To prime yourselves for Sunday’s exercise on Lectio Divina, I sent through the first reading on Thursday evening from Sacred Rhythms-arranging our lives for spiritual formation by Ruth Hayley Barton. This is the second part, sections called Moving from Head to Heart and Encountering God in Scripture, slightly summarised. The last section of this chapter deals with the actual exercise which we will do on Sunday when we get together.
Moving from Head to Heart
Allowing ourselves to pay attention at this level may feel a bit threatening at first, depending on how suspicious or out of touch we are with our feelings and other internal dynamics. Robert Mulholland points out that in our culture there is generally little danger of neglecting the cognitive, rational, analytical dynamics of our being, for these
Are so hyper-developed in our culture and in our normal modes of learning that we are not going to have to worry about getting them out of balance . . . Yes, we must love God with all our mind . . . however, we must remember that the injunction to love God with all our mind comes a little further down the road in Jesus’ list; loving God with all our heart and all our soul precedes loving God with all of our mind.
Something powerfully different happens when we are willing to pay attention to our internal dynamics rather than just reading for information or reading to complete the assigned reading for the day. Say I have chosen a reading program that requires me to read three to five chapters in order to read through the Bible in a year. As I follow the program, I come across the passage in Luke 6 where Jesus talks about loving our enemies as a mark of true Christianity. This is a pretty basic concept that most of us learned in our earliest days in Sunday school, and so it feels fairly routine. If I am trying to get through the allotted number of chapters for the day, chances are that I will keep charging through the passage so I can check it off the list.
If, on the other hand, I am seeking to engage the Scriptures for spiritual transformation, I may also set aside some time to read a shorter passage (six to eight verses perhaps) that I feel drawn to. I savor the words and wonder what is on God’s heart for me today. I have no other agenda except listening and deepening my intimacy with God, so I can take time to notice that when I read Luke 6:27 and the following verses I feel a bit resistant. It’s pretty subtle at first, but I stop and give myself a little space to notice the feeling and wonder about it. Lo and behold, it proves to be more than a vague feeling of discomfort. There is a fist rising up from my gut that says, I don’t think so! And I am completely off guard, because I had been feeling pretty spiritual when I began my Bible reading for the day.
But rather than judging myself (which I am prone to do), I wonder what aspect of myself or my life is being touched by this verse. As I sit with my resistance, I realize that underneath all my piety, there is a part of me that is not feeling very loving at all today. In fact, I am harboring real anger toward someone who has hurt me. I thought I had put it to rest, but on this day, in response to this verse, I realize that the anger is still alive and well. I can see the perpetrator in my mind’s eye, the details are crystal clear along with the injustice of it all, and I feel the anger all over again. No wonder there is something in me that rises up and fights.
Now if I choose to, I can reflect more deeply on what my reactions tell me about myself. How am I doing with the issue of love in my life‒really? What does this particular awareness on this day tell me about where I am not like Christ? Am I being transformed into a more loving person‒even in the most challenging situations‒or am I harboring places of bitterness where my spirit is closed? What does this tell me about my spiritual condition? Am I wiling to look at that in God’s presence?
It reminds me of how the desert fathers read Scriptures. For them, contact with Scripture was “contact with fire that burns, disturbs, calls violently to conversion.” The story is told of someone coming to Abba Pambo, asking him to teach him a psalm. Pambo begins to teach him Psalm 38, but hardly has pronounced the first verse, “I will be watchful of my ways, for I fear I should sin with my tongue,” when the brother said he does not wish to hear anymore. He tells Pambo, “This verse is enough for me; please God may I have the strength to learn it and put it into practice.” Nineteen years later he was still trying.
Encountering God in Scripture
Can we know such a way for ourselves? “We need a way of approaching Scripture that will move us very concretely from an over-reliance on information gathering to an experience of Scripture as a place of intimate encounter . . . a way of being with Scripture that allows God to initiate with us (beyond all the ways that we seek to control such things) and also creates space for us to respond fully (beyond all the ways we hold ourselves so tight). Lectio Divina provides us with just such a way.
Lectio Divina (translated “divine [or sacred] reading”) is an approach to the Scriptures that sets up to listen to the word of God spoken to us in the present moment . . . it dates back to the early mothers and fathers of the Christian faith . . . it is rooted in the belief that through the presence of the Holy Spirit, the Scriptures are indeed alive and active as we engage them for spiritual transformation (Hebrews 4:12).
As we make ourselves open and available to God through this practice, the Scriptures will penetrate to our very depths, showing us those things about ourselves that we are incapable of knowing on our own due to our well-developed defense structures. In the context of such radical self-knowledge, God will invite us into our next steps with him or touch us with his healing grace. Invariably he communicates his love for us in ways that we can hear and experience beyond cognitive knowledge.
One of the reasons this approach is so powerful is that lectio divina involves a delicate balance of silence and word. It is a very concrete way of entering the rhythm of speaking and listening involved in intimate communication. It incorporates several spiritual practices that support and catalyze a life-transforming relationship with God. A period of silence before the reading of Scripture helps us to quiet our inner chaos so that we are prepared to listen. After we read Scripture, silence helps us to be attentive to God when he does speak and creates spaces for noticing our inner dynamics and exploring them in God’s presence.
Lectio involves a slower, more reflective reading of Scripture that helps us to be open to God’s initiative rather than being subject to human agendas‒our own or someone else’s. It also allows for at least two different kinds of prayer that are not heavy-laden with human effort. One is a prayer of response. This is prayer that most naturally flows out of what we’ve heard or sensed in God’s invitation to us. Lectio offers the space for this kind of response to flow, which is a very intimate thing. It also incorporates the prayer of rest‒prayer beyond words in which we rest in God’s love and sovereignty in our life. This is a great way to conclude my experience with Scripture, and again, it is built right into the process.
Although Bible study is not a part of the lectio process itself, Bible study is an essential supplement to it. Lectio can actually be used as a powerful follow-up to more traditional Bible study methods, moving people very naturally into the process of application.”