Lectio Divina

Lectio Divina - One hundred and twenty-eight

2012-01-24T17:04:00.001-05:00

Lal Ded, translated by Coleman Barks in Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women, ed. Jane Hirshfield, Harper Perennial, 1995, p.121.

The soul, like the moon,

is new, and always new again.

And I have seen the ocean

continuously creating.

Since I scoured my mind

and my body, I too, Lalla,

am new, each moment new.

My teacher told me one thing,

Live in the soul.

When that was so,

I began to go naked,

and dance.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and twenty-seven

2012-01-05T14:39:00.002-05:00

Lal Ded, translated by Coleman Barks in Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women, ed. Jane Hirshfield, Harper Perennial, 1995, p.126.

On the way to God the difficulties

feel like being ground by a millstone,

like night coming at noon, like

lightning through the clouds.

But don’t worry!

What must come, comes.

Face everything with love,

as your mind dissolves in God.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and twenty-six

2012-01-01T15:32:00.000-05:00

Thomas Keating and Contemplative Outreach, Intentions for the Coming Year

Led by Thomas Keating, we have set forth intentions for the coming year. These are the measures that we aspire to and will return to . . .

• To heed the call to be transformed and then to rely on God to enable us to pass on the mercy, forgiveness, compassion and love to all humanity that we have received.
• To create a context in which the transformation of humanity can take place.
• To make the practice of Centering Prayer and the conceptual background readily available.
• To see Christ as present in everything and everyone.
• To acknowledge that any good accomplished is the work of the Holy Spirit.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and twenty-five

2011-12-16T11:11:00.001-05:00

Richard Rohr, Adapted from Preparing for Christmas with Richard Rohr, pp. 31, 11-12.

We tend to manage life more than just live it. We are all overstimulated and drowning in options. We are trained to be managers, to organize life, to make things happen. That is what built our First World culture. It is not all bad, but if you transfer it to the spiritual life, it is pure heresy. It is wrong. It doesn’t work. It is not gospel.

If Mary was trustfully carrying Jesus during this time, it is because she knew how to receive spiritual gifts, in fact the spiritual gift. She is probably the perfect example of how fertility and fruitfulness break into this world.

There is a great banquet that utterly relativizes and situates all our daily emotions, hurts, addictions, and plans. When you abide in your true Godself, as Mary did, the small self is always seen as limited, insecure, and surely good—but still passing away. We must eat from this big table to know who we really and finally are.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and twenty-four

2011-12-02T14:58:00.001-05:00

The Essential Rumi, trans. Coleman Barks, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994, p.22.

Quietness

Inside this new love, die.

Your way begins on the other side.

Become the sky.

Take an axe to the prison wall.

Escape.

Walk out like somebody suddenly born into colour.

Do it now.

You’re covered with thick cloud.

Slide out the side. Die,

and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign

that you’ve died.

Your old life was a frantic running

from silence.

The speechless full moon

comes out now.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and twenty-three

2011-11-18T12:03:00.001-05:00

Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, p. 191.

Pain teaches a most counterintuitive thing—that we must go down before we even know what up is. Suffering of some sort seems to be the only thing strong enough to destabilize our arrogance and our ignorance. I would define suffering very simply as “whenever you are not in control.”

All healthy religion shows you what to do with your pain. If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.

If we cannot find a way to make our wounds into sacred wounds, we invariably become negative or bitter. If there isn’t some way to find some deeper meaning to our suffering, to find that God is somehow in it, and can even use it for good, we will normally close up and close down.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and twenty-two

2011-11-03T16:39:00.002-04:00

Steve Jobs, from a commencement speech at Stanford in 2005

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart…

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and twenty-one

2011-10-22T16:27:00.002-04:00

Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle

Just as we cannot stop the movements of the heavens, revolving as they do with such speed, so we cannot stop the movement of our thought. And then we send all the faculties of the soul after it, thinking we are lost, and have misused the time that we are spending in the presence of God.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and twenty

2011-10-08T16:55:00.002-04:00

Galway Kinnell, "Saint Francis and the Sow"

The bud

stands for all things,

even for those things that don’t flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;

as Saint Francis

put his hand on the creased forehead

of the sow, and told her in words and in touch

blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow

began remembering all down her thick length,

from the earthen snout all the way

through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,

from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine

down through the great broken heart

to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering

from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:

the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

Hear the poet Galway Kinnell read his poem.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and nineteen

2011-09-21T08:33:00.001-04:00

Cynthia Bourgeault, Love is Stronger than Death: The Mystical Union of Two Souls. Texas: Praxis, 2007, 186.

The Kingdom of Heaven is not higher but aliver; it is right here, just on the other side of that “terror we can just scarcely bear”’; the only thing lacking to embrace it is the depth of our hearts.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and eighteen

2011-09-12T16:14:00.003-04:00

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, Ballantine 1996, p. 468

What it is we are hungering for can never be fulfilled by a mate, a job, money, a new this or that. What we hunger for is of the other world, the world that sustains our lives as women. And this child-Self we are awaiting is brought forth by just this means - by waiting. As time passes in our lives and our work in the underworld, the child develops and will be born. In most cases, a woman’s nightdreams will presage the birth; women literally dream of a new baby, a new home, a new life.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and seventeen

2011-08-31T15:32:00.004-04:00

Gerald May, Wisdom of Wilderness. New York: HarperCollins 2009, xiii-ix.

Oh my divine love, never again reassure me. I do not want to know everything will be all right. I never want to be secure again as long as I live. Give me no safety. Only give me this livingness forever, this power-of-being, though I know I will die of it, of love exploding.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and sixteen

2011-08-15T09:35:00.006-04:00

Exodus 3:11-14

Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

He said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.”

But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”

God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”

Lectio Divina - One hundred and fifteen

2011-07-26T15:48:00.000-04:00

Gerald May, Wisdom of Wilderness. New York: HarperCollins 2009, xiii-ix.

I have come to hate that word [cope], because to cope with something you have to separate yourself from it. You make it your antagonist, your enemy. Like management, coping is a taming word, sometimes even a warfare word. Wild, untamed emotions are full of life-spirit, vibrant with the energy of being. They don't have to be acted out, but neither do they need to be tamed. They are part of our inner wilderness; they can be just what they are. God save me from coping. God help me join, not separate. Help me be with and in, not apart from. Show me the way to savoring, not controlling. Dear God, hear my prayer: make me forever copeless.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and fourteen

2011-07-13T12:24:00.001-04:00

Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, Trans. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy. New York: Riverhead Books, 1996, 119.

