The Interior Castle: The First Dwelling: Lectio Divina
Release Date: 08/19/2024
The Surpassing Value of Knowing Christ: Lectio Divina: Philippians 3:4-16
Contemplative at Home
An 18-minute audio guided meditation with the letter to the Philippians, Philippians 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...
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Twenty Minute Body Scan - Be Still and Know That I Am God
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...
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When God is Absent: A Meditation for Holy Saturday
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...
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Arrest: Lectio Divina: John 18:1-14
Contemplative at Home
A 21-minute audio guided meditation in John’s Gospel, John 18:1-14, using Lectio Divina. An audio guided lectio divina meditation with John's account of the arrest of Jesus. 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 "" or join our Facebook group You can support the show by sharing it with a friend, rating it on your preferred podcast platform, making a or Thank you...
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Jesus and Judas: Imaginative Contemplation: John 13:21-30
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. offers guided meditative prayer - space to slow down...
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Are You Going to Wash My Feet?: Imaginative Contemplation: John 13:1-17
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...
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The Glory that Comes from God: Lectio Divina: John 12:27-43
Contemplative at Home
A 22-minute audio guided meditation in John’s Gospel, John 12:27-28, 34-36, and 42-43, using Lectio Divina. Glory. Light. An access to eternity that doesn't look like the power and longevity we might have imagined. I think that Jesus is inviting us to listen very deeply here. I remember my high school French teacher setting out to teach us a tense that doesn't exist in English. "I need you to open your minds and put aside your current understanding of language," she began. Jesus asks us to open our minds and put aside our understanding of glory. This glory is not about power,...
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We Want to See Jesus: Lectio Divina: John 12:20-26
Contemplative at Home
A 19-minute audio guided meditation in John’s Gospel, John 8:12-20, using Lectio Divina. 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. 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...
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Mary Anoints Jesus' Feet: Imaginative Contemplation: John 12:1-11
Contemplative at Home
A 24-minute audio guided meditation in John’s Gospel, John 12:1-11, 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. 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,...
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Jars of Clay: Lectio Divina
Contemplative at Home
A 16-minute guided audio meditation on 2 Corinthians 4:5-11, using Lectio Divina. This meditation emerged as a reflection on the human capacity for bringing both beauty and pain into the world. While this is true collectively, it is also true on an individual level. We are all capable of bringing forth beauty and harm, and I would imagine that if you took a few moments to reflect, you could several examples of your own action or inaction for each category. Perhaps this is something of an early meditation for Lent. I hope that you find it illuminating and hopeful. All blessings. Lissy 2...
info_outlineA 19-minute audio guided meditation with text from Mirabai Starr's translation of The Interior Castle.
In this meditation I invite you to pray with the wisdom of St Teresa of Avila. Listening prayerfully to the text, you are invited to ask: How is the Lord speaking to me in these words?
Teresa was given a picture of her inner self, her soul, as mansion, a palace, with many rooms. At the center of this palace is the holy of holies, a place where the Holy One dwells, abides, resides.
The text we pray with is this:
"Always visualise your soul as vast, spacious, plentiful. This amplitude is impossible to exaggerate. The soul's capacity far transcends our imagining. The sun at the centre of this place radiates to every part." (p45)
"As long as we are on this earth there is nothing more essential than humility. Enter the room of self-knowledge first, instead of floating off to other places. This is the path.(...) It seems to me that we will never know ourselves unless we seek to know God. Glimpsing his greatness, we recognise our own powerlessness: gazing upon his purity, we notice where we are impure: pondering his humility, we see how far from humble we are." (p47)
"Cultivate humility and self-awareness. Just remember: it is your most important task." (p49)
(And) "Guard yourselves... against the spirit of evil. It's aim is to undermine charity and cool the love the friends have for one another.(...) Let's understand that true perfection means loving God and loving our neighbour. (...)All spiritual rules are nothing but means toward the end of spiritual love." (p50-51)
The shape of our meditations at Contemplative at Home are very much informed by Ignatian Spirituality. Teresa was alive at the same time as Ignatius of Loyola, and she had a Jesuit Spiritual Director for some of her years, so shared in that formation. I hope that their combined wisdom in this partiuclar format will take you deeper in to the heart of Christ.
All blessings as you pray.
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.
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All music by Pete Hatch.