A PRIMER FOR LECTIO PRACTICE

A PRIMER FOR LECTIO PRACTICE

Pennington, it seems to me, has gotten a bit ahead of himself. As I remember our last session, the voices of perplexity and wonder return to me. So I want to take a minute and offer you an introductory guide to get you started with Lectio Divina.

First, let’s frankly admit that Pennington has blurred the lines of development in his fifth chapter. Much of what he was talking about there, I suspect, was the territory of practitioners who had put in a good 7 or 8,000 hours of practice. None of that getting rid of the false self has anything to do with those of us who are beginning our practice, and may never be our experience at all. That may come, if at all, much later in our practice. And when it comes we will be prepared for it, with our prayer community, our special prayer partner and our access to spiritual directors and counselors.

So let’s set as a goal for what we will call the first stage of Lectio practice: simply stated our goal at this stage is to bring the scriptures into our prayer life on a daily basis. Here are some ideas that may help you make a habit of lectio.

Commit to Thirty Days—A practice becomes a habit after three or four weeks. The first weeks will be an initial conditioning phase. If you can make it through this phase you stand a good chance of bringing Lectio into your life. Commit to a four week block of time. This is a manageable unit that will easily fit our calendar.

Daily Practice is Essential—Bringing scripture into your lives on a daily basis through lectio is a strong way of making it habitual.

Start Simply—Begin your practice gently. Sometimes can get over excited and try to do too much.
Remind Yourself—It is easy to forget your commitment so it is a good idea to place gentle reminders about your home or office. It is key that you make Lectio a regular event in your life, if you want to make it a nourishing practice.

Stay Consistent—Psychologists tell us that the more consistent our practice is the easier it will become habitual. Set up a little ritual and repeat it each time you begin lectio. This will help remind you of the practice you are bringing to prayer.

Get a Buddy—Find someone who you can talk to and who you can encourage at the same time they are encouraging you. They can keep you on the path even though you might feel discouraged.

Develop a Trigger—A trigger is something that will remind you to pray. When you find a word/phrase or sentence in the scripture that speaks to you, you might set yourself a pattern to trigger your return to that sacred word. So you might repeat the phrase each time you go through a door: It would be almost as if you were blessing the room before entering it each time. Perhaps you like the idea of the Ozark monks who placed the bible on their pillow when they get up of a morning so that when they go to bed it will be there waiting for them. And after reading of an evening they place it on their shoes so that when they get up in the morning they can begin the day with more reading.

Allow yourself to be Imperfect—There will be times when even your best efforts to bring the scriptures into your day will be difficult. Be forgiving to yourself. Nothing succeeds on the first try.

Establish Community—Luckily we have a community at St. Elizabeth’s where we have people who are starting this journey with us. As we meet each Sunday we can share our experiences and encourage each other in our practice this first month. Being around prayerful people regularly, helps us to become prayerful ourselves.

Consider This First Month to be an Experiment – Do not judge yourself until a month has passed. Think of this month as an experiment in prayer. Experiments really are not about failure, they are about results. Some experiments have different results from others. Let this month change your perspective on prayer.

Keep a Prayer Journal—There is something magical about writing down your experiences. Keeping track of your insights and your feelings is a good way to propel you into this prayer space. Writing makes our ideas more available and clear sometimes. Most importantly it focuses us on our habit of practice.

Now what to do?

EQUIPMENT NEEDED. Get a good bible. I am sure we all have one we trust and have used. Still, if you have been wanting an excuse to upgrade your biblical access this is the time to do it. I like the New Oxford Annotated Bible, [edited by Bruce M. Metzger and Roland E. Murphy. Oxford University Press, 1991] though I am very interested in the new sayings gospel, The Words of Jesus: A Gospel of the Sayings of Our Lord With Reflections by Phyllis Tickle [Jossey Bass, 2008].

Whatever text you choose, it should be a comfortable size so as not to place a physical burden on your hefting it about.

How to select what to read. Each of us has built our own landscape of reckoning points in scripture. You may have an easy time, therefore, of selecting the territory to travel as you reach into the text on a daily basis.

Some Suggestions: If you do not have such a familiarity here are some other ways in.

Choose a particular book you’d like to read. Many find the Gospel of John and the Psalms nourishing material for Lectio.

Open the Bible at random and let your finger find a passage. Some think this is like a kind of divine lottery allowing the Lord to pick the passage to speak to us for the day.

Discover the lists of daily readings available that are in sync with the Prayer Book and lectionary.

Access this site: The Divine Hours A complete guide to the ancient practice of fixed-hour prayer [http://www.explorefaith.org/prayer/fixed/]
Purchase these prayers in the four volume series by Phyllis Tickle. The relevant volume for this season is: The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime [Doubleday, 2002]

Remember: Lectio is not about interpretation or even a dutiful linearity. Finding troubling passages you have worried about before might not be the best way to begin. Don’t think you have to begin at the beginning of a book of the Bible. Jump into the middle.

The Task: Lectio is about reading until some word, some phrase or some sentence strikes you. It will be as if lightening as touched the text and for a brief moment the world of scripture is illuminated. Perhaps the hair will stand up on the back of your neck. Perhaps you will find chills running up and down your spine. Some word, phrase, sentence, verse will call to you. That is your task. Find that sacred word.

Having found your text, set it aside for a moment.

THE VOYAGE OUT~

First Step: Lection. Find a place you can be quite in. Turn off the cell phone. Close the door. If you want to limit your time, set an alarm, on your watch perhaps. Sometimes in Lectio time dilates and seems to go so slowly that we may need a cue to remind us we belong to the world also.

Compose yourself. Let yourself relax and go into that deep place where the center holds. Listen to your breath for a moment. Then open your eyes and read the chosen text slowly. Let each word resonate up out of your throat, cross your tongue and bounce gently across your teeth. Use your body as a sounding board, a vibrant instrument in which the breath takes sound and begins to caress the ears. Remember we are not here for interpretation or exegesis. We are not even here for explanation. We are here lingering in the breath with the sacred seed syllable sounds of scripture.

Second Step: Meditation. From the reading there will emerge a phrase or line that bears repeating.

Take this into yourself.

Repeat it until you have memorized it.

Allow it to percolate through the grounding of your life. Intuitively embrace the text.

Listen for what emerges.

Force nothing.

Allow the bubbles of thinking to float slowly to the surface, editing nothing, rejecting nothing, accepting it all.

There may be memories, images, bits of dialog, things you have heard. You may hear the voices of your loved ones. Let them come to you and go. Cling to nothing.

These are the initial gestures of conversation.


Third Step: Oratio/Prayer. Allow yourself to take a few breaths and return to that breathing in and breathing out.

In that silence, open up to God.