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,

then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,

go to the limits of your longing.

Embody me.

Flare up like flame

and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.

You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and thirteen

2011-07-05T11:38:00.003-04:00

John 11: 1-45, NRSV Translation

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.” After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.” Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him.

Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and twelve

2011-06-20T14:43:00.001-04:00

From The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks. New York: HarperCollins, 1995, p. 260.

Birdwings

Your grief for what you’ve lost lifts a mirror
up to where you’re bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
here’s the joyful face you’ve been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and eleven

2011-06-12T16:42:00.001-04:00

Hadewijch of Antwerp, quoted in For Lovers of God Everywhere: Poems of the Christian Mystics, ed. Roger Housden, Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 2009, 60.

The madness of love
Is a blessed fate;
And if we understood this
We would seek no other:
It brings into unity
What was divided,
And this is the truth:
Bitterness it makes sweet,
It makes the stranger a neighbor,
And what was lowly it raises on high.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and ten

2011-05-31T15:46:00.002-04:00

Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert, (New York: New Directions, 1960) p. 43.

A brother came to Abbot Pastor and said: Many distracting thoughts come into my mind, and I am in danger because of them. Then the elder thrust him out into the open air and said: Open up the garments about your chest and catch the wind in them. But he replied: This I cannot do. So the elder said to him: If you cannot catch the wind, neither can you prevent distracting thoughts from coming into your head. Your job is to say No to them.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and nine

2011-05-17T08:06:00.000-04:00

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet. Stephen Mitchell, trans. New York: Vintage, 1986, p.41-2.

Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away, you write, and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast. And if what is near you is far away, then your vastness is already among the stars and is very great; be happy about your growth, in which of course you can’t take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don’t torment them with your doubts and don’t frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn’t be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn’t necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and eight

2011-05-05T14:26:00.001-04:00

Stephen Mitchell, A Book of Psalms, Selected and Adapted from the Hebrew. New York: HarperPerennial, 1993, 4.

Even in the midst of great pain, Lord,

I praise you for that which is.

I will not refuse this grief

or close myself to this anguish.

Let shallow men pray for ease:

“Comfort us; shield us from sorrow.”

I pray for whatever you send me,

and I ask to receive it as your gift.

You have put a joy in my heart

greater than all the world’s riches.

I lie down trusting the darkness,

for I know that even now you are here.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and seven

2011-04-25T07:52:00.001-04:00

Matthew 10:8

Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and six

2011-04-11T11:58:00.002-04:00

Wendell Berry, from "Sabbaths 2001", in Poetry, Vol 181, No. 1, pp. 6-8.

Sit and be still
until in the time
of no rain you hear
beneath the dry wind's
commotion in the trees
the sound of flowing
water among the rocks,
a stream unheard before,
and you are where
breathing is prayer.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and five

2011-03-29T13:51:00.001-04:00

Simone Weil, from "Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God" in Waiting For God. New York: Harper & Row, 1951, 105.

The key to a Christian conception of studies is the realization that prayer consists of attention. It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God. The quality of the attention counts for much in the quality of the prayer. Warmth of heart cannot make up for it. The highest part of the attention only makes contact with God, when prayer is intense and pure enough for such a contact to be established.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and four

2011-03-11T11:48:00.003-05:00

Gregory Orr, Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2005.

To be alive

To be alive: not just the carcass

But the spark.

That's crudely put, but…

If we're not supposed to dance,

Why all this music?

Lectio Divina - One hundred and three

2011-02-28T10:48:00.001-05:00

Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, 2000), 55.

If we are to live our lives fully and well, we must learn to embrace the opposites, to live in a creative tension between our limits and our potentials. We must honor our limitations in ways that do not distort our nature, and we must trust and use our gifts in ways that fulfill the potentials God gave us. We must take the no of the way that closes and find the guidance it has to offer -- and take the yes of the way that opens and respond with the yes of our lives.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and two

2011-02-14T11:46:00.000-05:00

Philip Novak, “Developing Your Awareness,” in Inner Knowing, ed. Helen Palmer. New York: Tarcher, 1998.

The mere act of trying to hold the mind to a single point, an act with which higher forms of meditation begin, teaches the beginner in a radically concrete and experiential way that he or she has little or no control over the mental flow. All attentional training starts with this failure. This is the first great step in the work of objectifying the mental flow, that is, of seeing it not as something that “I” am doing but something that is simply happening.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and one

2011-01-31T16:52:00.001-05:00

Arthur Green, Your Word Is Fire. New York: Schocken Books, 1977, pp.15-16.

Any teaching that places such great emphasis on total concentration in prayer must . . . deal with the question of distraction. What is a person to do when alien thoughts enter his mind and lead him away from prayer? . . . The Ba’al Shem Tov . . . spoke against the attempts of his contemporaries to . . . do battle with distracting thoughts . . . He taught that each distraction may become a ladder by which one may ascend to a new level of devotion . . . God is present in that moment of distraction! And only he who truly knows that God is present in all things, including those thoughts he seeks to flee, can be a leader of prayer.

Lectio Divina - One hundred

2011-01-19T14:41:00.001-05:00

From President Barack Obama’s Tucson Memorial Speech, January 12, 2011

For the truth is that none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack. None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped those shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man's mind.

So yes, we must examine all the facts behind this tragedy. We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence. We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of violence in the future.

But what we can't do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.

After all, that's what most of us do when we lose someone in our family - especially if the loss is unexpected. We're shaken from our routines, and forced to look inward. We reflect on the past. Did we spend enough time with an aging parent, we wonder. Did we express our gratitude for all the sacrifices they made for us? Did we tell a spouse just how desperately we loved them, not just once in awhile but every single day?

Lectio Divina - Ninety-nine

2011-01-10T12:04:00.001-05:00

Francis Vaughn and Roger Walsh, “Technology of Transcendence,” in Inner Knowing, ed. Helen Palmer. New York: Tarcher, 1998, p.

The sixth quality cultivated by the technology of transcendence is wisdom, which is something significantly more than knowledge. Whereas knowledge is something we have, wisdom is something we become. Developing it requires self-transformation. This transformation is fostered by opening defenselessly to the reality of “things as they are,” including the enormous extent of suffering in the world. In the words of the psalms, this is the recognition that we are “as dust . . . our lives are but toil and trouble, they are soon gone, they come to an end like a sigh’ (Psalm 90); “what man can live and never see death?” (Psalm 89)

Lectio Divina - Ninety-eight

2010-12-28T15:33:00.000-05:00

Abraham J. Heschel, The Prophets. New York: HarperCollins, 1962, p. 333.

