Contemplative at Home

A 13-minute guided meditation to help you settle on how you will observe Advent this year.  If you’re not quite sure what your advent observance will look like this year, or how to balance the sacred time of waiting with the jolly buzz of December, let me accompany you as you pray through these questions. This guided intention-setting meditation came to me after I listened to a conversa...

A 11-minute audio guided meditation with mindful breath awareness. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, God’s mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning Great is Thy Faithfulness. All blessings as you pause with these profound verses. May they be new to you as you pray. Lissy Contemplative at Home  offers guided meditative prayer – space to slow down and list...

A 25-minute audio guided meditation in Luke’s Gospel, Luke 10:38-42, using Imaginative Contemplation. “As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him an...

A 19-minute audio guided meditation with text from Mirabai Starr’s translation of The Interior Castle.   In this meditation I invite you to pray with the wisdom of St Teresa of Avila. Listening prayerfully to the text, you are invited to ask: How is the Lord speaking to me in these words? Teresa was given a picture of her inner self, her soul, as mansion, a palace, with many rooms. At the ce...

A 17-minute audio guided meditation in John’s Gospel, John 17:1-4, 10-11, 13, 23, 26, using Lectio Divina. In Jesus’ final prayer/teaching before he arrested, in John’s Gospel, there is both a summary and climax of the primary messages of John. These messages include: the intimacy or one-ness that exists between Jesus and the Father, the invitation to all Jesus’ followers into th...

An 18-minute audio guided meditation in John’s Gospel, John 16:16-27, with questions for reflection. This meditation takes on a slightly different pattern as we allow the text to open up questions for our spiritual journey. Firstly we see how Jesus prepares his disciples for his departure, for a radical shift in their relationship to him. All enduring relationships go through multiple stages of ch...

A 21-minute audio guided meditation in John’s Gospel, John 16:7-13, using Lectio Divina. John 16:7-13 “Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you, but if I go, I will send him to you.  8  And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment:  9  about sin, because...

A 17-minute audio guided meditation in John’s Gospel, John 15:12-17, using Lectio Divina. In this meditation on John’s Gospel, I invite you to join me in taking a ‘long, loving look’ at a few verses of text, beholding the words as living, shimmering, life-giving containers which hold endless layers of wisdom, mystery, beauty and truth. Just for these few minutes, I invite you to leave your dogma,...

A 21-minute audio guided meditation in John’s Gospel, John 15:1-11, using Imaginative Contemplation. We continue our series in John 15 with an imaginative contemplation on the vine and branches, exploring the notion of abiding in God. Imaginative Contemplation invites us to see the scripture in new ways, to attend to it with different parts of our mind and heart so that the Lord mig...

A 20-minute audio guided meditation in John’s Gospel, John 8:12-20, using Lectio Divina. “Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit.” “Abide in me.” “Abide in my love.” “I have said these things so that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be complete.” This meditation is in the second half of Jesus’ sermon on the vine and the branc...

A 17-minute audio guided meditation in John’s Gospel, John 15:1-5, using Lectio Divina. There are so many layers for reflection in this well-known passage and I invite you to come to it fresh today, open to what nuggets of wisdom might be waiting for you in these images today. Abide in me, as I abide in you. Perhaps you’d like to link this phrase to your moments of mindful breathing today. I...

A 23-minute audio guided meditation on the Gifts of Summer. The summer is a time of ripening and fullness, a time to allow the long, warm days to ripen the fruit of the labour of spring. To contemplate, according to Walter Burghardt SJ, is to “take a long, loving look at the real.” Summer, with its warmth and heat is just the time for such activity. Long, slow, loving moments to gaze a...

A 22-minute audio guided meditation in John’s Gospel, John 11:45-54, using Lectio Divina. In this meditation on John’s Gospel, we consider the variety of responses people made to the radical and astonishing life that Jesus brought. I invite you to consider the ways you resonate with those who respond with suspicion and concern, as well as those who respond with openness and joy. Bre...

A 25-minute audio guided meditation in John’s Gospel, John 11:32-44, Lazarus is raised from the dead, using Imaginative Contemplation. There are so many feelings in this story: Mary and Martha’s great grief mixed with feelings of profound disappointment with Jesus. Their angry confusion that he hadn’t come to heal Lazarus. Their apprehension when Jesus asks them to open the tomb. The f...

A 21-minute audio guided meditation in John’s Gospel, John 10:31-42, using Lectio Divina. The text in this meditation comes from the NRSV and NIV, and includes most but not all of the verses in John 10:31-42. See below for verses in today’s meditation. 22  Then came the Festival of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter,  23  and Jesus was in the temple courts walking in Solomon’s Colonnade....