Monday, March 30, 2009

Lectio Divina - Thirty-two


Nelson Mandela, quoted in Ann Belford Ulanov. The Unshuttered Heart: Opening Aliveness/Deadness in the Self. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007, pp. 75-76.


Our worst fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us . . . You are a child of God; your playing small doesn’t serve the world . . . We are born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just some of us, it is everyone and as we let our own light shine we unconsciously give other people permission to do so.


Friday, March 20, 2009

Lectio Divina - Thirty-one


Thich Nhat Hanh. Living Buddha, Living Christ. New York: Riverhead Books, 1995, pp. 23-4.


Our true home is in the present moment. The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment. Peace is all around us - in the world and in nature - and within us - in our bodies and our spirits. Once we learn to touch this peace, we will be healed and transformed. It is not a matter or faith; it is a matter of practice. We need only to bring our body and mind into the present moment, and we will touch what is refreshing, healing, and wondrous.



Sunday, March 15, 2009

Lectio Divina - Thirty


Paul Knitter, “New Possibilities for Interreligious Dialogue” in Beatrice Bruteau, ed., The Other Half of My Soul: Bede Griffiths and the Hindu-Christian Dialogue. Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 1996, p.169.


The first commandment of Christ to Christians is not a “missionary mandate” to go forth and make disciples of all nations, but is, of course, to love one’s neighbors. Many people feel that there is a certain clash between this commandment and the missionary mandate. Previous attitudes towards and ways of approaching other faiths have not allowed Christians to properly love their non-Christian neighbors. What, after all, does love mean, but to respect someone, to honor them, to really listen with an authentic openness to what they are saying?



Sunday, March 8, 2009

Lectio Divina - Twenty-nine


Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy & Fairy Tale. New York: HarperCollins, 1977, 40-41.


The preacher is not called to be be an actor, a magician, in the pulpit. He is called to be himself. He is called to tell the truth as he has experienced it. He is called to be human, to be human, and that is calling enough for any man. If he does not make real to them the human experience of what it is to cry into the storm and receive no answer, to be sick at heart and find no healing, then he becomes the only one there who seems not to have had that experience because most surely under their bonnets and shawls and jackets, under their afros and ponytails, all the others there have had it whether they talk of it or not. As much as anything else, it is their experience of the absence of God that has brought them there in search of his presence, and if the preacher does not speak of that and to that, then he becomes like the captain of a ship who is the only one aboard who either does not know that the waves are twenty feet high and the decks awash or will not face up to it so that anything else he tries to say by way of hope and comfort and empowering becomes suspect on the basis of that one crucial ignorance or disingenuousness or cowardice or reluctance to speak in love any truths but the ones that people love to hear.


Sunday, March 1, 2009

Lectio Divina - Twenty-eight


Suzanne Farnham et al. Listening Hearts: Discerning Call in Community. Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1991, p.33.


Humility is not gained by seeking it directly nor obtained by focusing on one’s faults and sins. Rather, it comes quietly to those who draw close to the Lord. As we experience God’s greatness, we sense our own smallness. When we encounter God’s wholeness, we realize our own incompleteness.