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CONTEMPLATION
“Contemplation is the practice of being fully present – in heart, mind, and body – to what is in a way that allows you to creatively respond and work toward what could be” (Center for Action and Contemplation). Through practices such as centering prayer, meditation, and Lectio Divina, we learn to
hold all things lightly, to be silent, and to welcome each moment as it comes. For more information on contemplation and contemplative practices, click here.
Current Offerings
Spring Refresh and Renew: A Personal Retreat
Spring is here and is a delight to our senses! This guided meditation will ground you in the
present moment, providing moments to use your senses to consider God at work in creation
and in you at home. Click here or visit Centering Space.
Take a walk on Trinity’s grounds using the Spring Meditation Walk located inside the front door of the church house (door facing High Street).
Ongoing Offerings
Encouraging Words
Sometimes we need just a moment to stop, to regroup, to gain a fresh perspective amidst the busyness
and anxiety of the day. Click here for some centering words, poems, and prayers to ground you in the
present moment.
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Love Relentlessly
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Beatitude by John Keene
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Being Human by Naima Penniman
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Labyrinth
Labyrinth
A labyrinth is an ancient tool used by people around the world. The pattern of pathways offers a contemplative journey as you move towards the center and the wind your way back out into the world. Labyrinths are created in all sizes and in a variety of patterns. An outdoor labyrinth is located on the grounds of Trinity Presbyterian Church. An indoor labyrinth and small handheld labyrinths are located in Centering Space with guides to support contemplation.
Personal Retreat
Taking a step back from the demands of daily life for an hour, a morning or afternoon, or perhaps even a longer day, can help to refresh and restore us. Such a retreat might include a time of prayer, reading, music and movement using the resources such as the labyrinth and meditation walk. You can find a guide for a personal retreat here.
Meditation Walk
Trinity is blessed with beautiful grounds and places designed to encourage getting centered in creation. We've compiled a self-guided meditation walk around the grounds with a number of stops along the way. You may download the full guide here , find an online version here, or find hard copies by our Memorial Garden to be used while you walk around the grounds. You'll also find QR codes at many of the stations, which will take you to the full walk and individual stations.
Lectio
Lectio Divina
Lectio Divina is a spiritual discipline designed to help us see past our presumptions by examining
small pieces of holy text with great care. We practice this discipline in small groups so that each
of us can see the text, and the piece of God it represents, with eyes other than our own. You
may participate at 5:45 on Wednesday and/or Friday mornings. Meeting details can be found
on the Calendar page. Feel free to email Mark Dewey for questions or additional details.
Diana Butler Bass of The Cottage challenges us to “Love Relentlessly”. In response to her call, poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer wrote the following poem. We invite you to find a quiet place. Perhaps light a candle, sip a hot beverage, and sink deeply into a time of contemplation as you let these words “slip into every cell in your body.”
Love
WHAT COMES NEXT
by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Love relentlessly.
—Diana Butler Bass
Love relentlessly, she said,
and I want to slip these two words
into every cell in my body, not the sound
of the words, but the truth of them,
the vital, essential need for them,
until relentless love becomes
a cytoplasmic imperative,
the basic building block for every action.
Because anger makes a body clench.
Because fear invokes cowering, shrinking, shock.
I know the impulse to run, to turn fist, to hurt back.
I know, too, the warmth of cell-deep love—
how it spreads through the body like ocean wave,
how it doesn’t erase anger and fear,
rather seeds itself somehow inside it,
so even as I contract love bids me to open
wide as a leaf that unfurls in spring
until fear is not all I feel.
Love relentlessly.
Even saying the words aloud invites
both softness and ferocity into the chest,
makes the heart throb with simultaneous
urgency and willingness. A radical pulsing
of love, pounding love, thumping love,
a rebellion of generous love,
tenacious love, a love so foundational
every step of what’s next begins
and continues as an uprising,
upwelling, ongoing, infusion
of love, tide of love, honest love.
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