Lectio Divina - Eighty-Seven

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.”