Angel in the River

Below is the lectio readings the Ordinary Mindfulness crew used this morning (we meet at St D's at 7:30). Read over it perhaps paying attention to who you meet when you open mind and heart in meditation.

Lectio: Sept 20, 2010

Genesis 32 (Jacob on the night before reuniting with his brother Esau whose inheritance he stole many years before)

The same night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. 24Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. 25When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. 26Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’ 27So he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’ 28Then the man* said, ‘You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel,* for you have striven with God and with humans,* and have prevailed.’ 29Then Jacob asked him, ‘Please tell me your name.’ But he said, ‘Why is it that you ask my name?’ And there he blessed him. 30So Jacob called the place Peniel,* saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’ 31The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.

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Whether in grief, anger, wanting, or restlessness, we can see that much of the work with the contractions of the heart is the work of our unfinished business. We encounter the forces and situations that have held us closed to ourselves and others. What is conflicted, ungrieved, unfinished shows itself as soon as we become attentive. It is here that we must learn how to work respectfully with the profound forces that govern human life. It is the layers of these energies that create contractions and suffering and the freeing of them that brings awakening and release. --After the Ecstasy the Laundry, Jack Kornfield