Centering a Rule of Life on the Spacious Path: (Restful) Readers Guide for Part 2
Resources & reflection questions + playlists & printables!
Pre-order at one of these retailers: Bookshop, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble
Dear (Restful) Launch Team,
We’ve had some new folks join us this week. Welcome! In the comments of this post, please say hello! If you’d like, tell us about a restful moment you enjoyed this week. Head to the comments to see my answers!
I have a few exciting things for you today:
Your (Restful) Reading Guide for Part 2 (pp. 97-134)!
This week, I’m sharing resources for the following chapters:
Chapter 5—Walk With Me: Saying Yes to Spacious Stability and Change in the Church
Chapter 6—Baptized Beloved: Unity in Diversity
Chapter 3—Centering in the Beloved
Response to Part 2: Centering a Rule of Life on the Spacious Path
If you’ve already pre-ordered the book, you can download the digital version here.
Read Mark 1:9-11 and Matthew 17:1-8 slowly and, if possible, out loud a few times.
Can you imagine being present in the moment of Jesus’ baptism and transfiguration? What would it look, sound, smell, and feel like?
Imagine you are present in the accounts of Jesus’ baptism and transfiguration. Where are you in the scene? Do you find yourself resonating with any of the people we see in the account?
How does it feel to imagine God’s voice in Jesus’ baptism and then again in Jesus’ transfiguration?
When you think about yourself as part of the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ baptism and transfiguration, what do you wonder? Could you put that question into a one-word prayer?
For Further Reflection (pp. 13-131)
How would you begin to describe your experience with stability and change in the church? What is helping you to embrace both stability and change in your current church community? What is making it difficult?
How might the following sentence from page 103 inform your practice of a Rule of Life?
“Spacious stability embraces a holy restraint from projecting our ideals onto the church where God has placed us and trusts that—even when it feels like a painful stretch—God knows and cares about our need to feel welcomed and at home.”
Chapter 6, “Baptized Beloved” invites us to contemplate the unity of diversity in God’s beloved community, centered in the holy Trinity, and revealed in the church and image of God revealed through the imago Dei. What resonated with you as you read this chapter? Where did you notice resistance? Could you begin to name why you might be feeling that?
Where in your life are you connected to a community who embodies well the unity of diversity of God’s beloved community? How could you invite this community to come alongside you as you discern a Rule of Life?
As you read about the communion of saints, who are the people (from this era or the ones before us) who have influenced you? Who do you want to follow as they follow(ed) Christ?
In chapter 7, we considered our true name as Beloved. How would it feel to pray the following prayer?
God, help me become more like Jesus and more like the beloved person you’ve always imagined”?
As you continue to notice the everyday pattern of your life with gentle curiosity rather than reflexive judgment, what experiences or practices from this section feel most inviting to your Rule of Life? How might the practices of Centering Prayer and Healing Communities (pp. 131-134) fit into your Rule of Life? Share your response with a trusted friend. Ask them to simply pray for you.
Continue to practice paying attention to the present by noticing your everyday, unwritten Rule of Life (as described on page 50).
Download this helpful Day in the Life tracker my friend Amy Barker Willers created to help you notice your unwritten Rule of Life for one day, one week, or the whole time you are reading the book.
Add one of these two printables Amy created for us to the Centering Prayer practice recommended on p. 131
Notice how it feels to trace or color through the circuits to the center and back out again.
Enjoy this playlist of songs I curated to accompany you as you read and reflect on Part 2 of The Spacious Path.
Reminder + Zoom link for tomorrow’s (Restful) Book Discussion
May 31, 7:30- 8:45 PM (Eastern)
For those of you who want to read and discuss the book with me now, please feel free to join our (Restful) Book Discussions on most Wednesday nights between now and the end of June. You can find our reading schedule here.
Tamara Murphy is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: (Restful) Book Discussion Group for The Spacious Path by Tamara Hill Murphy
Time: May 31, 2023 07:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86328877654?pwd=UXVsZHZNTjEzYVhaVTA1MkxYTUZZdz09
Meeting ID: 863 2887 7654
Passcode: 462821
I forgot to add my comment yesterday, so here goes! Last week was full of moments that threatened to be deeply UNrestful, but as I look back, I see how those moments made space for me to ask for help from people who love me. I'm also grateful for simple but highly effective things like ice packs to bring comfort to soreness.
I couldn't figure out where this fit in tonight so I thought I would share it here. This gives me rest and hope and assuredness in being beloved, and that we are all beloved.
When imaginatively contemplating Mark 1:9-11, Jesus' baptism, I am struck that the One who made all and holds all together, stepped into the water. I would imagine there were crowds there, some standing in the water, some having been baptized, some waiting to be baptized, some watching and taking notes to bring back to those in charge, some not believing they could be baptized, and Jesus, in the flesh, in the water, forgive me for getting perhaps too anthropological, but the medium of water connecting Him with all those standing by. Dead cells falling off each other as they do, mixing together in a river of love. Once again allowing the creation to hold the Creator, vulnerable, prefacing His death with what will be the symbol of our dying with Him and being raised again to life as the beloved, in the same water. The Eucharist baptized with us, to be later broken for us, to be later shared with each other, to become the Body of that same Christ. He actually left nothing to the imagination as He fully entered humanity. He left no doubt about His love. Of course, we tend to be stiff-necked doubters but when I look at the evidence....