Speak with him as you would to your best friend who loves you deeply.

Let slide all those temptations to fall into the rhetoric of prayer that we are so familiar with. This is conversation, not petition: it is the give and take between the soul and its beloved.

Return to this special word or phrase. Experience it as invitation.

Pause to listen for God. Hear his voice bless you, and pour into you such peace and blessing as you may never have known.

Offer to God the love letters you have stored in your heart for so long.


Fourth Step: Contemplation. Return to your breathing.

Imagine with the intake of your breath you are taking in the divine fragrance itself, filling you with forgiveness and love.

Imagine the exhalation of your breath as a purgation, a letting go of guilt and suffering and sorrow.

Bask in the silence of his love and come to rest in the sacred presence.

THE VOYAGE BACK~

Now slowly begin to collect yourself, radiant in the joy of this experience.

Breathing in and breathing out, listen to the world around you.

Send out your senses and reconnect with the world once more. Consider what has happened.

Grasp how this will make your day different.

Consider how this holy word or phrase changed the way you will interact with the world.
There may be wonderful bursts of insight and understanding, renewing the text and making it resonate with your life.

You may want to take a moment and write these down. Sometimes as with dreams we think we will be able to remember these pearls, but later when we want them they are gone irretrievably. Just jot a few notes. Then later when you open your prayer journal to write these notes will bring the joy and insight back to you so you can record them for later consideration.

As you go through the day carry this word with you. As you pass through doors repeat it silently blessing the room you are entering and blessing the people you meet.

Listening and doing

Over the last six weeks we have been considering the ancient art of Lectio Divina mainly through an examination of Basil Pennington’s book. During this time, I have been hunting for a better book I might recommend and profit from. Well, Success! I have found such a book: Eugene H. Peterson’s EAT THIS BOOK: A CONVERSATION IN THE ART OF SPIRITUAL READING [William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 2006]. A Presbyterian Pastor, Peterson gives us a different view than most of the books I have looked at—all of which were written by Catholics in Monastic orders. He is also quite a scholar so there are many chapters that look more deeply into Biblical issues than Pennington’s or others I have read. I recommend especially his chapter on “God’s Secretaries” which examines the problem of translation and how it affects Lectio Divina. Peterson has recently translated the Bible into contemporary American English which has been received very well in the marketplace. This is now available on-line. Take a look at it: http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/Message-MSG-Bible/

What I find missing in Peterson as in Pennington and all the others I have read is any recognition or understanding or embrace of the Historical Critical tradition which has transformed the way we think about the text. The last 125 years have produced a geyser of ancient documents which teach us more about the first 300 years of Christian tradition than Christians have ever known before.

Indeed, we are today Post Modern Christians whether we wish to acknowledge it or not: Most authors on Lectio Divina opt to deny the importance of these discoveries and the transformative quality they have had on our appreciation and perception of Biblical texts. That this is so, is for me a disheartening and disturbing feature of contemporary Lectio Divina practice. It is almost as if to practice Lectio Divina we have to return to a more primitive understanding of the Bible and the Church itself.

In reference to one of the most influential groups of biblical scholars in the last twenty years, The Jesus Seminar, Pennington writes: “We hear of some rather ridiculous things today that go under the name of ‘biblical scholarship,’ like the so-called Jesus group that cast votes, in diversely colored beads, to determine which saying in the New Testament are authentically Words of the Lord. Such nonsense is enough to turn one away from modern rationalistic scriptural studies. A reason that is not informed by faith and aided by Holy Spirit can hardly hope to attain to any truly fruitful understanding of the Word” [102].

My guess is that Pennington never read any of the Jesus Seminar scholarly productions such as Crossan’s The Historical Jesus, a magisterial reconsideration of the historical contexts of the man Jesus and his time. Certainly, he never understood the process behind The Five Gospels, an edition of Mathew, Mark, Luke, John and Thomas, in which these scholars tried to determine which words were likely to be actually from Jesus and which were invented for one purpose or another. Such studies clearly question the authenticity of the text and the historical process by which we received it.

The problem then is knowing this scholarship, how can we return to Lectio Divina and accept the predispositions Pennington demands in his first chapter? Perhaps by extension we might use something of Coleridge’s “A willing Suspension of Disbelief” [well disbelief might be too harsh a word, but perhaps a willing suspension of skepticism would work.]

I find it interesting that in Chapter Seven Pennington quotes Paul’s letter to Timothy in which Paul says that “All scripture inspired by God is useful for teaching and refutation for correction and putting us in the way that is right with god for communication and communion.” The only problem with this is that Paul wrote this letter long before there was any other scripture not from his own hand. He could not have been referring to what we now call “The New Testament” as it did not yet exist. He was in all likelihood referring to Hebrew scripture, but suddenly the “All” is taken by Pennington and many others to mean The Bible as we now have it. This kind of retrojection is frequent in the books I have read on Lectio, and it comes from a willful disregard for Biblical scholarship. [Retrojection is the throwing backwards of a modern idea into earlier historical periods as if it actually came from that time. For example, the writers of the New Testament retrojected their experience back into the experience of Jesus and the crucifixion.

I like very much what Pennington has to say here about the nature of friendship. “Our friend is someone we can really count on. St. James tells us in his epistle that the reason our prayer is not heard is because we are like the waves of the sea: up and down, up and down. I believe, I don’t believe, I trust, I don’t trust” [76].

I think this is the modern reader’s predicament. We are skeptical, we are true believers. We are skeptical, we are true believers. We are skeptical, we are true believers. We oscillate between these two states until nothing at all happens.

In Chapter Eight Pennington continues this argument by saying: “If I am content to gather beautiful thoughts in a book and feel good about myself because I am so faithful to my Lectio, then maybe I had better get rid of my book, stop collecting thoughts, and let some of the Lord’s words sear my soul” [86].

Beautiful thoughts, brilliant analyses, can be a kind of idol that we use to substitute for the relationship we could have with God in Lectio.

It is like Franz Kafka once wrote: “Altogether, I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn't shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we'd be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, also write ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make use feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe” (From a letter to Oskar Pollak dated January 27, 1904).

Having said this I think it would be good to end this class with a shared Lectio. This is what Lectio was in the beginning, you will remember. It was read by those literate monks who had access to a Bible to their confreres often during meals. It is so different from the kind of readerly Lectio occasioned by the advent of print and the liberation of the Bible from centuries of being forbidden to laity. So I think it only fitting to remember what Lectio was and should be again among us as listening Christians.

Following Pennington’s suggestions at the end of Chapter 12, lets read the first chapter of James.

We will read it three times.

After the first reading each of us choose a word or phrase from the reading and quietly repeat it within ourselves. Then there will be a time of sharing

After the second reading the reader will ask you to consider: “what has the Lord said to me in this reading with regard to my life today?” Then there will be a time of sharing: I hear the Lord saying to me . . . .