Is it more compatible with our conception of the grandeur of God to claim that He is emotionally blind to the misery of man rather than profoundly moved? In order to conceive of God not as an onlooker but as a participant, to conceive of man not as an idea in the mind of God but as a concern, the category of divine pathos is an indispensable implication. To the biblical mind the conception of God as detached and unemotional is totally alien . . .

The grandeur of God implies the capacity to experience emotion. In the biblical outlook, movements of feeling are no less spiritual than acts of thought.

Lectio Divina - Ninety-seven

2010-12-05T12:33:00.001-05:00

Brother David Steindl-Rast, in the foreword to Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ. New York: Riverhead Books, 1995, xiii.

In midwinter, St. Francis is calling out to an almond tree, “Speak to me of God!” and the almond tree breaks into bloom. It comes alive. There is no other way of witnessing to God but by aliveness.

Lectio Divina - Ninety-six

2010-11-19T11:38:00.001-05:00

The Gospel of Luke 10:38-42

Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

Lectio Divina - Ninety-five

2010-11-06T15:14:00.003-04:00

Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith. San Francisco: HarperOne, 2007.

Several years ago now, I met a former parishioner in the city where he and his family moved so that he could accept another job. We had gotten to know one another when we both worked in Christian education--he as the chair of the parish committee and I as the priest in charge. When we met again, he was the new president of an urban university and I had moved to Clarkesville. After we had filled each other in on our new lives, I asked him where he was going to church. With no hesitation, he said that he was not going anywhere. His life was full. His work was valuable. He spent his days with people of many faiths and no faith at all, who gave him ample opportunity to practice his own.

Still immersed in church life, I was skeptical. “Say more,” I said.

“After a lot of listening,” he said, “I think I finally heard the gospel. The good news of God in Christ is, ‘You have everything you need to be human.’ There is nothing outside of you that you still need--no approval from the authorities, no attendance at temple, no key truth hidden in the tenth chapter of some sacred book. In your life right now, God has given you everything that you need to be human.”

Lectio Divina - Ninety-four

2010-10-24T12:34:00.001-04:00

The Cloud of Unknowing. New York: Image Books, 1973, 56.

A naked intent toward God, the desire for God alone, is enough.

Lectio Divina - Ninety-three

2010-10-09T12:13:00.002-04:00

Rainer Maria Rilke. Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke: A Translation from the German and Commentary by Robert Bly. New York: Harper and Row, 1981, 49.

Sometimes a man stands up during supper

and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,

because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house,

stays there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,

so that his children have to go far out into the world

towards that same church, which he forgot.

Lectio Divina - Ninety-two

2010-09-29T07:19:00.002-04:00

Mary Oliver. New and Selected Poems. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992, 87.

The Kookaburras

In every heart there is a coward and a procrastinator.

In every heart there is a god of flowers, just waiting

to come out of its cloud and lift its wings.

The kookaburras, kingfishers, pressed against the edge of

their cage, they asked me to open the door.

Years later I wake in the night and remember how I said to them,

no, and walked away.

They had the brown eyes of soft-hearted dogs.

They didn’t want to do anything so extraordinary, only to fly

home to their river.

By now I suppose the great darkness has covered them.

As for myself, I am not yet a god of even the palest flowers.

Nothing else has changed either.

Someone tosses their white bones to the dung-heap.

The sun shines on the latch of their cage.

I lie in the dark, my heart pounding.

Lectio Divina - Ninety-one

2010-09-18T08:22:00.001-04:00

Chogyam Trungpa, The Essential Chogyam Trungpa. Boston: Shambhala, 1999, 119-120.

An open wound . . . is always there. That open wound is usually very inconvenient and problematic. We don't like it. We would like to be tough. We would like to fight, to come out strong, so we do not have to defend any aspect of ourselves . . . It is just an open wound, a very simple open wound. That is very nice -- at least we are accessible somewhere. We are not completely covered with a suit of armor all the time . . . That sore spot is known as embryonic compassion, potential compassion. At least we have some kind of gap, some discrepancy in our state of being that allows basic sanity to shine through . . . we have some kind of opening.

Lectio Divina - Ninety

2010-08-16T07:48:00.001-04:00

Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner, (New York: HarperCollins, Publishers), 1992, p. 185.

The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.

Lectio Divina - Eighty-Nine

2010-08-01T08:59:00.002-04:00

Hafiz, The Gift. Daniel Ladinsky, trans. New York: Penguin Compass, 1999.

Tired of Speaking Sweetly

Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,

Break all our teacup talk of God.

If you had the courage and

Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,

He would just drag you around the room

By your hair,

Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world

That bring you no joy.

Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly

And wants to rip to shreds

All your erroneous notions of truth

That make you fight within yourself, dear one,

And with others,

Causing the world to weep

On too many fine days.

God wants to manhandle us,

Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself

And practice His dropkick.

The Beloved sometimes wants

To do us a great favor:

Hold us upside down

And shake all the nonsense out.

But when we hear

He is in such a “playful drunken mood”

Most everyone I know

Quickly packs their bags and hightails it

Out of town.

Lectio Divina - Eighty-Eight

2010-07-16T11:18:00.002-04:00

Simone Weil, quoted in W.H. Auden, A Certain World: A Commonplace Book. New York: Viking, 1970, 283.

To love our neighbor as ourselves does not mean that we should love all people equally, for I do not have an equal love for all the modes of existence of myself. Nor does it mean that we should never make them suffer, for I do not refuse to make myself suffer. But we should have with each person the relationship of one conception of the universe to another conception of the universe, and not to a part of it.

Lectio Divina - Eighty-Seven

2010-07-03T06:43:00.002-04:00

Mary Oliver, Thirst. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006, p. 4.

When I Am Among the Trees

When I am among the trees,

especially the willows and the honey locust,

equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,

they give off such hints of gladness.

I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,

in which I have goodness, and discernment,

and never hurry through the world

but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves

and call out, “Stay awhile.”

The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,

“and you too have come

into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled

with light, and to shine.”

Lectio Divina - Eighty-Six

2010-06-20T10:05:00.000-04:00

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace. New York: Vintage Classics, 2008, 293.

