Lectio Divina

First Week in Lent

Lent 1

Praying Lectio Divina

“Lectio Divina means Divine Reading. It is a prayerful way to read scripture or any spiritual writing.
Read -- Read Deeply
Read a scripture passage slowly and hear deeply the sound and meaning of every word. Imagine that God is speaking to you through these words. Listen attentively to see which word or phrase catches your attention and speaks to you and your life.
Meditate – Think, imagine Deeply
Take what caught your attention from your reading and think deeply about it using your imagination. Imagine what it meant to those at that time who first heard it? Why is this important to you and your tradition and your experience and your life today? What about it particularly moves you.
Pray -- Pray from the Heart
If your heart is moved or your emotions touched, go with the feelings and offer what you are feeling to God in prayer.
Contemplate -- Rest
Fall into the love of God and the love from God that was generated. Rest in the silence. Just be.
Finally, memorize or copy the thought that moved you and try to remember it from time to time during the day.
Journal if possible about what happened during the prayer.”

Modified from the Community of Reconciliation at Washington National Cathedral and the Friends of St. Benedict

Lectio Divina is an ancient Benedictine practice of reading the scriptures, which similar to centering prayer cultivates contemplative prayer. It was practiced in community in monasteries during the time of St. Benedict. This is a time-honored way to try to connect to God through reading scripture, prayer, meditation, and contemplation or listening for God. If your tradition has fixed lectionary readings for Sunday, this is an excellent way to prepare for Sunday by practicing Lectio Divina with one or all of the readings daily as your personal discipline or in a group.

Macrina Wiederkehr in her book, A Tree Full of Angels, Seeing the Holy in the Ordinary, writes extensively about Lectio Divina, calling it “plowing up the field of the soul.” She uses as her guide a quote from the Benedictine Abbot Marmion, “Read under the eye of God until your heart is touched, then give yourself up to love.” She uses imagery in the process, and waits for a mantra, a holy word, a phrase, a sentence that may stay. She then carries that word or phrase with her during the day. She describes giving yourself to God as surrender, melting into God.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

Today Sunday March 10 you can purchase a signed copy of A Daily Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock in the narthex after the 8 and 10:30 services. Proceeds from the book go for hurricane relief in the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast.

Wounded Healer

Wounded Healer

“To be a conscious person in this world, to be aware of all the suffering and the beauty, means to have your heart broken over and over again.” Sharon Salzberg, “Daily Quote,”InwardOutward.org, May 31, 2018.

Sharon Salzberg is an author and teacher of Buddhist meditation practices. Those in Christian and psychological traditions will recognize this Buddhist belief we share as the Christian and Jungian teaching of the wounded healer. The best healers are those who also have experienced and have known the most about suffering. We daily see this in our small group grief recovery group, Walking the Mourner’s Path. Three or four of us are the facilitators holding the group together. The real healers are those participating in the group who are trying to live through the death of a loved one and know something about what the others in the group are thinking and feeling. The same is true for all of those in 12-step recovery groups.

When we talk with spiritual friends who are suffering, we listen and listen and listen. At some point they will mention someone else who is suffering who helped or reached out to them. This is our clue subtlety to tell them that perhaps at some future date they can be able do the same for someone else. It is the old native American message of having walked in someone else’s moccasins that gives us compassion for that person when we have a hint of what his or her life is like.

Sometimes the only resurrection that we ever see in tremendous suffering is developing an awareness of what it is like for others who are also in distress.

We have a choice, bitterness for the suffering or an understanding of compassion for others who also struggle.

Four disciplines are telling us this same message about the wounded healer. I know there must be other traditions as well who are sending this message. When several disciplines intersect, for me this is a sign of a truth.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

One opportunity Sunday March 10 to purchase a signed copy of A Daily Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock in the narthex after the 8 and 10:30 services. Proceeds from the book go for hurricane relief in the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast.

Love Overcomes

Love

“Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offences.” Proverbs 10:12

We are all banking on this being true. I think of all my offences, the evil I have done, the harm I have done consciously or unconsciously, the friends, the family members I have hurt. I make amends when I can for the harm I have done, but mostly I try to make living amends. I hope to learn to love the way my granddaughter, Langley, is doing to this young child on her mission trip. I want to hold closely the Christ in others and let them know what a treasure they are. I want to be able to see the Christ in them. This is what spiritual friends do for each other. They affirm, stand by each other.

More often now I am paying it forward. For many reasons I cannot make amends to the person I have harmed, but instead I try to show the love I wish I could now give to them to someone else. Paying forward is showing love to someone else that has done nothing for us, especially someone we do not know and often someone who feels loveless.

I try, I judge, I make mistakes, I mess up, I hurt others, I make amends, I try to show love that has been so often unconditionally given to me, and the cycle seems invariably to start all over again. It is a circular path. It is the human condition. I try to stay connected to this circular pathway of others who know more than I know how to love and hope to learn from them. I can so easily see Christ in them and occasionally they can see the Christ in me which guides me back onto the path of love.

Today, I now learn most about how to love from my grandchildren. What a circular life, for I first learned about love from my own grandparents many years ago.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

One opportunity Sunday March 10 to purchase a signed copy of A Daily Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock in the narthex after the 8 and 10:30 services. Proceeds from the book go for hurricane relief in the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast.