Transformative Reading
Using the metaphor of an Art Exhibit, where your words are paint and paper is your canvas, Nancy Sylvester, IHM, invites you to become an active participant with her as she grapples with integrating her faith experience with contemporary insights from theology, philosophy, science, and psychology. Critical to this synthesis is contemplation and its capacity for transformation both of self and of one’s engagement with the world.
As you meander through the Galleries you join her to reflect on the many aspects of contemplation, struggle with critical issues, navigate political landscapes, ponder Christian liturgical feasts, savor the seasons, and imagine a transformed future.
The invitation throughout is to engage in contemplative practice – to ‘see’ the world in new ways; to receive each work, engage your own experience with it, and then give creative expression to what has moved in you.
When you read Journey-Faith in an Entangled World you embark on a profound journey to find meaning and hope in a post-modern world.
Available in both paperback and Kindle formats on Amazon.com.
Understanding impasse as that darkest time of night before the first light of day the horizon just before dawn–in that sense, it is rich with promise.
Marge Swedish
Have you ever felt you were in a no way out situation?
Couldn’t communicate with those involved?
Tried everything you know to resolve the conflict?
Became obsessed with the problem?
You may be at an impasse Engage your impasse with the reflections of others who discovered a way to face into the experience through the spiritual journey rooted in contemplation.
Available on Amazon.com
Reading and Listening to What is Real
Finding Home in a Changing World
by Nancy Sylvester, IHM
Discussing What Needs to be Discussed
A presentation that Nancy Sylvester, IHM, gave at Elephants in the Living Room https://www.elephantsinthelivingroom.us
Each month, a different part of the presentation will be available for people to learn how to respond to what they hear and read that is
ARTICLES
Transformative Power of Contemplation
Alert to the Stirrings of God
Seeing reality and being aware is central to contemplation.
Impasse-Chaos
Hope in Times of Impasse
I began to see that no matter what the circumstances of our lives, others tended to feel and experience what I did-fear, rejection, being alone and isolated, anger, criticism, oppression, vulnerability, loss and grief. After sharing with one another, we engaged in other exercises together: contemplative prayer, liturgy and artistic expression.
Dialogue – Encountering – Differences
The Call to Hear the Other’s Voice
Dialogue and Contemplation. Speech and Silence. Community and Individual. Each half needed to create the whole. In the Circles we try to practice this both/and approach. Dorothy Soelle in The Silent Cryreminds us that “Don’t speak! is an often repeated admonition found in the most diverse traditions of mysticism. At its most basic level, it calls for a preparation, a becoming silent so that a voice other than one’s own may be heard.”
How will We Celebrate July 4, 2276?
Click HERE for the Complete Article.
Consciousness Developing
Metaphor of the Snail
The snail is an earlier stage of evolutionary emergence. But we share the evolutionary journey with all those who came before and those yet to come. We live and exist in environments, in cultures, on lands that seem to fit each for the time. Throughout our 13.8-billion-year history the containers of our unfolding have changed radically and incrementally.
Contemplative Sitting Network
Join Us to Pray
Allow yourself to encounter the photo with a light heart, remembering that summer is the season of abundance which has the capacity to awaken a child’s sense of play and wonder in us. Be present to the image and engage it with a light heart, suspending at least temporarily, all your concerns. What part of the image draws your attention? What is drawing your eye and even more your heart? Sit in the silence of the image and allow yourself to be drwn to source of all life.
Enjoy the summer and keep sitting!
Margaret and Nancy
New to Contemplation...Begin HERE
The Basics of Contemplation
Contemplation, A Call to All
When Words Don’t Work
Would You Stop Staring…Contemplative Practice
Reflect on your faith journey as
you listen to Nancy’s Sylvester’s Journey:
What Drew Me to Contemplation?
What is Contemplation?
Continue to reflect on your faith journey as you listen to Nancy discuss transformation:
Transformation
Contemplation Transforms Our Space
for the Future
1. An Incredible Time – Contemplative Leadership at the Edge of Transformation
to read the article CLICK
2. The Call to be a Mystic
3. The Revolution that Begins Within
4. This Moment Need Transformational Leaders
5. This Moment Calls for a New Consciousness: Embracing Diverse Worldviews
6. This Moment Calls for a New Consciousness: Becoming An Anti-Racist
Book Review by Nancy Sylvester, IHM
and M. Shawn Copeland
“What if, by chance, our time in evolution is a dark-night time — a time of crisis and transition that must be understood if it is to be part of learning a new vision and harmony for the human species and the planet?… For a new consciousness and harmony?”
Enter the Chaos Zoom Call
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