“It would be good,” thought Prince Andrei, looking at this icon which his sister had hung on him with such feeling and reverence, “it would be good if everything was as clear and simple as it seems to Princess Marya. How good it would be to know where to look for help in this life and what to expect after it, there, beyond the grave! How happy and calm I’d be, if I could say now: Lord have mercy on me! . . . But to whom shall I say it? Either it is an undefinable, unfathomable power, which I not only cannot address, but which I cannot express in words -- the great all or nothing,” he said to himself, “or it is that God whom Princess Marya has sewn in here, in this amulet? Nothing, nothing is certain, except the insignificance of everything I can comprehend and the grandeur of something incomprehensible but most important!”

Lectio Divina - Eighty-Five

2010-06-06T15:54:00.001-04:00

Thomas Keating, Invitation to Love

The experience of God's love and the experience of our weaknesses are correlative. These are the two poles that God works with as He gradually frees us from immature ways of relating to Him. The experience of our desperate need for God's healing is the measure in which we experience His infinite mercy. The deeper the experience of God's mercy, the more compassion we will have for others.

Lectio Divina - Eighty-Four

2010-05-23T09:41:00.001-04:00

Martin Buber, Between Man and Man, trans. by Ronald Gregor Smith (London: Kegan Paul, 1947), p. 184.

I have occasionally described my standpoint to my friends as the “narrow ridge.” I wanted by this to express that I did not rest on the broad upland of a system that includes a series of sure statements about the absolute, but on a narrow rocky ridge between the gulfs where there is no sureness of expressible knowledge but the certainty of meeting what remains undisclosed.

Lectio Divina - Eighty-Three

2010-05-08T10:04:00.003-04:00

Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1970, p.12.

So often when we say “I love you” we say it with a huge “I” and a small “you”. We use love as a conjunction instead of it being a verb implying action. It’s no good just gazing out into open space hoping to see the Lord; instead we have to look closely at our neighbor, someone whom God has willed into existence, someone whom God has died for. Everyone we meet has a right to exist, because he has value in himself, and we are not used to this. The acceptance of otherness is a danger to us, it threatens us.

Lectio Divina - Eighty-Two

2010-04-25T11:04:00.005-04:00

Vincent Van Gogh, quoted in W.H. Auden, A Certain World: A Commonplace Book. New York: Viking, 1970, p. 174.

It always strikes me, and it is very peculiar, that, whenever we see the image of indescribably and unutterable desolation -- of loneliness, poverty, and misery, the end and extreme of things -- the thought of God comes into one’s mind.

Lectio Divina - Eighty-One

2010-04-11T09:47:00.000-04:00

From the NRSV version of the Bible – John 20:19-29.

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Lectio Divina - Eighty

2010-03-26T14:58:00.000-04:00

Esther de Waal, Seeking God: The Way of Saint Benedict. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1984, p.43

To listen closely, with every fiber of our being, at every moment of the day, is one of the most difficult things in the world, and yet it is essential if we mean to find the God whom we are seeking. If we stop listening to what we find hard to take then, as the Abbot of St. Benoit-sur-Loire puts it in a striking phrase, “We’re likely to pass God by without even noticing Him.” And now it is our obedience which proves that we have been paying close attention. That word “obedience” is derived from the Latin oboedire, which shares its roots with audire, to hear. So to obey really means to hear and then act upon what we have heard, or, in other words, to see that the listening achieves its aim.

Lectio Divina - Seventy-Nine

2010-03-07T09:17:00.001-05:00

Kallistos Ware, “The Power of the Name,” in Elizabeth Behr-Sigel, The Place of the Heart: An Introduction to Orthodox Spirituality. Torrance, CA: Oakwood Publications, 1992, p. 138.

To pray is to pass from the state where grace is present in our hearts secretly and unconsciously, to the point of full inner perception and conscious awareness when we experience and feel the activity of the Spirit directly and immediately.

The purpose of prayer can be summarized in the phrase, “Become what you are.”

Lectio Divina - Seventy-Eight

2010-02-28T10:07:00.000-05:00

Ann Belford Ulanov, The Living God and Our Living Psyche: What Christians Can Learn from Carl Jung. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2008, Kindle location 820.

The psyche wants to be whole, which does not mean perfect, but that all parts are brought in. God wants all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, not just the parts we choose. This is coming home, taking acceptance all the way down. The shameful secret, the hidden manipulation, even the murderous intent and, as well, the undared talent and buried tenderness, also get a seat at the table.

Lectio Divina - Seventy-Seven

2010-02-21T10:24:00.000-05:00

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation. New York: New Directions, 1961, pp. 80-81.

We do not go into the desert to escape people but to learn how to find them; we do not leave them in order to have nothing more to do with them, but to find out the way to do them the most good. But this is only a secondary end.

The one end that includes all others is the love of God.

. . . the truest solitude is not something outside you, not an absence of men or of sound around you; it is an abyss opening up in the center of your own soul.

And this abyss of interior solitude is a hunger that will never be satisfied with any created thing.

The only way to find solitude is by hunger and thirst and sorrow and poverty and desire, and the man who has found solitude is empty, as if he had been emptied by death.

He has advanced beyond all horizons. There are no directions left in which he can travel. This is a country whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. You do not find it by traveling but by standing still.

Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in obscurity, and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity.

Lectio Divina - Seventy-Six

2010-02-14T08:07:00.000-05:00

Dag Hammarskjold, quoted in W.H. Auden, A Certain World: A Commonplace Book. New York: Viking, 1970, p. 174.

God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illuminated by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason.

Lectio Divina - Seventy-Five

2010-02-07T15:10:00.000-05:00

J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey. Boston: Little, Brown, 1961, p. 172.

The Jesus Prayer has one aim, and one aim only. To endow the person who says it with Christ-Consciousness. Not to set up some little cozy, holier-than-thou trysting place with some sticky, adorable divine personage who’ll take you in his arms and relieve you of all your duties and make all your nasty Weltschmerzen and Professor Tuppers go away and never come back. And by God, if you have intelligence enough to see that -- and you do -- and yet you refuse to see it, then you’re misusing the prayer, you’re using it to ask for a world full of dolls and saints and no Professor Tuppers.

Lectio Divina - Seventy-Four

2010-01-31T09:01:00.002-05:00

From The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks. New York: HarperCollins, 1995, p. 103.

God picks up the reed-flute world and blows.

Each note is a need coming through one of us,

a passion, a longing-pain.

Remember the lips

where the wind-breath originated,

and let your note be clear.

