Lectio Divina
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On All Saints Day
“One must not think that a person who is suffering is not praying. He is offering up his sufferings to God, and many a time he is praying much more truly than one who goes away by himself and meditates his head off, and, if he has squeezed out a few tears, thinks that is prayer.” – Saint Teresa of Avila. To Roman Catholics, saints are super-Christians, marked out by their devotion, piety, and service to Christ. To Protestants, everyone who believes in Jesus is a saint. I’m not sure what I believe. This is a sentence that can apply to about 90% of my own interior life. What I…
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Dividing Asunder
For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12, Authorized Version) It’s always interesting for me to ask people questions about things I assume they understand, only to learn that my assumption was misguided. For example, the New Testament verse referenced above clearly delineates between soul and spirit; the divinely-inspired (I trust) writer assumes such a delineation. And yet when I have asked Christians to explain the difference between soul and spirit, I have received less than…
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Recoverable And Precious
I have been working for some time now on a memoir, a memoir focused on a particular area of my life and a particular person. As the stack of pages grows incrementally, I find myself remembering things long forgotten, and discarding memories that I once thought important but now see as distractions. As with all the things I have ever undertaken in my life, I feel inadequate to the task, but I also feel a strong compelling hand in the small of my back, pushing me forward as certainly as my own fingers push the pencil along the page of my notebooks. Reading this evening in one of Frederick Buechner’s…
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Dancing With God
We have but to live, take each day as it comes, see the Lord in all that happens and have a kind of response to the will of God that is much like dancing. You must work with it. It is not a matter of passive submission. This is no way to dance; it is too heavy, too leaden, too dragging and uninspired. No, you must dance with your partner, you must cooperate, you must work with the will of God. This is the sort of dancing that leads to the kingdom and makes one free. — Brother Paul Quenon, OCSO, in his book “In Praise of the Useless Life:…
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“Where The Holiness Is Palpable…”
I’ve been reading Frederick Buechner’s novel The Storm and enjoying his reverent craft to a high degree. I’ve also been listening to some of his talks while driving to and from work. An interview conducted by Walter Brueggemann is one of my favorites, and I’ve included the third section of it below. In the interview, Buechner talks about his experiences within and thoughts about the church, and he makes the perceptive point that “the mystery is missing” in the physical structure of today’s church buildings, noting with sadness the sterile, brightly lit religious structures of today. His words about holy aesthetics reminded me of the fine essay In Praise of…
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Forgotten Men
I’ve finished reading Thomas Merton’s history of the Trappist order, The Waters of Siloe (1949 by Harcourt, Brace, and Company, Inc., New York, NY) and have thoroughly enjoyed it. Merton — or Father Louis, as he was known at Gethsemani Abbey — certainly deserved his reputation as a formidable writer. I wanted to share a couple of sections from this book. One for a rather whimsical reason, and the other a more serious point I wanted to highlight. First, the whimsical section. I offer these paragraphs from pages 132-133 in hopes that my friend Francis Berger might see them: We can see what was the mentality of the monks of Gethsemani…
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The Soul’s Language
Prayer begins by talking to God, but it ends by listening to Him. In the face of Absolute Truth, silence is the soul’s language. — Venerable Fulton J. Sheen
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The Map Of Scars
I dreamed of my daddy last night, which was unusual. I rarely dream of him, probably because I didn’t really know him at all, having only seen him less than forty times in my life. In the dream, I couldn’t see Daddy’s face clearly. This has been a lifelong pattern for me. So often, I will look someone full in the face in one of my dreams but the face will be blurred or occluded in some way. I can see the person from the periphery of my vision, but a direct gaze will immediately blur the center of my dream-vision. It is like mercury, forever running and shifting away…
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Prie-Deux
Here, now, just like this. This is that flash of a moment when I feel Your presence, Your friendship. Just now, sitting here in the dark room, the candle-flame a small, still pillar before me, the coffee-pot murmuring in the kitchen, my skin cool and alive and grateful in the yet-night air, my knees aching from kneeling here at my improvised prie-deux, my submerged brain still kicking towards the lake’s surface. Just now, like this, Your affection and attention are as close and real as a garment. And I seem to almost be able to touch understanding in these moments. If I were thrown here in some act of divine…
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Your Own Grace
God is working on you in order that you may no longer be a child, tossed about by every wind, a prey to external influences. He has given you your own grace, your own nature (insofar as it is good), your own distinctive character. You are therefore required to be yourself and not anyone else. Live according to your own nature; inwardly without restriction; outwardly in so far as external conditions permit. I would compare you to a sailor; he has no doubt as to the port for which he is making and if he is obliged to tack, it is in order to make his port. It is not…