Praying Lectio Divina

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 profoundly and hear every word’s sound and meaning. 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, your tradition, 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 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 connect to God through reading scripture, prayer, meditation, and contemplation or listening for God. If your tradition has fixed lectionary readings for Sunday, practice Lectio Divina with one or all of the readings daily as your discipline or in a group.

In her book, A Tree Full of Angels, Seeing the Holy in the Ordinary, Macrina Wiederkehr writes extensively about Lectio Divina, calling it “plowing up the field of the soul.” As her guide, she uses a quote from 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, or a sentence that may stay. She then carries that word or phrase with her during the day. Finally, she describes giving yourself to God as surrender, melting into God.

Buechner: Ash Wednesday

Buechner: Ash Wednesday

“In many cultures, there is an ancient custom of giving a tenth of each year’s income to some holy use. For Christians, to observe the forty days of Lent is to do the same thing with roughly a tenth of each year’s days.”—Frederick Buechner in Whistling in the Dark: An ABC Theologized (Harper & Row, 1988), p. 82.

Duke University Chapel

We begin our Lenten journey on this Ash Wednesday. It is a day to remember our mortality: “Dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” I think of my favorite aunt, who had Alzheimer’s for more than ten years, who died on Ash Wednesday.  

I remember watching the members of our parish receive the imposition of ashes. Some have cancer or other illnesses, and I know they worry whether they will be present in this body at this church next Ash Wednesday. Some are filled with tears as they stand or kneel at the altar. I wonder who will meet death face to face before next Easter. Could it be even myself or a member of my family? I never imagined we would not be in our churches for two Ash Wednesdays.

I travel back in time to the Cathedral School on Ash Wednesday, when we heard elementary students comment as we placed ashes on their foreheads: “Will it stay on? How do I look? You look funny.”

I remember a beautiful young mother holding her three-month-old baby girl and coming to the altar. Our priest traces the sign of the cross on the mother’s forehead. I do not want her to put the cross on this baby’s head. I watch as she asks the mother, and then applies the black ashes to the tiny forehead. The little girl does not cry out, but I want to stand up and protest: “No, don’t do that!” My life profession has been to care for tiny babies. I do not want to think of this precious one dying. I will not permit it. I still have no answers as to how to handle the death of a child. 

Ash Wednesday is a reminder of our immortality. I still have difficulty with it. A huge part of me lives as though I and others will live forever. As I grow older, I realize this is not true, as I begin to treasure each day as a gift. Easter tells me there is more than this life—resurrection—a resurrection, a new life. Barbara Crafton calls this life in the resurrection The AlsoLife.

I think again of my aunt. In fact, I still sometimes feel her presence. That same Ash Wednesday she died, someone calls to tell me that a dear friend is having her first baby today and has asked for prayers. I pray that the presence of God in the spirit of my aunt will be by the bed of my friend to guide and protect her and her unborn child. 

It is always thus. One person dies, another is born. We all carry the blackened sign of the cross on our forehead. My mind returns to the Cathedral School as I remember a sermon by Beth Maze on Ash Wednesday: “Creation Is Made from Dust.” 

It is good that we have these forty days to ponder all this.

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/

 

 

 

Waiting for God

Waiting for God

 “O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,

My eyes are not raised too high;

I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.

But, I have calmed and quieted my soul,

Like a weaned child with its mother;

My soul is like the weaned child that is with me.” Psalm 131

I come to early church with all the concerns of the day, the present week, and the past week. I am not playing the harp because I have difficulty putting in new strings for two recently broken ones. It is the first meeting for discernment for the Daughters of the King at St. Mark’s. We have a wellness forum during the adult formation hour that I have been working on. Some pages are missing in the Eucharistic Prayer for the next service in the Altar Book.

I decide to go sit at the back of the church and try to quieten the busyness about these concerns and more. The church is absolutely quiet. The long green season hangings are more calming and simplistic with a hint of the ornamental. The candles are lighted and flickering. The summer flowers are in honor of the mother of a friend.

 I am in a beautiful place built to bring us closer to God, but my head is still a mess. How can I see or taste a glimpse of the holy before the service starts? Must I wait for some moment during the liturgy, at the scripture, in the prayers, the sermon, the music, the Eucharist? I pray for guidance, actually for help. The message comes. Start intercessory prayers. You did not say your private prayers this morning before church. Too busy. I start praying for those I have committed to pray for each day. If I know them, I imagine them with Jesus. Almost immediately, I feel that peace that passes understanding, a calm.

Time after time, this is my experience. I begin to know a peace whenever I can get out of myself and my world and my concerns, and send love to my neighbor by visiting, calling, writing, serving, or a multitude of other ways, but especially in intercessory prayer. I rarely know how these prayers affect those I pray for, but with each prayer, my mind and my body also take me to find Jesus as I try to connect others to that healing love.

Joanna joannaseibert.com    https://www.joannaseibert.com/