Lectio Divina - Ninety-six

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.