{"id":500,"date":"2011-07-01T12:14:22","date_gmt":"2011-07-01T16:14:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/?p=500"},"modified":"2013-03-07T15:53:21","modified_gmt":"2013-03-07T20:53:21","slug":"advent-meditation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/?p=500","title":{"rendered":"Advent Meditation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Glow<\/span><\/h4>\n


\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Turn off the lights in your room<\/p>\n

and light a candle.<\/p>\n

Place it a few feet away from you.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Now focus on the flame:<\/p>\n

sometimes it dances<\/p>\n

and you observe its smallest movements,<\/p>\n

sometimes it seems motionless and steady.<\/p>\n

You may find it more restful to close your eyes<\/p>\n

and see the flame in fantasy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As you look at the flame<\/p>\n

think of what it symbolizes for you.<\/p>\n

It may be a symbol of many things.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Allow memories of the past<\/p>\n

connected with the candle flame<\/p>\n

to come to your awareness.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Then conduct a dialogue with the flame<\/p>\n

\u2014 on life and death, the flame\u2019s and yours,<\/p>\n

or life and death in general.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Finally put all words and thoughts and memories aside<\/p>\n

and contemplate the flame in silence,<\/p>\n

thus allowing the flame to give your heart a message,<\/p>\n

a wisdom that escapes the grasp of conscious thought.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At the end take leave of the flame<\/p>\n

by joining your hands and bowing down to it.<\/p>\n

Then respectfully put it out<\/p>\n

with the grateful awareness<\/p>\n

that it has kindled something in your heart<\/p>\n

that you will carry with you through the day.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

by Anthony deMello<\/span>, <\/span>Wellsprings, A Book of Spiritual Exercises<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A meditation from Anthony deMello’s “Book of Spiritual Exercises” [..]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":501,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19],"tags":[71,56,92,105,67],"class_list":["post-500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sacristy","category-prayers","tag-advent","tag-candle","tag-meditation","tag-spirituality","tag-symbol"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=500"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1519,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500\/revisions\/1519"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}