Thomas Merton: Session 5

Turning to the Mystics with James Finley

Center for Action and Contemplation

Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 6 April 2020

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This is the fifth episode of eight that focuses on the mystic, Thomas Merton. In the spirit of Lectio Divina, James Finley looks at a contemplative prayer from Thomas Merton’s Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. In this session, Jim moves from a reflective prayer in the previous episode to contemplative prayer. Using wordless communion, Jim shares a series of paradoxes to help us not fall into reflection prayer. For the transcript to this podcast, you can find it here. To learn more about James Finley, visit jamesfinley.org Turning to the Mystics is a podcast by the Center for Action and Contemplation. We'd love to hear your thoughts, comments or feedback. To do so, email us at [email protected] Have a question you’d like Jim or Kirsten to answer on a future episode? Email us: [email protected] or, send us a voicemail: cac.org/voicemail This podcast is made possible, thanks to the generosity of our donors. If you would love to support the ongoing work of the Center for Action and Contemplation and the continued work of our podcasts, you can donate at cac.org/podcastsupport Thank you!

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to a podcast by the Center for Action and Contemplation.
0:04.4	To learn more, visit cac.org.
0:08.5	Greetings, I'm Jim Finley.
0:11.4	Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.
0:14.3	Geech, her to the mystics.
0:17.3	Uh, greetings, everyone. Greetings everyone and welcome to our time here together which will be turning to the teachings of the Christian mystic Thomas Murphy
0:35.0	to help us deepen our experience of and response to
0:45.0	these previous sessions.
0:49.0	We reflected on the passage,
0:52.0	Mertin, my Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
0:58.1	And we use this passage as a way to see how Thomas Merton mentors us or models for us,
1:12.2	experiencing God's presence and reflective prayer.
1:15.0	That is in which we receive, we hear God's words speaking directly into our heart
1:22.0	in a word of scripture, the word of a spiritual teaching.
1:27.0	And that word that Lexio into our heart initiates a kind of meditatio, a discursive reflective meditation of thoughts and images
1:36.7	and insights of lumen by faith to deepen our experience and understanding of God's presence in our life.
1:45.0	And so we could see how then fidelity to such prayer as a daily rendezvous with God
1:52.0	would over time transforms the depths of our mind and heart.
1:57.0	That is little by little helps form kind of an underlying habitual state of discipleship or a state of Christ's
2:07.0	consciousness or a state of this way of being sensitized and tuned into the grace nature of each passing moment of our life.
2:20.0	And in this session I want to return into a passage in Merton where he will be bearing witness to or helping us to understand the ways in which reflective prayer opens out upon a contemplative prayer, like
2:39.9	the practice of contemplative prayer.
	...

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