Don’t try to end it.

Be your note.

I’ll show you how it’s enough.

Lectio Divina - Seventy-Three

2010-01-23T12:01:00.000-05:00

Carmina Gadelica, quoted in Esther de Waal, The Celtic Way of Prayer: The Recovery of the Religious Imagination. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2003, p.33-4.

God, kindle Thou in my heart within

A flame of love to my neighbor,

To my foe, to my friend, to my kindred all,

To the brave, to the knave, to the thrall,

O Son of the loveliest Mary,

From the lowliest thing that liveth,

To the Name that is highest of all.

O Son of the loveliest Mary,

From the lowliest thing that liveth,

To the Name that is highest of all.

Lectio Divina - Seventy-Two

2010-01-16T12:26:00.001-05:00

Marie-Louise von Franz, Creation Myths. Boston: Shambhala, 1995, pp. 11-12.

One of Jung’s students asked him, “I am now seventy and you are eighty years old. Won’t you tell me what your thoughts are on life after death?” Jung’s answer was, “It won’t help you when you are lying on your deathbed to recall, ‘Jung said this or that.’ You must have your own ideas about it. You have to have your own myth. To have your own myth means to have suffered and struggled with a question until an answer has come to you from the depths of your soul. That does not imply that this is the definitive truth, but rather that this truth which has come is relevant for oneself as one now is, and believing in this truth helps one to feel well.”

Lectio Divina - Seventy-One

2010-01-09T12:16:00.002-05:00

Ann & Barry Ulanov, Cinderella & Her Sisters: The Envied and the Envying. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1983, p.121.

Even the saints must not be envied or emulated here. Even their most daring deeds must not be coveted to replace our own little timid acts and to make us into mirrors of their majesty. Their daring is theirs, not ours. Their renunciation, if that is the mark of their holiness, is for them, not for us.

Lectio Divina - Seventy

2010-01-02T11:56:00.000-05:00

Esther de Waal, The Celtic Way of Prayer: The Recovery of the Religious Imagination. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2003, p.8.

The word peregrinatio is almost untranslatable, but its essence is caught in the ninth-century story of three Irishmen drifting over the sea from Ireland for seven days, in coracles without oars, coming ashore in Cornwall and then being brought to the court of King Alfred. When he asked them where they had come from and where they were going they answered that they “stole away because we wanted for the love of God to be on pilgrimage, we cared not where”. This wonderful response and this amazing undertaking comes out of the inspirational character of early Irish spirituality. It shows at once how misleading is that word “pilgrimage” and how very different indeed is the Celtic peregrinatio from the pilgrimages of the Middle Ages or the present day. There is no specific end or goal such as that of reaching a shrine or a holy place which allows the pilgrim at the end of the journey to return home with a sense of a mission accomplished. Peregrinatio is not undertaken at the suggestion of some monastic abbot or superior but because of an inner prompting in those who set out, a passionate conviction that they must undertake what was essentially an inner journey. Ready to go wherever the Spirit might take them, seeing themselves as hospites mundi “guests of the world”, what they are seeking is the place of their resurrection, the resurrected self, the true self in Christ, which is for all of us our true home.

Lectio Divina - Sixty-nine

2009-12-20T08:52:00.000-05:00

Thomas Keating, The Daily Reader for Contemplative Living. New York: Continuum, 2007, p. 358.

The joy of Christmas is the intuition that all limitations to growth into higher consciousness have been overcome. The divine light cuts across all darkness, prejudice, preconceived ideas, prepackaged values, false expectations, phoniness and hypocrisy. It presents us with the truth. To act out of the truth is to make Christ grow not only in ourselves, but in others. Thus, the humdrum duties and events of daily live become sacramental, shot through with eternal implications.

Lectio Divina - Sixty-eight

2009-12-13T10:56:00.001-05:00

John Jay Chapman, quoted in W.H. Auden, A Certain World: A Commonplace Book. New York: Viking, 1970, pp 192-3.

The men and women who make the best boon companions seem to have given up hope of doing something else. They have, perhaps, tried to be poets or painters; they have tried to be actors, scientists and musicians. But some defect of talent or opportunity has cut them off from their pet ambition and has left them with leisure to take an interest in the lives of others. Your ambitious man is selfish. No matter how secret his ambition may be, it makes him keep his thoughts at home. But the heartbroken people -- if I may use the word in a mild benevolent sense -- the people whose wills are subdued to fate, give us consideration, recognition and welcome.

Lectio Divina - Sixty-seven

2009-12-06T12:04:00.000-05:00

Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. New York: Image, 1968, pp. 156-7

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness . . . My happiness could have taken form in the words: “Thank God, thank God that I am like other men, that I am only a man among others.”

Lectio Divina - Sixty-six

2009-11-28T17:43:00.000-05:00

Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment. Novato, CA: New World Library, 1999, pp126-7.

When listening to another person, don’t just listen with your mind, listen with your whole body. Feel the energy field of your inner body as you listen. That takes attention away from thinking and creates a still space that enables you to truly listen without the mind interfering. You are giving the other person space -- space to be. It is the most precious gift you can give. Most people don’t know how to listen because the major part of their attention is taken up by thinking. They pay more attention to that than to what the other person is saying, and none at all to what really matters: the Being of the other person underneath the words and the mind.

Lectio Divina - Sixty-five

2009-11-22T12:07:00.000-05:00

From The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks. New York: HarperCollins, 1995, p. 260.

Which is worth more, a crowd of thousands,

or your own genuine solitude?

Freedom, or power over an entire nation?

A little while alone in your room

will prove more valuable than anything else

that could ever be given you.

From Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert, (New York: New Directions, 1960) p. 30.

A certain brother went to Abbot Moses in Scete and asked him for a good word. And the elder said to him: Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.

Lectio Divina - Sixty-four

2009-11-15T09:47:00.000-05:00

Meister Eckhart, quoted in Ann Belford Ulanov. The Unshuttered Heart: Opening Aliveness/Deadness in the Self. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007 p. 107

The more deeply we are our true selves, the less self is in us.

Lectio Divina - Sixty-three

2009-11-08T10:02:00.000-05:00

John Henry Newman, quoted in Christian Teachings on the Practice of Prayer From the Early Church to the Present, ed. Lorraine Kisly. Boston: New Seeds, 2006, p.130.