After the third reading each of us will reflect on what the Lord wants us to do today/this week.
Then there will be a time of sharing what has come forth.

Then we will rise and all say together the Lords prayer.


Let us call upon the Holy Spirit to be with us in this place and open our ears that we may hear the divine word and be renewed.
James 1
1James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,
To the twelve tribes scattered among the nations:
Greetings.
Trials and Temptations
2Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. 6But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; 8he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.
9The brother in humble circumstances ought to take pride in his high position. 10But the one who is rich should take pride in his low position, because he will pass away like a wild flower. 11For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich man will fade away even while he goes about his business.
12Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.
13When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; 14but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. 15Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.
16Don't be deceived, my dear brothers. 17Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. 18He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.
Listening and Doing
19My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, 20for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. 21Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.
22Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.23Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror 24and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.
26If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. 27Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Father/Mother, Give Me a Word of Life

Chapter 5
Father/Mother, Give Me a Word of Life

You will remember that we have been watching for the instructions for Lectio across these chapters. We found three separate sets of instructions for Lectio in the solitude of print in the last chapter. In Chapter 6 we find yet more instructions. In Chapter 5, however, we have a very peculiar discussion of the history of the Desert Fathers and the altered states of consciousness the meditative tradition they gave us is designed to stimulate. Let us not be coy here. Lectio Divina, indeed meditation in general, is not merely a life affirming exercise that is good for you. It is nothing less than a handbook about how to “separate ourselves from enslavement to this world’s values” [50].

This is not just another call to asceticism, plain living or even righteousness—whatever that may mean. It is a call to turn away from the “TV enthroned in our homes.” Pennington is very clear about his goals here: “It is only by the powerful grace of the Spirit that the Word of God, a double-edged sword, can pierce through and separate our spirit from the clutches of the worldly spirit. And that Holy Spirit will operate with as a liberating force only if we seek and welcome her.”

Well then we may ask, how do we do this? Pennington says “We need to carve out some time apart for ourselves to escape form the bombardment of the world and to come to our true self. Our place apart can be a corner of our room where the Bible proclaims a Presence” [51]. He says it may be as minor a gesture as “turning our chair away from our desk with all its affairs, leaving the world behind for a few minutes while we rest in the Presence and know ourselves to be held in a great and tender love.”

He names the essential quality of this gesture “Quies” quiet. “That wonderful freedom to be able to rest quietly in the Lord, knowing that in him we have all.” We might even find a private special place where we can go to find this quiet, a church, a library, a park.

But quiet is not an easy state to achieve. Most of us cannot just go sit and turn off the jabbering monkey mind that howls away inside our skulls, not without a lot of meditative practice and disciplined coached work. But it is exactly this state of internal quiet that the desert fathers worked so hard to achieve. They worked to “No longer [be] tugged this way and that by our passions, emotions, uncontrolled desires.” Pennington continues this instruction: The desert fathers “longed for the freedom to do what they really wanted to do, be who they wanted to be, without having to struggle constantly against thoughts . . . that sought to master them and rule them.” Then he tells us that it is exactly this hard fought for interior silence that is essential, “if we are going to be able to hear the Lord in Lectio.”

This is a kind of Catch 22. Of course, we can’t do this without years of practice meditating. But we have to is we are going to be able to practice Lectio properly. Pennington is, it seems to me, being a bit disingenuous here. He knows very well just how hard turning off this raging interior torrent of jabber is. He acts as if it were easy to do this, as if it is just a matter of finding a quiet place. Would that it were that easy. Yet it is what must be done if we are to be able to hear the Lord in Lectio, says Pennington.

Here, finally, Pennington states the goal of Lectio Divina, and for that matter most of the great monastic treasures. “We [must] free ourselves from the false self that the values of the world encourages us to create.”

So. Pennington asserts, there is a false self. And it is this false self that must be shed if we are to enter into the Presence of God to listen.

Here is the white water I was warning you about. This is the spiritual crisis teachers of Lectio or Centering Prayer never talk much about. It is no small thing either, this shedding of the False self because this so called “false self” is the self we have come to love and know and respect having lived with it all these years.

Yet at the same time Pennington is not very concerned that the reader of his book will take this admonition seriously because he says “We cannot hope . . . to escape the self-alienation that marks our lives from the womb and is constantly fostered by a worldly society, if we do not at times and even regularly seek periods of quietness” [51-2]. Shedding a false self is not an avocation. It is not something that can be done by seeking quietness “at times or even regularly.” The Zen men know something of this shedding and are quick to say that we should not seek this unless we seek it with the same fervor as a man whose hair is on fire seeks water. It is not a sometimes affair or even a mere regularity that is required. It is a determined dedicated and coached practice that is required. I doubt it is even something most of us can undertake on our own in isolation with our printed texts.

I would think Pennington knows this full well, but as he is writing to laity who are not in the habit of taking their spiritual life as seriously as the man whose hair is on fire seeks water, he offers this advice half heartedly—or so it seems to this reader.

Then comes this instruction: “This is the goal of all authentic meditation practices and especially of that centering prayer that comes to us from the desert tradition—the quietness that enables us to be Christ to the Father in the Holy Spirit” [52]. What an odd thing to say. “The goal is to “be Christ to the Father in the Holy Spirit.”

We seem to be in the presence of a considerable mystery here, or at least some tradition not well translated from the original languages and experiences of the desert fathers.

Pennington continues giving instruction: “But anyone who has practiced meditation knows that the asceticism of the practice lies not only in giving time to meditation, but in managing during the actual time of meditation to be faithful in the setting aside thoughts, feelings, emotions, desires, all the expressions of the self.” He says this as if setting these things aside is only a function of being faithful. He takes this too casually, I think. Setting aside these thoughts, feelings, emotions and desires—all the expressions of the self—requires nothing less than a kind of spiritual crisis, what some might call in other places a break down. Yet none of the apparatus which would allow us to engage the kind of meditative practice that would precipitate a spiritual crisis, find assistance, wise counsel and support during the crisis itself is offered or indeed suggested.

Here is where I find our good Catholic monastics far too glib as they offer us training in the monastic spiritual treasures set loose among the laity after Vatican Two. It is almost as if they trust that none of us are really going to take the meditative practice seriously—since we are mere laity—so they really don’t have to worry that they have set the cat among the pigeons—as the saying goes.

