Lectio Divina One Hundred and Forty-Six

Martin Luther King, Jr., “Playboy Interview,” in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. James M. Washington.  San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1991, p. 356.

It disturbed me when I first heard [myself described as an extremist.]  But when I began to consider the true meaning of the word, I decided that perhaps I would like to think of myself as an extremist – in the light of the spirit which made Jesus an extremist for love.  If it sounds as though I am comparing myself to the Savior, let me remind you that all who honor themselves with the claim of being “Christians” should compare themselves to Jesus.  Thus I consider myself an extremist for that brotherhood of man which Paul so nobly expressed: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”  Love is the only force on earth that can be dispensed or received in an extreme manner, without any qualifications, without any harm to the giver or receiver.

Lectio Divina One Hundred and Forty-Five

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet. Stephen Mitchell, trans. 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 One hundred and forty-four

Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), 110.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things. 

Lectio Divina One Hundred and Forty-Three

Richard Rohr, from A Teaching on Wondrous Encounters

The Bible is an invitation into the struggle itself—you are supposed to be bothered by some of the texts. Human beings come to consciousness by struggle, and most especially struggle with God and sacred texts. We largely remain unconscious if we avoid all conflicts, dilemmas, paradoxes, inconsistencies, or contradictions.  Some people reject religion altogether because they are so unable to come to terms with the Bible and the ideas of Christianity.  But we are supposed to be bothered by the Bible.  The life of faith is a struggle to reconcile ourselves with the paradoxes and problems we find there.  What do we find in ourselves that we know is deeply true that is in conflict with the Bible?  What does the Bible tell us that challenges us to go deeper into ourselves?  The truth is found neither by accepting all the religious ideas we are presented with nor by rejecting them.

Lectio Divina One Hundred and Forty-Two

David Frenette, The Path of Centering Prayer: Deepening Your Experience of God. Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2012, p. 153.

Acting in gentleness shifts you out of the struggle to find God. Gentleness is necessary for the deepening of centering prayer. Your actions become more and more subtle in centering prayer as contemplation awakens in you. Actually, the sense that you have to achieve something, find some deeper depth, or go somewhere to discover God, other than where you are now, is an illusion. Let contemplation come effortlessly to you, as a continual gift out of the gifting nature of God. Contemplation is effortless in the same way that the falling of snow is effortless. It is effortless in the same way a light breeze blowing on your neck is effortless. It is effortless in the same way that the petals of a flower open into the sunlight. In receptive effortlessness, there is nowhere to go, nothing to deepen, not even any need to be gentle. The depth of contemplation is just being, effortlessly, in God.

Lectio Divina - One Hundred and Forty-One

Thomas Merton, from A Silent Action: Engagements with Thomas Merton, by Rowan Williams.  Fons Vitae 2011.

I can no longer see the ultimate meaning of a man’s life in terms of either “being a poet” or “being contemplative” or even in a certain sense “being a saint,” (although that is the only thing to be).  It must be something much more immediate than that.  I – and every other person in the world– must say “I have my own special peculiar destiny which no one else has had or ever will have.  There exists for me a particular goal, a fulfillment which must be all my own – nobody else’s– and it does not really identify that destiny to put it under some category – “poet,” “monk,” “hermit.”  Because my own individual destiny is a meeting, an encounter with God that He has destined for me alone.  His glory in me will be to receive from me something which He can never receive from anyone else.

Lectio Divina - One hundred and Forty

Tao Te Ching, trans. Stephen Mitchell. New York: Harper Perennial, 1982, #80.

If a country is governed wisely,

its inhabitants will be content.

They enjoy the labor of their hands

and don’t waste time inventing

labor-saving machines.

Since they dearly love their homes,

they aren’t interested in travel.

There may be a few wagons and boats,

but these don’t go anywhere.

There may be an arsenal of weapons,

but nobody ever uses them.

People enjoy their food,

take pleasure in being with their families,

spend weekends working in their gardens,

delight in the doings of the neighborhood.

And even though the next country is so close

that people can hear its roosters crowing and its dogs barking,

they are content to die of old age

without ever having gone to see it.