Brother Lawrence: Session 3

Turning to the Mystics with James Finley

Center for Action and Contemplation

Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 13 October 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This is the third session which focuses on Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection. In the tenor of the ancient practice of Lectio Divina, James Finley reads passages from Carmen Acevedo Butcher's translation of Brother Lawrence's Practice of the Presence, reflects on core themes, and finishes with a meditative practice. Resources: Turning to the Mystics is a podcast by the Center for Action and Contemplation. To learn more about James Finley, visit his faculty profile ⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠. The book we will be using this season can be⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠found here⁠⁠⁠⁠. The transcript for this podcast can be found here. Connect with us: Have a question you'd like Jim or Kirsten to answer about this season? Email us: ⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠ Send us a voicemail: ⁠⁠⁠⁠cac.org/voicemail⁠⁠⁠⁠ We'll be accepting questions for our Listener Questions episode until November 7, 2025. This podcast is made possible, thanks to the generosity of our donors. If you would love to support the ongoing work of the Center for Action and Contemplation and the continued work of our podcasts, you can donate at ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://cac.org/support-cac/podcasts/⁠⁠⁠⁠ Thank you!

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to a podcast by the Center for Action and Contemplation.
0:04.0	To learn more, visit cac.org.
0:09.6	Greetings. I'm Jim Finley.
0:13.1	Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.
0:33.6	Greetings, everyone, and welcome to our time together, turning for trustworthy guidance to the teachings and brother Lawrence's of practicing the presence. And in this session, I want to explore something with you in the light of all the mystics that we're studying, like collectively.
0:43.6	What I think is important, it's helpful to realize that when we listen to these mystics, that their lives are woven into our lives.
0:53.4	That as the patterns of their lives are the patterns of our life.
0:57.0	And our lives are woven into their lives,
1:00.0	because the patterns of our life are the patterns of their life,
1:03.0	the ordinariness in which the wakings occur.
1:07.0	And that our lives woven into each other
1:09.0	are woven into God's life, woven into our lives.
1:13.2	In this talk, I would like to explore that. I'd like to turn to fundamental aspects of
1:19.3	Brother Lawrence's life and teachings. And because he entered Diskhouse Carmelite Monastery,
1:26.6	he was certainly very aware of the spirit of St. John of the Cross and Teresa Vavala,
1:31.1	who founded that reform in Spain.
1:34.9	And so I would like to look at fundamental mentions of his life and how they resonate
1:39.6	and are expressed in the fundamental expressions of their lives, of Teresa and John.
1:45.5	And I would like to do this in a way so that by seeing how these modalities of transformation in his life and their life,
1:53.8	to help us see how they're occurring in our life.
1:57.5	That's what I'm attempting to do here intuitively.
2:00.6	And I like to begin first with Brother Lawrence's life. That's what I'm attempting to do here intuitively.
	...

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