Pennington goes on to say: “Herein is the true purpose of ascetic practice: to free ourselves from the imperious domination of our own thoughts, passions, and desires, to free the spirit for things of the Spirit.” As he continues his discussion he describes the monastic men and women of the desert as folk who “all but died to life in this world.” I do not think he means here that they merely cut themselves off from the social whirl of the material world, but in fact they shed the false self and in so doing experienced a kind of death to the old self and a resurrection to the new spiritual self. This is not an easy experience, and none of our protestant institutions are ready and able to sustain such a process of death and renewal. How many pastors/priests are trained in such spiritual directorship? How many are trained in the counseling of the fragmented self? How many have the kind of team put together where they can call upon licensed psychologists/psychiatrists who might be able to deal with such a spiritual crisis and understand it as a spiritual not a medical crisis? Few, I’d wager.

When, at last Pennington writes: “A daily meeting with the Lord in the Gospels, as a true disciple seeking a word of life from the Master, is the surest way for each one of us to grow into the mind of Christ.” Again we meet the mystery. Is this a particularly intense altered state of consciousness he is offering us? I suspect it is an exalted mystical state that few if any embrace outside the nurturing and sustaining embrace of the monastic community with all its years of community experience of such disciplines and spiritual states.


Chapter 6
Lectio in Context

In this chapter Pennington continues with his instruction pointing the way to the spiritual turbulence Lectio is designed to produced in the lives of disciplined determined and coached practioners. “Whenever we say the word ‘lectio,’ we actually imply a whole process or way of spirituality—a process into God, deep into the inner life of the trinity” [57]. A greater warning could hardly be sounded, but he tosses it off right before a Latin lesson, as if it were of no particular importance.

He offers us a spiritual four-fold process composed of lectio—meditatio—oratio—contemplatio. By which he means Lection, medition, oration and contemplation.

Holy Leisure
What we laity do not have is “holy leisure” [58]. Yet it is what sets aside monastic practice of Lectio from the practice of the laity. This recognition percolates under this text in often annoying ways, in my opinion.

The Fourfold process of Lectio:

I am always interested in process as it gives us a basis for practice.

Step One: Lectio, gathering the sacred text “plucking of the word that we will use al day to remember God’s message to us” [59].

Step Two: Meditatio
Meditatio meant in the first 1000 years of Christian practice that having “received a word of life from one’s spiritual father or mother, we carried that word with us, repeating it, perhaps even on the lips but certainly in the mind, until it formed the heart and called for the response of prayer” [61]. Pennington is at some pains to distinguish between modern ideas of meditation and that meditation practice of the early Christians. “Meditation was not so much an active process whereby we worked with what we had received until it fitted into the conceptual framework we already had—rather it was a more receptive process allowing the Word to break open and reform us. It is not a wholly passive process; a certain assimilation on our part is necessary.”

One metaphor the early church fathers used for this process was “chewing the cud.” That is we would take the word of the morning and through the day we chew on what we have received allowing it to be assimilated during the day.

The meditation of Mother Teresa is one of the most profound of these traditions.

Oratio
Pennington writes: “almost naturally, this on going meditation calls forth a response, thanksgiving, praise, petition, repentance, adoration. . . . The world is shot through and through with the mercy and love of God.

I like Pennington’s suggestion that we use “some reminders, for example, forming the deliberate intent to repeat our word each time we hear a clock strike, each time we pass through a door, when we walk down a corridor or street. Some effort, some schooling, will quickly make the practice ours” [64].

Contemplatio
Con means with
Templa was the segment of the heavens that the pagan priests of ancient Rome used to watch, later becoming the place one went to know the will of the gods and to worship them. In the new covenant, Pennington says, “we are the temple of the new covenant, the covenant in his Blood, which we celebrate and receive in the Eucharist” [65].

Pennington writes of this process and of our practice: “The whole process if we have space for it can be present in each or any period of lectio. As we listen to the word (lectio), a word, a phrase, a sentence may sell strike us, and we let it reverberate within, opening and expanding, forming and shaping (meditation) calling forth varied responses (oratio) until finally we simply rest in the Reality to which it all leads (contemplatio) [67].

Listening to the Word

Chapter Three
Listening to the Word,
pages 19-30

At the end of the last chapter Pennington identifies the motive force behind the discipline of Lectio. He writes: “In true Lectio [one has to wonder if Pennington thinks there may be a false Lectio then] by the power of the Word of God and of the Spirit, we do see, we do hear. The Word and the Spirit expand our listening. Their grace heals us of the binding prejudice, the fears, the selfishness and the self-centeredness that would have us cling to our present parameters with the illusionary comfort of their controlled limitations.”

Lectio is governed, enabled, directed by the Holy Spirit. Christianity is unique, I suspect, in that it has a part of the Trinity dedicated to transformation. As Pennington writes of the Holy Spirit and the Sacred Word of God: “They lift us above all limitations of our human reason, enabling us to be a listening not only for those transcendent truths of faith that are beyond the grasp of reason, but also for the very experience of God.” I have to wonder if Pennington thinks that the average reader has any inkling of what this instruction means because here he asserts that Lectio Divina is a discipline that will—with the assistance of the Holy Spirit—provide “transcendent truths of faith that are beyond the grasp of reason.” More, he asserts it will provide “for the very experience of God.” These are amazing assertions for laity, perhaps. We hear them regularly during the Mass and may even have heard them discussed in Adult Education classes, but in the context of this monastic treasure we have to understand that we are not just in the presence of the Holy Spirit, we are inviting the Holy Spirit to intervene in our lives and move us into a kind of listening that will transform our lives by allowing us access to “transcendent truths of faith” truths that are “beyond the grasp of reason.”