Thus self-knowledge is at the root of all real religious knowledge; and it is in vain -- worse than vain -- it is a deceit and a mischief, to think to understand the Christian doctrines as a matter of course, merely by being taught by books, or by attending sermons, or by any outward means, however excellent, taken by themselves. For it is in proportion as we search our hearts and understand our own nature, that we understand what is meant by an Infinite Governor and Judge; in proportion as we comprehend the nature of disobedience and our actual sinfulness, that we feel what is the blessing of the removal of sin, redemption, pardon, sanctification, which otherwise are mere words. God speaks to us primarily in our hearts. Self-knowledge is the key to the precepts and doctrines of Scripture. The very utmost any outward notices of religion can do, is to startle us and make us turn inward and search our hearts; and then, when we have experienced what it is to read ourselves, we shall profit by the doctrines of the Church and the Bible.

Lectio Divina - Sixty-two

2009-11-01T07:23:00.002-05:00

The Book of Common Prayer. New York: Seabury Press, 1979, p. 355.

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Lectio Divina - Sixty-one

2009-10-18T09:41:00.000-04:00

Ann & Barry Ulanov. Primary Speech: A Psychology of Prayer. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982. p.92.

Intercessory prayer pulls us into the tow of God’s connectedness to everything. We are pulled into a current that shows us nothing is separated from anything else, no one from everyone else. We are in an ocean that flows under everything and through everyone. Not only do we discover the hungry parts of ourselves that we need to feed when we pray for the hungry persons of the world, but we discover the neglected parts of the world through praying for the neglected parts of ourselves. When we deal with the hating parts of ourselves, we see with sudden clarity how much hate exists in the people around us. When we pray for the suffering parts of ourselves, we are increasingly wounded by the suffering of those around us.

Lectio Divina - Sixty

2009-10-11T09:54:00.001-04:00

The New Zealand Prayer Book (San Francisco: HarperSan Francisco, 1989), 184.

Lord,

it is night.

The night is for stillness.

Let us be in the presence of God.

It is night after a long day.

What has been done has been done

what has not been done has not been done;

let it be.

The night is dark.

Let our fears of the darkness of the world and of our own lives

rest in you.

The night is quiet.

Let the quietness of your peace enfold us.

all dear to us,

and all who have no peace.

The night heralds the dawn.

Let us look expectantly to a new day,

new joys,

new possibilities.

In your name we pray.

Amen.

Lectio Divina - Fifty-nine

2009-10-03T18:48:00.000-04:00

George A. Maloney, quoted in Christian Teachings on the Practice of Prayer From the Early Church to the Present, ed. Lorraine Kisly. Boston: New Seeds, 2006, p.136.

For a person who has begun the inner journey into the heart, true prayer should no longer be a thing to do, an activity before God. It should become more and more a state of standing before God’s loving presence, totally emptied of self, total gift to God. In complete nudity of spirit, in complete formlessness, without words, but with the “passionless passion” of the total true self, we grow daily in oneness with the triune God . . . Prayer of the heart becomes the unremitting consciousness of God’s abiding presence deep within us. It brings about the state of restfulness, tranquility, the quelling of all inordinate movements and desires, passions and thoughts within us.

Lectio Divina - Fifty-eight

2009-09-26T15:00:00.001-04:00

Thomas Keating. Open Mind, Open Heart. Continuum: New York, 1986.

Contemplative prayer is the world in which God can do anything. To move into that realm is the greatest adventure. It is to be open to the Infinite and hence to infinite possibilities. Our private, self-made worlds come to an end; a new world appears within and around us and the impossible becomes an everyday experience.

Lectio Divina - Fifty-seven

2009-09-20T09:48:00.000-04:00

Chogyam Trungpa, Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior. Boston: Shambhala, 1984, p. 20.

When you awaken your heart in this way, you find, to your surprise, that your heart is empty. You find that you are looking into outer space. What are you, who are you, where is your heart? If you really look, you won’t find anything tangible and solid. Of course, you might find something very solid if you have a grudge against someone or you have fallen possessively in love. But that is not awakened heart. If you search for awakened heart, if you put your hand through your rib cage and feel for it, there is nothing there except for tenderness. You feel sore and soft, and if you open your eyes to the rest of the world, you feel tremendous sadness. This kind of sadness doesn’t come from being mistreated. You don’t feel sad because someone has insulted you or because you feel impoverished. Rather, this experience of sadness is unconditioned. It occurs because your heart is completely exposed. There is no skin or tissue covering it; it is pure raw meat. Even if a tiny mosquito lands on it, you feel so touched. Your experience is raw and tender and so personal.

The genuine heart of sadness comes from feeling that your nonexistent heart is full. You would like to spill your heart’s blood, give your heart to others. For the warrior, this experience of sad and tender heart is what gives birth to fearlessness. Conventionally, being fearless means that you are not afraid or that, if someone hits you, you will hit him back. However, we are not talking about that street-fighter level of fearlessness. Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw and beautiful heart. You are willing to open up, without resistance or shyness, and face the world. You are willing to share your heart with others.

Lectio Divina - Fifty-six

2009-09-13T09:26:00.002-04:00

Thomas Merton, A Thomas Merton Reader. New York: Doubleday, 1974, p.240.

I know that many people are, or call themselves, “atheists” simply because they are repelled and offended by statements about God made in imaginary and metaphorical terms which they are not able to interpret and comprehend. They refuse these concepts of God, not because they despise God, but perhaps because they demand a notion of Him more perfect than they generally find: and because ordinary, figurative concepts of God could not satisfy them, they turn away and think that there are no other: or worse still, they refuse to listen to philosophy, on the ground that it is nothing but a web of meaningless words spun together for the justification of the same old hopeless falsehoods.

Lectio Divina - Fifty-five

2009-09-06T09:17:00.000-04:00

René Daumel, quoted in Parabola, Volume 34, No. 3, Fall 2009, p. 56.

Another way of putting it would be (without knowing Chinese) to propose this new translation of the first line of the Tao Te Ching: “A way that is entirely laid out, no, it is not the way.” I told you that I have encountered in my life a true teaching. One of the signs of its truth, for me, is that it never proposes an entirely prescribed path. No, at every step the entire dilemma is revisited. For me, nothing is resolved once and for all. And what I have always loved in you is your refusal of a prearranged path, and that’s important to me because alone one can’t sustain such a position. We must be a number of people to help each other, to awaken each other.

