This 16-minute guided meditation invites you to review your Advent meditations, to hold silence on the threshold between Advent and Christmas, and to imagine God’s new life being born again within you.

Dear Ones—

This guided meditation is for anyone who has been praying throughout Advent and would like to hold a moment of stillness between the longing and hope of Advent, and the celebratory feast of Christmas.

You are invited to be still, to wait, to remember, to imagine.

We are held in the paradox between what is and what is to come, the paradox between our poverty, our dependence, our frailty and the fullness of life that is poured out to us each and every day.

We pause here to acknowledge that tension, to attend to the Holy One who comes anew in us.

References in the meditation:

Lamentations 3:22-23

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning.

Isaiah 43:19

See I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

Prayer of Teilhard de Chardin (excerpted from Hearts on Fire, Praying with the Jesuits)

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

Blessings, Dear One….

Contemplative at Home offers guided meditative prayer – space to slow down and listen to the truth that is being born out of God’s love for you today – drawing on Ignatian spirituality and at times, Lectio Divina.

Sign up for Lissy’s newsletter “The Contemplative Window” or find out about upcoming retreats here.

You can support the show by sharing it with a friend, rating it on your preferred podcast platform, making a one-off donation or becoming a member. Thank you so much!

All music by Pete Hatch. 

The post Pause for Christmas Eve – A Guided Meditation appeared first on Contemplative at Home.

A 22-minute audio guided meditation with the teaching of St Ignatius.

“I want and I choose what better leads to God’s deepening life in me.”

Last week we had a meditation on the ‘Principle and Foundation’ of St Ignatius of Loyola, and today I offer you a meditation with a more contemporary translation of the text.

You may find this translation easier to connect with in places.

The closing phrase “I want and choose what better leads to God’s deepening life in me” comes to me regularly, offering a rudder as I navigate questions of discernment or direction.

I hope you’ll find a phrase or two here that nourishes you.

Blessings as you pray.

“The Principle and Foundation”

God who loves us creates us and wants to share life with us forever. Our love response takes shape in our praise and honor and service of the God of our life. 

All the things in this world are also created because of God’s love and they become … gifts, presented to us so that we can know God more easily and make a return of love more readily. 

As a result, we show reverence for all the gifts of creation and collaborate with God in using them so that … we develop as loving persons in our care for God’s world and its development. But if we abuse any of these gifts of creation or, on the contrary, take them as the center of our lives, we break our relationship with God and hinder our growth as loving persons. 

In everyday life, then, we must hold ourselves in balance before all created gifts…. We should not fix our desire on health or sickness, wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or a short one. For everything has the potential of calling forth in us a more loving response to our life forever with God.

Our only desire and our one choice should be this: I want and I choose what better leads to God’s deepening life in me. 

David L Fleming, Draw Me into Your Friendship: The Spiritual Exercises, A Literal Translation and A Contemporary Reading

Contemplative at Home offers guided meditative prayer – space to slow down and listen to the truth that is being born out of God’s love for you today – drawing on Ignatian spirituality and at times, Lectio Divina.

Sign up for Lissy’s newsletter “The Contemplative Window”

All music by Pete Hatch. 

The post God’s Deepening Life in Me: Lectio Divina: Teachings of St Ignatius appeared first on Contemplative at Home.

A 19-minute audio guided meditation on the Ignatian ‘Principle and Foundation,’ using Lectio Divina.

In his “Spiritual Exercises”, Ignatius invites us to consider who God is, who we are, and how we therefore invited to relate to God and all of the created order.

In the Principle and Foundation, with which you are invited to pray in this meditation, Ignatius assumes that the pilgrim is already comfortable with the fact that God is the source of all love, life, goodness and flourishing.

With this in mind, he infers that the path to human flourishing is to be as free and open to relationship with God as possible.

Therefore, he invites us to consider how our other relationships might be helping or hindering us on this path to flourishing. He invites us to be ‘indifferent’ to all created things – not with a lack of care – but with a mindfulness about our attachment, and how our attachment may be encouraging an increase in the flow of Divine Love in our lives, or hindering this flow.

Ignatius is big on discernment, and here we get one of his keys to good discernment: does it help or hinder the growth of my true aim: the love, service and praise of the Source of Life?

As you pray with this text, I’m not asking you to agree with it all, or even to fully wrap your head around it today. I’m simply offering these words to you as a potential vessel through which the Holy may have something to say to you.

I invite you to pray with an open heart.

Every blessing.

Today’s text:

“Human beings are created to praise, reverence and serve God our Lord, and by means of doing this to save their souls.