If Robby the Robot were about he would be shouting about now, “Danger! Will Robinson, Danger!” “Transcendent truths of faith” or the “very experience of God” are not your ordinary every day run-of-the-mill experiences for laity nor should they be taken as such. These are altered states of consciousness with potent and life changing consequences. They should not be taken lightly nor entered into without proper respect though Pennington seems to offer them as if they are the most normative experience a Christian should desire.
For many of the laity, Church is something we do as part of being respectable folk. For many parents, it is a way of enculturing the younger generation, a way of bring up good Christian children who know the values of the family and the essentials of Judeo Christian culture. For others of us it is a kind of spiritual vitamin without which we don’t feel right the rest of the week. For still others, it is the heart of a community we value, where the sacraments mark the beginning and the end of life as well as those essential ties that bind us in between. Be that as it may be, Pennington is at some pains to remind us that that the Mass is the Liturgy of the Word offered to the People of the Word marking us as the People of God.
Sometimes in the banality of repetition the sharp edges of memory are worn away and we forget how this whole ceremony is designed to remind God’s people of the life giving refreshment of the Scriptures. We may forget that it is not the homily, but the proclamation of the Word, that is the central feature of the Mass. In the midst of Candles, sacred lights, clouds of incense, anthems of praise and shouts of Alleluia “the great moments of theophany” are celebrated.
As a theologian Pennington may toss about the word “theophany” easily, but for most of us laity, it is not an easy word. Most of us do not know the word. It means the "the appearance of a divinity who is named and recognized to a human. It is the moment of revelation. It is contrasted with hierophany which points to a manifestation of the sacred, a break through of the supernatural into the natural world. Hierophany is different from theophany in that the supernatural/transcendent experience does not seem to be sponsored by any named diety. In hierophany we simply are aware we are in the presence of an enormously sacred event. Transpersonal psychologists would call this a metanoya by which they mean a break through, a piercing of straight thinking, reasoned ordinary mentality by transcendent experience. In this case, Pennington is referencing the many moments when the God of the Hebrew Scriptures announces his sponsorship of a particular sacred moment. Nowhere is this more true than in the presence of Jesus Christ who is the sublime manifestation of the sacred in Christian tradition.
So we are called to pay attention in the Mass to remember these moments when God claims us as his own. Pennington writes noting as we all do how overwhelming the content of the Liturgy of the Word is: “I have found that if I try to grasp all that is served up in the Liturgy of the Word, it all seems to run through my fingers.” Wonderful as it is, the Liturgy of the Word is really not an effective discipline. It is worship. It is the call to the Community to remember. “Do this in remembrance of Me” we hear before the communion. For Laity the totality of the liturgy of the Word is a powerful call not to forget, not to fall into the slumber of the secular, not to recede from the sacred into the normal, but to remember where it is, where it came from, and how it is at the center of our identity as Christians.
Pennington continues: “So what I now do in PRACTICE is to choose one small tasty morsel.” Here is that word that separates Lectio Divina from the Liturgy of the Word. Lectio is a practice, a discipline, a way of embracing the Word more intimately, more powerfully so that the transformation may occur. “Sometimes,” Pennington continues, “one particular nugget is given to me—one word, sentence, or phrase strikes me very forcefully; at other times I select one.” The mind trained by Lectio opens to the Word differently than it does to the rest of us. Such a one listens for a talisman “’a word of life,’ which I talk over with the Lord after Communion and carry with me through the day. I allow the word to re-echo in my mind and in my heart, giving color to all that I experience through the day.”`

Scriptural Study
Pennington recognizes that beyond the Liturgy of the Word most of the laity do not have access to the community of voice in which monastics experience Lectio. Few of us are part of a community where we can go to be read to, to have the oral experience of the Word washing over us as the sea washes over the shore. For us alone in our spiritual lives we are sustained by text. The word in text can exist disembodied from the flesh. It stands aloof, separate waiting for us to access it, reanimate it, to give it voice. He recognizes that most of us have to resort to our study, open our Bibles and participate in regular study of the text. Here he opens a particularly nasty can of worms which he has been avoiding, “the idea that few of us know the original languages in which the sacred texts were written. So we have to rely on translations. Pennington writes: “There is an old saying: “Every translator is a traitor.” English is so different from ancient Hebrew or New Testament Greek that a translation is an enormous compromise. Depending upon the institutional demands made upon the translator the betrayal may be minimal and scholarly or extreme and political.

Be that as it may, the text we have is what it is. For our study of the Word, we should be careful in selecting a study text, so we may find a translator less prone to betrayal than otherwise might be the case. My recommendation would be that you seek out a scholarly translation such as the New Revised Standard Version rather than a more politically oriented translation.

Motivational Study
From time to time there will be “dry” periods in our spiritual life. At such times it is good to seek the strength of others who have written about their own spiritual journeys. In the model of others, we may often find the refreshment we have not been able to find in our own lives.

Lectio Divina
It is astonishing to listen here to what Pennington says, as it is so unexpected: “We come to Lectio not so much seeking ideas, concepts, insights, or even motivating graces; we come to lectio seeking God himself and nothing less than God. We come seeking the experience of the presence of the living God, to be with him and to allow him to be with us in whatever way he wishes” [27]. Lectio is so different a form of reading that it may seem utterly alien to us who have always read for interpretive meaning, to understand the text in its historical contexts. Here is not understanding. Rather here is active listening. It is as if we were to say as Pennington would have it: “Speak, Lord, your servant wants to hear.” He cautions us: “It is important . . . that in lectio we do not try to contract the Word we receive to the dimensions of our already-held concepts and ideas. Rather it is necessary to allow these ideas to be blown open, if need be . . .” [27]. “Lectio is essentially prayer at a deep experiential level.”

Pennington makes no bones about things: Regardless of the betrayal of the translator, regardless of the fact we are not reading the original languages as a scholar might do, we are to condsider the Bible as “a book wholly inspired by God, who guided the writers”—and the translators presumably—“gracefully in accord with their freedom and God given gifts, to express only what God wanted them to express and all that God wanted them to write in his name” [28].


Chapter Four
A New Packaging,
pages 31-45

Pennington returns in this chapter to the theme Keating articulated in his Intimacy with God. Asian teachers were so popular with American youth because their teaching was “very simple and precise. They gave the seeker a method that could immediately be put into practice” [31]. Pennington confesses: we [Catholics] “have rarely taught our mthods of prayer in simple, practical ways that the learner can immediately begin to use” [32]. Consequently, Pennington assumes that the individual student is isolated and alone with his/her Bible and so needs a solitary method to practice. Here are his three steps:
1) “Come into the Presence and Call upon the Holy Spirit.
2) Listen for ten minutes to the Lord speaking to you through the Sacred text
[presumably as you read.]
3) Thank the Lord and take a ‘word.’”

Pennington reminds us of the central instruction we heard earlier. “The Bible bespeaks a Real Presence, a place where we can encounter the living God whenever we will” [33].

Pennington expands on these three simple steps somewhat.
1) pick up the bible with reverence.
2) Reflect on the wonder of the Divine Reality it contains.
3) Turn to the Holy spirit which
a) Inspired these words
b) Abides within each of us to teach us all things
c) Making them a living communication with the Lord

Pennington expands these steps a third time drawing upon a 12th century text.
1) we take the book in reverence and kneel down
2) we call upon the Holy Spirit to help
3) we listen to the first words on our knees and kiss the text
4) only then do we sit down and continue the lectio.

He adds further instruction:
1) Determine the duration of our lectio by a set time.
2) If we say we will read a page or a chapter, we are so pressed that we may
forget the significance of our reading.
3) We may decide instead just to sit here with the Lord for these few minutes,
then we can receive the Word with a certain openness and a sense of leisure.
4) There is no need to push on. The rest of the text will be there tomorrow.
5) If the first word or the first sentence speaks to us, we can just sit with
it, let it come alive within us, respond to it. There is no need to push on.

