletter. Thank you. - - - . . . unless you put yourself in the way of being encountered by the living God, rather than just thinking about God, or talking about God, or stating God's position with respect to various moral issues, your work will be in vain.
- Roberta Bondi,
Back to School with Julian of Norwich (How would you "put yourself in the way of being encountered by the living God?" How can you do this today?)
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Readings of the Day
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EX 32:15-24, 30-34; PS 106:19-20, 21-22, 23; JN 11:19-27 R. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. Our fathers made a calf in Horeb
and adored a molten image;
They exchanged their glory
for the image of a grass-eating bullock.
They forgot the God who had saved them,
who had done great deeds in Egypt,
Wondrous deeds in the land of Ham,
terrible things at the Red Sea.
Then he spoke of exterminating them,
but Moses, his chosen one,
Withstood him in the breach
to turn back his destructive wrath.
USCCB lectionary
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Reflection on the Gospel
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Jesus entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him.
When I became a student pastor, the first months were full of challenges. But my biggest dilemma came at the Fall Chili Supper. The pastor's wife was usually involved in the kitchen, while the pastor was working alone in his study. I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to be alone in my study, but I wasn't very welcome in the kitchen, either. I finally decided to help the youth clear tables. This worked out quite well until I was discovered by the matriarch-in-charge. She took the scraper out of my hand and said, "You are not Martha anymore - you're Mary now. Go!" We are all both Mary and Martha on any given day, serving Jesus in all kinds of ways.
Guide the choices we make, Holy God. - by Jeanne Lischer
My Daily Bread
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Spiritual Reading
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The Sparkling Stone, by St. John of Rusybroeck (1293-1381)
But further we find a more subtle and inward difference, between the secret friends and the hidden sons of God; and yet both these alike by their inward exercise maintain themselves in the Presence of God. But the friends possess their inwardness as an attribute, for they choose the loving adherence to God as best and highest of all that they ever can and will reach: and that is why they cannot with themselves and their own activity penetrate to the imageless Nudity. For they have, as images and intermediaries between God and themselves, their own being and their own activity. And though in their loving adherence they feel united with God, yet, in this union, they always feel a difference and an otherness between God and themselves. For the simple passing into the Bare and Wayless, they do not know and love: and therefore their highest inward life ever remains in Reason and in Ways. And though they have clear understanding and discernment of all virtues that may be conceived, the simple staring with open heart into the Divine Brightness remains unknown of them. And though they feel themselves uplifted to God in a mighty fire of love, yet they keep something of their own selfhood, and are not consumed and burnt to nothingness in the unity of love. And though they may desire to live for ever more in the service of God and to please Him eternally, they will not die in God to all the selfhood of their spirit, and receive from Him a God-formed life. And even though they esteem little and count as nothing all consolation and all rest which may come from without, yet they greatly value the gifts of God, and also their own inward works and the solace and sweetness which they feel within and thus they rest upon the way, and do not so wholly die to themselves, as to be able to attain the highest beatitude in bare and wayless love. And even if they could practise and apprehend with clear discernment the perfection of loving adherence to God, and all the inward and upward going ways by which one may pass into the Presence of God; yet the wayless passing, and the glorious wandering, in the Superessential Love, wherein neither end, nor beginning, nor way, nor manner, can ever be found, would remain hidden from, and unknown of them.
- Chapter 8: "On the difference between the secret friends and the hidden sons of God."
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