The other things on the face of the earth are created for the human beings, to help them in the pursuit of the end for which they were created.

From this it follows that we ought to use these things to the extent that they help us towards our end, and free ourselves from them to the extent that they hinder us from it. 

To attain this it is necessary to make ourselves indifferent to all created things, in regard to everything which is left to our free will and is not forbidden. Consequently, on our own part we ought not to seek health rather than sickness, wealth rather than poverty, honor rather than dishonor, a long life rather than a short one, and so on in all other matters.

Rather we ought to desire and choose only that which is more conducive to the end for which we are created.” 

The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, SE23: Translated by George E Ganss SJ

Contemplative at Home offers guided meditative prayer – space to slow down and listen to the truth that is being born out of God’s love for you today – drawing on Ignatian spirituality and at times, Lectio Divina.

Sign up for Lissy’s monthly-ish newsletter “The Contemplative Window”

You can support the show by sharing it with a friend, rating it on your preferred podcast platform, making a one-off donation or becoming a member. Thank you so much!

All music by Pete Hatch. 

Photo by Evgeni Tcherkasski on Unsplash

The post The Principle and Foundation : Lectio Divina : Teachings of St Ignatius appeared first on Contemplative at Home.

A 23-minute audio guided meditation with Exodus 3:1-15, using Lectio Divina.

Contemplative at Home offers guided meditative prayer – space to slow down and listen to the truth that is being born out of God’s love for you today – drawing on Ignatian spirituality and at times, Lectio Divina.

Sign up for Lissy’s newsletter “The Contemplative Window” or join our Facebook group here

You can support the show by sharing it with a friend, rating it on your preferred podcast platform, making a one-off donation or becoming a member. Thank you so much!

All music by Pete Hatch. 

The post I Must Turn Aside: Lectio Divina: Exodus 3 – The Burning Bush appeared first on Contemplative at Home.

An 18-minute audio guided meditation with the letter to the Philippians, Phil 2:4-16, using Lectio Divina.

When we read Paul we get a sense of his intensity, his high energy, his focussed mind. But he can also be read contemplatively. Here you are invited to connect with Paul’s faith, the great experience he has had with the love and life of Christ. This Love sees and holds and knows him, and that has become more compelling to him than any other thing in all creation.

What is your vision of Christ? Of Love? At this moment in your life, what desire do you have to journey further into the love and life of Christ?

Contemplative at Home offers guided meditative prayer – space to slow down and listen to the truth that is being born out of God’s love for you today – drawing on Ignatian spirituality and at times, Lectio Divina.

Sign up for Lissy’s newsletter “The Contemplative Window” or join our Facebook group here

You can support the show by sharing it with a friend, rating it on your preferred podcast platform, making a one-off donation or becoming a member. Thank you so much!

All music by Pete Hatch. 

The post The Surpassing Value of Knowing Christ: Lectio Divina: Philippians 3:4-16 appeared first on Contemplative at Home.

A 20-minute audio guided body scan, resting in God’s love, Psalm 46:10

A deeply restorative meditation in the body, for the mind and spirit.

You will emerge feeling calmer, more centred and more deeply connected with the Spirit of God.

This kind of meditation is known as yoga nidra, and I love to offer it to groups in-person. It is best experienced lying flat on your back. Tuck up with a blanket if you’re in a cool environment. If you can stay awake you’ll get the most benefit!

This recording has been much-requested, and I trust you will find it beneficial.

Every blessing.
Lissy

Contemplative at Home offers guided meditative prayer – space to slow down and listen to the truth that is being born out of God’s love for you today – drawing on Ignatian spirituality and at times, Lectio Divina.

Sign up for Lissy’s newsletter “The Contemplative Window” or join our Facebook group here

You can support the show by sharing it with a friend, rating it on your preferred podcast platform, making a one-off donation or becoming a member. Thank you so much!

All music by Pete Hatch. 

The post Twenty Minute Body Scan – Be Still and Know That I Am God appeared first on Contemplative at Home.

A 21-minute audio guided meditation, with text from John 19:38-42

Though it is wildly tempting to rush to Easter morning, I invite you to tarry a while with me, to stay here in the holy, devastating moments as the body of Jesus is removed from the cross.

As Michael Rosen so wisely said: we can’t go around it, we can’t go over it, we can’t go under it. We have to go through it.

My prayer is that we will all gently grow in our capacity to attend the loss, absence, and bewilderment that will inevitably consume us from time to time. Not because the wilderness is an end in itself, but because our healing and our hope, can only be as deep as the depths to which we have explored our pain.