Enthroning the Bible.
Pennington gives us an interesting suggestion. When he worked with a monastery in the Ozarks the devout people there had an interesting practice: They would enthrone the Bible on the pillow on their bed. When they go to bed, they pick up the Bible, take a moment and get a word or phrase from the Bible to carry with them into sleep. Then they place the Bible on their shoes so that in the morning they have to pick up the Bible again and again they receive a word to carry with them through the day.

A Lectio trained Christian will take his time to open his/her Bible, take a word to carry with them through the day. Often, Pennington writes, it will come alive to him, or it may prove to be just the word someone else needs. [39]

This Word Lectio

Chapter One: This Word Lectio, pages 1-10

In the days before printing, books were a one at a time hand made artifact. They were rare, expensive and not shared by everyone. Indeed most in the Monastic life in those days could not read or write. So Lectio was just about the only way the ordinary monk could encounter the Word of God. Lectio was Spoken Word usually during the course of meals in the refectory or in chapter meetings. When they could read, the text looked nothing like it does to day as both the vowels and spaces were omitted Stxtwldlksmthnglkths. [So text would look something like this.] As a result, if monks did their own Lectio they were as Pennington calls them a “community of mumblers.”

Lectio, today, is an experiential hearing of the word. It should properly be titled Exaudio Dvina as it is really an intense kind of listening to the sacred word and allowing the sound of the sacred word to enter you, permeate your consciousness and seep into your being. It is so very different from the kind of reading we ordinarily do, or for that matter the kind of listening we ordinarily do. This is not reading where we are struggling for interpretation, struggling to reduce the sounds to acceptable meaning. It is wholly other. And therein is its novelty and wonder.

Remember what I suggested last week: What I have found in Pennington’s book is in fact a set of instructions for a mystical experience emerging from the determined, directed practice of Lectio Divina. If you read carefully, Pennington is careful to give you instruction in the basic belief system that Lectio Divina uses to transport its practitioners into spectacular religious experience. In the weeks to come I want to unearth these instructions and see if we can internalize them to make Lectio Divina the Magic Carpet it is intended to be.

In this chapter Pennington begins to assert what are the basic assumed truths which sustain a Lectio Divina practice which would culminate in a revitalizing mystical experience. He calls these “Dispositions.”

Dispositions:
According to our know-it-all cyber encyclopedia Wikipedia: “A disposition is a habit, a preparation, a state of readiness, or a tendency to act in a specified way.” That is to say a disposition points to a response we are hard wired to give without thinking. Now I hasten to say for those of us who have been following the historical/critical scholarly commentary on Christian tradition these dispositions are hardly hard wired into us, any more, if ever they were. These dispositions are not about critical thinking, in fact critical thinking is anathema to the tradition out of which these dispositions are fundamental.

FAITH:
The first disposition is faith. That is to say we have internalized as if wholly true and without question that Scripture is the Word of God. Listen to what Pennington says here: “We believe not only that the Word who is Gods speaks to us through this inspired Word, but that the Word is truly present in his inspired Word and present to us as he communicates with us through the word.” The proposition that the Bible, especially the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Scriptures are inspired, and as our evangelical friends are fond of saying “inerrant” is pretty fundamental, if you are a fundamentalist. It is the shield behind which so much knavery hides, as recent scholarship has suggested. Be that as it may, in this world of Lectio Divina we have to set the historical/critical apparatus aside and accept as reflex that Scripture is the word of God, literal and absolute.

HUMILITY
Pennington goes on to develop this idea by outlining the second of these dispositions: Humility. Pennington writes: “Humility is the acceptance of our profound ignorance with regard to God as well as to so many other things. We know what we know, and it is not very much. We know what we do not know, and that is a lot more. . . . We come to our listening hungry and thirsty, filled with longing and need. And God who is mighty does great things for us. He fills the hungry with good things.”

I love this last metaphor of the Christian being the pilgrim on the spiritual path who is both starving and dying of thirst. It puts Lectio on the same footing as the Zen Buddhist who says: “do not follow this path unless you can do so with the same energy as the man with his hair on fire seeks water.” Lectio is not a time for half measures. The practioner of Lectio Divina is all in or not in at all.

OPENNESS
A third disposition is the reflex of openness. Listen to what Pennington writes here: “I am not simply reading a book I have read so often before.” We all know what this means. How many times have we read the 23rd Psalm, heard it read so that it becomes a familiar chant? Pennington says set that familiarity aside and assume that when I am reading the scriptures “I am meeting a Person, a Divine Person, the God who loves me and who has a wondrous plan for me.” Again the metaphor of text as place. The scriptures are a place of meeting, a meeting ground where we come to encounter the Divine Person who loves us without reservation.

FAITHFULLNESS
I love Pennington’s image of the Kavi, the Indian garment of intense orange. “Its color is achieved by dipping a piece of white cotton in yellow dye a thousand times. The monastics [of India] wear this color as a reminder of their need to dip again and again into the Divine thorough meditation in order to attain the transformation they desire. To attain a total open listening for the Divine we need to dip again and again into the divine reading of Lectio Divina.” The practioner of Lectio is like the cloth which has to be dipped a thousand times in the water of divinity in order to achieve transformation. Let there be no doubt what Pennington is talking about here: it is Transformation. We are not practicing Lectio Divina in order to be a better Christian, we are practicing Lectio Divina to become a transformed Christian, one who is utterly different than they were before they started. It is a shedding of the old straight logic and a donning of the new divine logic that is sought here.
There is another explanation for this color. It was the color of clothing Indians gave to imprisoned and condemned criminals so they could not blend in with the locals. By wearing this color, Indian monastics declare they are one with the oppressed of the culture.

Faith, humility, openness and faithfulness. The dispositions begin where they end with faith and the distinction of faithfulness. Let us say this another way. We begin with acceptance, that is a setting aside of doubt and skepticism and critical thinking, of all those things the academy has worked so hard to instill in us for the secular world of lay life. We continue with abject debasement of our own powers of discernment, a willingness to open ourselves to the possibility of thinking differently about the world than we have been taught. We end with the reflex of habitual prayer, of dipping ourselves again and again into the sea of numinous divinity. If we can begin this way, then what Pennington charts for us may well lead to transformation.

Chapter Two: The Listening That We Are, pages 11-18

One of the things we have to come to terms with in Lectio Divina is this notion that: “The Word was made flesh. Jesus is the most complete expression of the Word in our creation. God is Word. God is communication.” This is Pennington’s interpretation of the implications of the first verses of the Gospel of John, Chapter 1. “1In the beginning, the Word existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He existed in the beginning with God. 3Through him all things were made, and apart from him nothing was made that has been made.”

