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Water

Meg: With each chapter of the book, Day with Jesus I am practicing the lectio method that I see the Monk of the Eastern Church used. It is lectio of experience through the text of the Gospels.

This is the Feast of Your Sacred Heart. There's no more powerful attraction than the Sacred Heart image here in the west and the Prayer of the Heart from the Jesus Prayer tradition held sacred from the eastern Christian tradition.

When your side was pierced blood and water flowed. (John 19:34) And they looked on him whom they have pierced. (John 19:37)

We witness today such harm done and see only compassion and sacrifice poured out.

Blood and water: the blood is life force and the water is cosmic energy flowing through all matter.

As both actual and symbolic is blood and water you also simply poured water for the usual human matters of washing, cleaning, drinking, cooling and cooking chores.

This living tradition all of us humans do pours between each of us and all of us at all times and places. What a privilege to wash, to clean, to drink, to cool and to cook.

2000 years ago there was more labor to fetch, carry, store and measure water. Today we simply turn on a faucet or get a bottle from the refrigerator. We wash clothes effortlessly and swim regularly in pools designated for leisure.

Yesterday was flying over Chicago late afternoon. In this middle of the summer there were multiple swimming pools, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, golf courses mostly empty of participants. Everyone must have been at work or still in school.

We seem to prepare for what we need and we work hard to make things available and convenient, but then use water and our material resources mindlessly. Literally we do not notice.

My generation doesn't even look upon whom we've pierced. We seldom notice.

Lord, this day, your feast of your sacred heart do quicken my heart to be more aware, more soft and less hard. Using the fact of water let me immerse myself in the flow of all that passes through time today. Let me love with your compassion and gentle silence that flows like water in-between the hills.

This murmuring brook of the Jesus Prayer fills the inner space may it also course through the meeting of each one of my sisters today.

amen.