In this meditation I use the text from John 18:38-42 NRSV.

I also quote Etty Hillesum, who died at Auschwitz, from her book An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork “And that is all we can manage in these days and also all that really matters: that we safeguard that little piece of You, God, in ourselves. And perhaps in others as well. Alas, there doesn’t seem to be much You Yourself can do about our circumstances. About our lives. You cannot help us. But we must help You, and defend your dwelling place inside us to the last.” A profound reflection for the darkest of days. Thank you to Val for sharing this with me last week.

In the closing blessing, I use words that are very close to Jan Richardson’s poem Beloved is Where we Begin. This poem lives inside of me and sometimes emerges. Jan has lots of helpful blessings for Holy Week and Easter. Do sit with them. 

Thank you for trusting me to accompany you on your journey, in your sacred moments. It is a great honour to be here with you. 

All blessings.

Contemplative at Home offers guided meditative prayer – space to slow down and listen to the truth that is being born out of God’s love for you today – drawing on Ignatian spirituality and at times, Lectio Divina.

Sign up for Lissy’s newsletter “The Contemplative Window” or join our Facebook group here

You can support the show by sharing it with a friend, rating it on your preferred podcast platform, making a one-off donation or becoming a member. Thank you so much!

All music by Pete Hatch. 

The post When God is Absent: A Meditation for Holy Saturday appeared first on Contemplative at Home.

A 21-minute audio guided meditation in John’s Gospel, John 18:1-14, using Lectio Divina.

A meditation with John’s account of the arrest of Jesus.

Contemplative at Home offers guided meditative prayer – space to slow down and listen to the truth that is being born out of God’s love for you today – drawing on Ignatian spirituality and at times, Lectio Divina.

Sign up for Lissy’s newsletter “The Contemplative Window” or join our Facebook group here

You can support the show by sharing it with a friend, rating it on your preferred podcast platform, making a one-off donation or becoming a member. Thank you so much!

All music by Pete Hatch. 

Art: Duccio di Buoninsegna, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The post Arrest: Lectio Divina: John 18:1-14 appeared first on Contemplative at Home.

A 23-minute audio guided meditation in John’s Gospel, John 13:21-30, using Imaginative Contemplation.

Everyone has gathered in Jerusalem for the passover, and Jesus knows that his hour has come. As he sits around the table with his disciples, he becomes visibly distressed before he says aloud “One of you will betray me.”

This meditation brings us to this room, to this table, joining Jesus and his friends for 10 minutes, as a moment between Jesus and Judas unfolds.

Blessings as you continue on through Lent.

Blessings.

Contemplative at Home offers guided meditative prayer – space to slow down and listen to the truth that is being born out of God’s love for you today – drawing on Ignatian spirituality and at times, Lectio Divina.

Sign up for Lissy’s newsletter “The Contemplative Window” or join our Facebook group here

You can support the show by sharing it with a friend, rating it on your preferred podcast platform, making a one-off donation or becoming a member. Thank you so much!

All music by Pete Hatch. 

Photo by Pedro Domingos on Unsplash

The post Jesus and Judas: Imaginative Contemplation: John 13:21-30 appeared first on Contemplative at Home.

A 22-minute audio guided meditation in John’s Gospel, John 13:1-17, using Imaginative Contemplation.

In this meditation on John’s Gospel, I invite you to join me in taking a ‘long, loving look’ at a few verses of text, beholding the words as living, shimmering, life-giving containers which hold endless layers of wisdom, mystery, beauty and truth.

Here we have Jesus, at a meal with his friends just before the passover. He knows that his hour has come, that Judas intends to betray him. He gets up from the table, takes off his outer robe and ties a towel around himself, and begins washing the disciples feet – a task typically undertaken by the servants of the house as you enter.

Just for these few minutes, I invite you to leave your dogma, your creed, your thoughts, and your rational mind aside, and become present to your deeper self, your true self or essential self. I invite you to a way of unknowing, a place of deep being. 

Contemplative at Home offers guided meditative prayer – space to slow down and listen to the truth that is being born out of God’s love for you today – drawing on Ignatian spirituality and at times, Lectio Divina.

Sign up for Lissy’s newsletter “The Contemplative Window” or join our Facebook group here

You can support the show by sharing it with a friend, rating it on your preferred podcast platform, making a one-off donation or becoming a member. Thank you so much!

All music by Pete Hatch. 

The post Are You Going to Wash My Feet?: Imaginative Contemplation: John 13:1-17 appeared first on Contemplative at Home.