Resonant Reading (Wednesday)-Dazzled by God-Hugo

An exploration of ideas, feelings, and our life experiences, using a different short reading as our springboard each time. The sessions are on Saturdays, 4-5, and on Wednesdays, 12-1. All are wide open and you are welcome to come twice a week or once in a while.

The participants over the years have found that the approach we take, and the respectful, affectionate community of inquirers in which we read and converse, are as important as the reading itself. While many small groups begin with a check-in, with a session only an hour long, Resonant Reading jumps right in to the conversation. Those who are frequently in the group get to know each other very well this way, and those who are new will soon find they are among friends.

Facilitators use a light hand, posting the reading in the chat and calling on whoever’s Zoom hand is up. Suggestions for readings* come from group members, who also take turns facilitating, if they want to try that role.

The reading for this session: Wednesday, January 21st

He was there alone, communing with himself, peaceful, adoring, comparing the serenity of his heart with the serenity of the ether, moved amid the darkness by the visible splendor of the constellations and the invisible splendor of God, opening his heart to the thoughts which fall from the Unknown. At such moments, while he offered his heart at the hour when nocturnal flowers offer their perfume, illuminated like a lamp amid the starry night, as he poured himself out in ecstasy in the midst of the universal radiance of creation, he could not have told himself, probably, what was passing in his spirit; he felt something take its flight from him, and something descend into him. Mysterious exchange of the abysses of the soul with the abysses of the universe!
He thought of the grandeur and presence of God; of the future eternity, that strange mystery; of the eternity past, a mystery still more strange; of all the infinities, which pierced their way into all his senses, beneath his eyes; and, without seeking to comprehend the incomprehensible, he gazed upon it. He did not study God; he was dazzled by him. He considered those magnificent conjunctions of atoms, which communicate aspects to matter, reveal forces by verifying them, create individualities in unity, proportions in extent, the innumerable in the infinite, and, through light, produce beauty. These conjunctions are formed and dissolved incessantly; hence life and death.
—Victor Hugo from Les Miserables about Bishop Myriel

Questions? Drop an e-mail to resonant-reading+owner@uucpa.org.