Lectio Divina - Fifty-four

2009-08-30T09:40:00.003-04:00

Chung Hyun Kyung in “Come, Holy Spirit - Renew the Whole Creation”, in Signs of the Spirit: Official Report of the Seventh Assembly, Michael Kinnamon, ed. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1991, pp. 42-3.

Then what should we do when the spirit calls us? The first thing we should do is repent. While I was preparing for this reflection in Korea, I had a chance to spend some time with Christian grassroots women activists in Korea. I asked them if there was anything they wanted me to say to the Christians from around the world gathered in Canberra with the theme “Come, Holy Spirit - Renew the Whole Creation.” They told me: “Tell them they don’t have to spend too much energy to call the Spirit because the Spirit is already here with us. Don’t bother calling her all the time. She is busy working hard with us. The only problem is we do not have eyes to see and ears to hear the Spirit, as we are occupied with our greed. So tell them repent!” So sisters and brothers, I give you a “not-so-pleasant” greeting from my sisters, “Repent!” . . . Indeed repentance is the first step in any truthful prayer. Genuine repentance, metanoia, also means a radical change of direction in our individual and communal life. In order to feel the Holy Spirit, we have to turn ourselves to the direction of the wind of life, the direction the Holy Spirit blows.

Lectio Divina - Fifty-three

2009-08-21T16:37:00.003-04:00

Psalm 150:6

Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!

Lectio Divina - Fifty-two

2009-08-16T08:55:00.000-04:00

Mohandas Gandhi, quoted in Diana Eck, Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Benares. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993, p. 219.

I hold that it is the duty of every cultured man or woman to read sympathetically the scriptures of the world. If we are to respect others' religions as we would have them respect our own, a friendly study of the world's religions is a sacred duty.

Lectio Divina - Fifty-one

2009-08-09T11:57:00.002-04:00

Frank Ostaseski, Founder & Director Metta Institute, Five Precepts

The Fifth Precept: Cultivate Don’t-Know Mind
This describes a mind that’s open and receptive. A mind that’s not limited by agendas, roles and expectations. The great Zen teacher Suzuki Roshi, was fond of saying, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”

From this vantage point we realize that “not knowing is most intimate.” Understanding this we stay very close to the experience allowing the situation itself to inform our actions. We listen carefully to our own inner voice, sensing our urges, trusting our intuition. We learn to look with fresh eyes.

Lectio Divina - Fifty

2009-08-02T09:32:00.000-04:00

Frank Ostaseski, Founder & Director Metta Institute, Five Precepts

The Fourth Precept: Find a Place of Rest in the Middle of Things

We often think of rest as something that will come when everything else is complete, like when we go on a holiday or when our work is done. We imagine that we can only find rest by changing the conditions of our life. But it is possible to discover rest right in the middle of chaos. It is experienced when we bring our full attention, without distraction, to this moment, to this activity. This place of rest is always available. We need only turn toward it. It’s an aspect of us that’s never sick, is not born, and does not die.

Lectio Divina - Forty-Nine

2009-07-26T11:15:00.001-04:00

Frank Ostaseski, Founder & Director Metta Institute, Five Precepts

The Third Precept: Don’t Wait

Patience is different than waiting. When we wait, we are full of expectations. When we’re waiting, we miss what this moment has to offer. Worrying or strategizing about what the future holds for us, we miss the opportunities that are right in front of us. Waiting for the moment of death, we miss so many moments of living. Don’t wait. If there’s someone you love, tell him or her that you love them. Allow the precarious nature of this life to show you what’s most important, then enter fully.

Lectio Divina - Forty-Eight

2009-07-19T11:43:00.001-04:00

Frank Ostaseski, Founder & Director Metta Institute, Five Precepts

The Second Precept: Bring Your Whole Self to the Experience

In the process of healing others and ourselves we open to both our joy and fear. In the service of this healing we draw on our strength and helplessness, our wounds and passion to discover a meeting place with the other. Professional warmth doesn’t heal. It is not our expertise but the exploration of our own suffering that enables us to be of real assistance. That’s what allows us to touch another human being’s pain with compassion instead of with fear and pity. We have to invite it all in. We can’t travel with others in territory that we haven’t explored ourselves. It is the exploration of our own inner life that enables us to form an empathetic bridge to the other person.

Frank Ostaseski is a Zen chaplain who has developed five precepts as companions on the journey of accompanying the dying. The precepts are also deeply meaningful in other aspects of life.

Lectio Divina - Forty-Seven

2009-07-12T07:54:00.001-04:00

Frank Ostaseski, Founder & Director Metta Institute, Five Precepts

The First Precept: Welcome Everything. Push Away Nothing

In welcoming everything, we don’t have to like what’s arising. It’s actually not our job to approve or disapprove. It’s our task to trust, to listen, and to pay careful attention to the changing experience. At the deepest level, we are being asked to cultivate a kind of fearless receptivity.

This is a journey of continuous discovery in which we will always be entering new territory. We have no idea how it will turn out, and it takes courage and flexibility. We find a balance. The journey is a mystery we need to live into, opening, risking, and forgiving constantly.

Lectio Divina - Forty-Six

2009-07-05T11:43:00.001-04:00

Luke 10:38-42, NRSV translation

Lectio Divina - Forty-Five

2009-06-29T07:00:00.001-04:00

Augustine, Confessions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991, p.73

You alone are always present even to those who have taken themselves far from you. . . Let them turn, and at once you are there in their heart - in the heart of those who make confession to you and throw themselves upon you and weep on your breast after traveling many rough paths. Where was I when I was seeking for you? You were there before me, but I had departed from myself. I could not even find myself, much less you.

Lectio Divina - Forty-Four

2009-06-21T09:37:00.002-04:00

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet. New York: Vintage, 1986, p.88.

This is in the end the only kind of courage that is required of us: the courage to face the strangest, most unusual, most inexplicable experiences that can meet us. The fact that people have in this sense been cowardly has done infinite harm to life; the experiences that are called “apparitions,” the whole so-called “spirit world,” death, all these Things that are so closely related to us, have through our daily defensiveness been so entirely pushed out of life that the senses with which we might have been able to grasp them have atrophied. To say nothing of God. But the fear of the inexplicable has not only impoverished the reality of the individual; it has also narrowed the relationship between one human being and another, which has as it were been lifted out of the riverbed of infinite possibilities and set down in a fallow place on the bank, where nothing happens.

Lectio Divina - Forty-Three

2009-06-14T10:21:00.001-04:00

Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic,” in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1984, 57-8.