What are we to do with this mystery? How is the Word God? It has always seemed to me that when we confront mysteries we are confronting something very ancient the origins of which have been forgotten, the language used to express this idea lost to time, or in fact the culture that produced this idea has vanished leaving this incredible shard on the great mound which is all that is left of the ancient cities for us to discover. More importantly, it has always seemed to me that we who are literate who are the heirs of the incredible revolution of the fifth century B.C. during which writing began to replace oral/aral memory traditions cannot possibly understand what this means. It is as if we by being literate have eaten of the apple of knowledge and are forever separated from Eden by the transformation we have experienced as a result of that ingestion.

That is to say that this way of thinking which we find now embedded in John is very much older than John itself. It emerges from a kind of consciousness lost to us now, one perhaps available in the pre-literate cultures of the Mediterranean where what was known was known by oral retelling, was known by being held in memory by people trained in the arts of memory. So in that time before literacy, the word had great power, greater power than we who are literate perhaps can comprehend. There are numerous creation stories that have come down to us where the creation is accomplished by uttering a word, a magical incantation. (prove this). In this ancient world before literacy the spoken word had much more power than it has now. An Oath, for example, a man’s word was his bond. Breaking an oath was unthinkable because it would break the word upon which the relationship between the oath taker and the oath giver was based.

Sacred words are words of power. Words speak us into existence when we are given a name. In the Buddhist tradition there are sacred seed syllable sounds which are woven into mantras, sacred words like “Aum,” and strings of sacred words like “Aum Mani Padmi Hum.” In ancient tradition the sound of the word was all that existed: no letters existed to capture the sound, record them, and preserve them for later replay. In that lost world it may make some sense to say as Pennington does that “God is word.” The next play in this mystery is the idea of the incarnation in which “The Word was made flesh.” That somehow word and flesh can be one. And indeed they may well be, if before written language the word was remembered and uttered. Words can only exist in that pre literate world, if they are embodied because they must be uttered by a vocal apparatus powered by lungs triggered by mind and spinal chord. The Sound only exists if it is heard by enfleshed ears that can understand them because the mind of the listener is prepared to receive them. In that preliterate world, Words can only be flesh.

Now move from that understanding of a world before literacy to the next step in which Pennington asserts that “Jesus is the most complete expression of the Word in our creation.” That is to say that we Christians believe that this man Jesus embodied the ancient sacred words, gave utterance to them, and from his mouth and from his flesh came our tradition.

Now Pennington follows this with a return to the original idea “God is Word. God is communication.” Which I would rephrase by making it a syllogism “IF God is word, THEN God is communication.” He amplifies this to say “And we therefore are essentially a listening.” Our role then is to be listeners, to be the receivers of the word which was uttered by Jesus into scripture. We are “a listening for that Word. To the extent we truly ‘hear’ that Word, receive that Word into our being and into our lives, we participate in the Divine Being, Life, Love , Joy. Made in the image of God, we have an unlimited, an infinite potential to be like unto him. . . .” The gambit Pennington makes here is that the teachings of Jesus, the words from his flesh, the word made flesh, are accurately presented in the Scripture. Pennington jettisons everything we have learned about scripture from the Historical/Critical tradition and assumes that Scripture is the living word of God whole and complete. So that to hear aurally/orally in Lectio Divina the scripture read to us, is to hear the voice of God itself. For him there are no questions that this is absolutely true.

But Pennington is a wise teacher. He knows that our ability to listen even to the Divine Word is a function of our ability to hear. He writes: “As things come to me across my listening, I get only what falls within the parameters of the listening that I am. If I am a very ‘set’ person, very rigid in my ideas and convictions, then that is it. That is all I get, and all I will ever get. On the other hand, if I am very open person, then each thing I encounter in my ‘listening’ has the potential to expand my listening, to push out my boundaries perhaps just a little bit more.”

Our ability to listen is a function of our mind set, our pre dispositions, our experiences, our vocabulary, our education, our willingness to receive new things. Pennington knows that listening is a struggle. How are we to listen? Are we listening to interpret? Are we listening to find confirmation of what we already know? Are we listening for something new, some new thing yet un uttered? What is our goal in listening? Must we even have a goal as we listen?

I particularly love what Pennington writes: “From one end to the other, the Scriptures are a love story. They are a Love speaking to his beloved. And we sometimes have every kind of listening for God but that of a lover. To let the Scriptures speak to us in their nakedness can be immensely frightening, for they demand such a love in return.”

Pennington is demanding here that we shed all preconceptions, unlearn all learning, give up all critical thinking and open ourselves wholly to the scriptures as wholly as the shore opens itself to the waves of the sea. Such listening is frightening because it may mean the erosion of what we think we are. It may mean the discovery that we are not who we thought we were. It may even mean that we must journey into a pilgrimage of transformation.

Introduction to Lectio Divina

Some Observations:

Over the years as a seminar leader I have found the Episcopal audience to be among the best read and best educated. Although this is as it should be for those of us in the American tradition, it is not as it has always been. Indeed Lection Divina originates in a medieval world where literacy was the exception rather than the rule. The nearly universal literacy of the Roman Imperium had faded beneath the onslaught of foreign invaders, many of whom had no written language. As the literate died from plague and famine, and the privations of battle and flight, the system of education which had replenished the literate ranks generation to generation was lost. What remained were the monasteries where islands of education and learning were preserved. It was during this monastic age that Lectio Divina emerged not so much as reading but as listening. The illiterate monks were read to during their moments of silent dining.


It is important to say here that Lectio Divina is a practice, it is not worship in the same way we laity mean worship. I want to make a distinction between worship—what we lay people mostly do and are encouraged to do—and Christian practice—what the monastic religious are trained to do.

The Prayer Tradition of Episcopal Laity
We Laity are most often taught five kinds of prayer. The first of these is the prayer of adoration or worship. In the prayer of adoration we praise God for his greatness and his goodness. We acknowledge our utter dependence upon hin for all things. The Mass and other liturgies of the church are full of this kind of prayer.
The second of these is the prayer of expiation or contrition in which we acknowledge our sinful nature and ask God for his forgiveness and mercy. This in Episcopal tradition occurs in our prayer of confession during the mass.

The third of these is the prayer of love or charity. This is an expression of our love for god who is the source and object of all love. One traditional prayer begins: "O my God, I love Thee above all things, with my whole heart and soul, because Thou art all good and worthy of all love. I love my neighbor as myself for the love of Thee. I forgive all who have injured me, and ask pardon of all whom I have injured. Amen."
The fourth kind of prayer is the prayer of petition. These are most familiar with us as we come before God with our requests for ourselves and those we love. The Lord’s prayer is probably the best known of these, although we may find ourselves using this kind of prayer most often, perhaps when we are alone.
The fifth kind of prayer we are taught is the prayer of thanksgiving such as the grace we offer before meals and before gatherings.

When Prayer Becomes Practice Rather Than Worship
I want to draw a distinction here because of the word practice. Few of us actually practice prayer, I’d wager, for while these five kinds of prayer are wonderful they are not embedded in a tradition of practice.

Recently, I have been studying the new research of Positive Psychology into the nature of success. There is fascinating new research that suggests that if we want to reach expert levels of skill at anything, we much devote 10,000 hours of devoted, concerted directed practice of that art. Much of this research has been reviewed recently by Malcolm Gladwell in his new book Outliers, which I highly recommend. A great deal of his review of this research is also available on his website: Gladwell.com where he has an archive of his New Yorker articles.

We Laity seldom have time to put in 10,000 hours of devoted, concerted, directed practice of anything and given our once a week participation in church activities it unlikely that we will find ourselves with 10,000 hours of devoted, concerted, directed practice of prayer. This kind of experience is relegated to monastic environments where men and women sequester themselves from the work-a-day secular world to devote themselves to hard spiritual work. It is very interesting that many of the great monastic practices so treasured and hidden from Laity have come out from the monastery and been offered to Laity since the 1960’s. Why should this be?

How Did Lectio Divina Emerge from Its Monastic Traditions and Confines?

Thomas Keating, one of Pennington’s great friends and colleagues, writes in his Intimacy with God [Crossroads Publishing, 1996] “I also became aware of the deep contemporary hunger for spirituality. In the wave of spiritual reawakening that the Second Vatican Council seems to have touched off, young people were going to India in search of spiritual teachers. Some spent several years there under horrendous physical conditions. They adapted to poverty, exposure, sickness and bad food in order to satisfy their hunger for an authentic spiritual path.

“My thought was, well, this is fine. I was not knocking he seriousness of Zen practice or denying that many people were benefiting from it as well as from other Eastern practices. By why were thousands of young people going to India every summer to find some form of spirituality when contemplative monasteries of men and women were plentiful right here in this country? This raised the further question. Why don’t they come to visit us? Some did, but very few. What often impressed me in my conversation with those who did come was they had never heard that there was such a thing as Christian spirituality. They had not heard about in their parishes or Catholic schools if they had attended one. Consequently, it did not occur to them to look for a Christian form of contemplative prayer or to visit Catholic monasteries. When they heard that these existed, they were surprised, impressed and somewhat curious” (13-14).

The simple fact was that most Christian tradition pre 1960 did not let the Laity in on the monastic treasures of spiritual life. In fact, my guess is that the Second Vatican Council’s liberalization of the rules against sharing these traditions with Laity was based simply on the realization that they were losing market share of the next generation’s believing community. To know the truth of this all we have to do is look at the increasingly secular nature of Europe. Catholic Churches are closing all over the continent and many in America as well. Even in Memphis that was so fond of saying we have more churches than gas stations, the recent trend has been to tear down churches and replace them with more commercial establishments like Walgreens.


So Keating asked his monastic community “Could we put the Christian tradition into a form that would be accessible to people in the active ministry today and to young people who have been instructed in an Eastern technique and who might be inspired to return to their Christian roots if they knew there was something similar in the Christian tradition” [15]? So it was that in the last thirty years there has been an outpouring of these hidden monastic treasured traditions.

Among these is Lectio Divina, Centering Prayer, Christian Meditation, The Divine Hours, The Rosary, the liturgical arts of psalmody and hymnodity to name only a few of the best known and shared. In point of fact, we discover that hidden from the laity for all these centuries has been an extraordinary treasure of spiritual practices. Part of this treasure is an over arching community of spiritual directors, something we in Protestant tradition know very little about. In fact, it is my belief that it is this community of spiritual directors that enlivens these secret practices and guards them from abuse and wards the practitioner from damage. We in the Protestant community who voyage into these sacred traditions without benefit of spiritual directors will in some cases find ourselves in considerable difficulty. This is especially true I think of Centering Prayer. For the most part, however, many of these treasures are very accessible and open to those off us who are bereft of the guidance of a community of spiritual directors.

How Then Do We Practice?

Let us return for a moment to the idea of practice. We often call ourselves practicing Christians if we attend church regularly, partake of the sacraments, and attempt to lead a life led by the precepts of Christ our Lord. I want, however, to propose to you that to practice means working at a particular discipline regularly with a determined regime of encounter and coached by someone who knows what the discipline should produce. Take for example the recent hero of the Chinese Olympics: Michael Phelps. Phelps started swimming competitively at age seven. He trains six hours a day, six days a week, swimming approximately 8 miles a day or nearly 50 miles a week. He has access to a dietician who works to detect any slight food allergies that might reduce his strength. He works with a strength coach and a master swimming coach.

I wonder what would happen if we took an attitude towards our faith tradition like an Olympic athlete takes to his sport. What could a spiritual Olympics look like? What would the competitions be? How would we train? What would our rewards be? This may sound facetious, yet this is they way many traditions focus their religious. There is a kind of competition and the gold medal is Sainthood. Among priests the gold goes to Bishops, Archbishops and other worthies.


Now few of us are trying out for sainthood. We are here for community, the nurture of the Mass and the sacraments and to celebrate the mystery of life and the divine. Even so, we can enrich our lives by considering these monastic disciplines which have gone public in the last 40 years as a proper venue for devoted, concerted directed practice. These monastic treasures are time tested and proven disciplines for opening ourselves to the Divine and seeking union with the One who guides and directs our lives.

A Few Words About the Text

Having said this, I want now to turn to our text by Basil Pennington. This text: Lectio Divina: Renewing the Ancient Practice of Praying the Scriptures is a distinctly conservative text. Pennington is an old school, authentic Roman Catholic monastic teacher. You are not going to find him worrying about the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Nag Hammadi Gospels and what they might mean. You will not see him fidgeting over the Gnostic tradition or whether the Q Gospel existed. You may hear him sneer at the Jesus Seminar and the work of Crossan and Borg. You will not find in him any doubt that the Bible is anything but the living word of God from which the breath of the divine ushers when handled reverently.

What I have found in Pennington’s book is in fact a set of instructions for a mystical experience emerging from the devoted, concerted directed practice of Lectio Divina. If you read carefully, Pennington is careful to give you instruction in the basic belief system that Lectio Divina uses to transport its practitioners into spectacular religious experience. In the weeks to come I want to unearth these instructions and see if we can internalize them to make Lectio Divina the Magic Carpet it is intended to be.

Lectio Divina

So I am beginning a class at St. Elizabeth's Episcopal Church in Bartlett, Tennessee on Lectio Divina. I have taught a class like this at St. George's Episcopal Church in Germantown, Tennessee so this is not new terrirory exactly. However, I find that in the intervening ten years there have been quite a number of new books published on the subject.