We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings. . . The fear of our desires keeps them suspect and indiscriminately powerful, for to suppress any truth is to give it strength beyond endurance. The fear that we cannot grow beyond whatever distortions we may find within ourselves keeps us docile and loyal and obedient, externally defined, and leads us to accept many facets of our oppression as women.

When we live outside ourselves, and by that I mean on external directives only rather than from our internal knowledge and needs, when we live away from those erotic guides from within ourselves, then our lives are limited by external and alien forms, and we conform to the needs of a structure that is not based on human need, let alone an individual’s. But when we begin to live from within outward, in touch with the power of the erotic within ourselves, and allowing that power to inform and illuminate our actions upon the world around us, then we begin to be responsible to ourselves in the deepest sense.

Lectio Divina - Forty-two

2009-06-04T14:11:00.001-04:00

Henri Nouwen, With Open Hands. Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1972, p.14.

The man invited to pray is asked to open his tightly clenched fists and to give up his last coin. But who wants to do that? A first prayer, therefore is often a painful prayer, because you discover you don’t want to let go. You hold fast to what is familiar, even if you aren’t proud of it.

Lectio Divina - Forty-one

2009-05-31T12:15:00.002-04:00

Teilhard de Chardin, quoted in The Oxford Book of Prayer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989, p.7.

Blessed be you, harsh matter, barren soil, stubborn rock: you who yield only to violence, you who force us to work if we would eat. Blessed be you, perilous matter, violent sea, untameable passion: you who unless we fetter you will devour us. Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever new-born; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth. Blessed be you, universal matter, unmeasurable time, boundless ether, triple abyss of stars and atoms and generations: you who by overflowing and dissolving our narrow standards of measurement reveal to us the dimensions of God . . .

Lectio Divina - Forty

2009-05-23T19:37:00.000-04:00

Andre Louf, in Christian Teachings on the Practice of Prayer From the Early Church to the Present, ed. Lorraine Kisly. Boston: New Seeds, 2006, p.2.

Each and every method of prayer has but one objective: to find the heart and alert it. It must be a form of interior alertness, watchfulness. Jesus himself set “being awake” and “praying” side by side. The phrase “be awake and pray” certainly comes from Jesus in person (Matt 26:41; Mark 13:33). Only profound and quiet concentration can put us on the track of our heart and of the prayer within it.

Lectio Divina - Thirty-nine

2009-05-17T11:46:00.000-04:00

Eugene H. Peterson, Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1989, p.98.

Our hate needs to be prayed, not suppressed. Hate is our emotional link with the spirituality of evil. It is the volcanic eruption of outrage when the holiness of being, ours or another’s, has been violated. It is also the ugliest and most dangerous of our emotions, the hair trigger on a loaded gun. Embarrassed by the ugliness and fearful of the murderous, we commonly neither admit or pray our hate; we deny it and suppress it. But if it is not admitted it can quickly and easily metamorphose into the evil that provokes it; and if it is not prayed we have lost an essential insight and energy in doing battle with evil.

Lectio Divina - Thirty-eight

2009-05-10T11:30:00.001-04:00

A Pygmy prayer, from Desmond Tutu, An African Prayer Book. New York: Doubleday, 1995, p.8.

In the beginning was God,
Today is God,
Tomorrow will be God.
Who can make an image of God?
He has no body.
He is the word which comes out of your mouth.
That word! It is no more,
It is past, and still it lives!
So is God.

Lectio Divina - Thirty-seven

2009-05-03T12:25:00.000-04:00

Anthony Bloom. Beginning to Pray. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1970, p.15.

To meet God means to enter into the “cave of a tiger” - it is not a pussy cat you meet - it’s a tiger. The realm of God is dangerous. You must enter into it and not just seek information about it.

Lectio Divina - Thirty-six

2009-04-26T15:37:00.001-04:00

Henri Nouwen. The Only Necessary Thing: Living a Prayerful Life. New York: Crossroad, 1999, p. 30.

It is God’s passionate pursuit of us that calls us to prayer. Prayer comes from God’s initiative, not ours. It might sound shocking, but it is biblical to say: God wants us more than we want God!

So who is more in need of our prayers: we or God? God is. Who wants to be heard most: we or God? God does. And who “suffers” more from our lack of prayer: we or God? I say it in awe but without fear: God does.

Lectio Divina - Thirty-five

2009-04-19T13:14:00.001-04:00

From The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks. New York: HarperCollins, 1995, p. 13.

Lo, I am with you always means when you look for God,

God is in the look of your eyes,

in the thought of looking, nearer to you than your self,

or things that have happened to you.

There’s no need to go outside.

Be melting snow.

Wash yourself of yourself.

A white flower grows in the quietness.

Let your tongue become that flower.

Lectio Divina - Thirty-four

2009-04-12T14:34:00.000-04:00

Seyyed Hossein Nasr. “The Wisdom of the Body” in Religion and the Order of Nature, Oxford University Press: New York, 1996.

As long as we consider the body as a mere machine, it is not possible to take seriously the religious understanding of the order of nature nor to live in harmony with it. To rediscover the body as the theater of Divine Presence and manifestation of Divine Wisdom as well as an aspect of reality that is at once an intimate part of our being and a part of the natural order is to reestablish a bridge between ourselves and the world of nature beyond the merely physical and utilitarian. To rediscover the body as the abode of the Spirit, worthy of Resurrection before the Lord, and intimate companion in the soul’s journey in this world, sacred in itself and in the life which permeates it, is to rediscover at the same time the sacredness of nature.

Lectio Divina - Thirty-three

2009-04-05T09:25:00.001-04:00

Max Picard. The World of Silence. Wichita, Kansas: Eighth Day Press, 2002, p.110.

Animals are creatures that lead silence through the world of man and language and are always putting silence down in front of man. Many things that human words have upset are set at rest again by the silence of animals. Animals move through the world of words like a caravan of silence . . . A whole world, that of nature and that of animals, is filled with silence. Nature and animals seem like protuberances of silence. The silence of animals and the silence of nature would not be so great and noble if it were merely a failure of language to materialize. Silence has been entrusted to the animals and to nature as something created for its own sake.

Lectio Divina - Thirty-two

2009-03-30T07:46:00.001-04:00

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.

Lectio Divina - Thirty-one

2009-03-20T07:54:00.001-04:00

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.

Lectio Divina - Thirty

2009-03-15T11:19:00.002-04:00

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?

Lectio Divina - Twenty-nine

2009-03-08T11:42:00.002-04:00

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.