This blog pairs well with my YouTube channel meditation / video where you can spend 6 calm minutes listening to it, watching birds fly over blue water in a blue sky, seeing a rivulet flow, and enjoying a container ship slowly entering the horizon. To view, go here.
The practice of Lectio Divina is ancient and simple, and it exists in diverse forms across faith traditions and wisdom traditions. It means sacred reading. It’s a kind of steeping that creates a web of mental associations, sometimes broken up into four non steps.
I think of these as a web.
We read or bite some wise words, and then we chew on them like a cow chewing her cud. And for those of us from the country who’ve seen cows chewing their cud, that’s some very, very excellent chewing. Very serious nourishing chewing and re chewing.
And then the next non step or spot on the web is savoring.
So read or bite, reflect or meditate or chew, and then comes the respond or oratio or prayer. What is it saying to me? And then the final non step is contemplatio, or contemplation, resting, simply letting go of thoughts or finding that thoughts let go of you, of us, and resting.
Sometimes the fourth non step is sort of separated away and packaged as centering prayer. And that can be, as I’ve experienced it and many others, very nourishing.
Also the cloud of unknowing’s author Anonymous says in chapter 35 and elsewhere that Lectio Divina is where we start as contemplatives.
And in my experience, this kind of food or eating is needed throughout the journey of life. And the wise Jesus said, we don’t live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of love or God or mystery, the ultimate source, however a person thinks. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. What from this seems to be highlighted in your consciousness?
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
What would you feel is speaking to you in this in these wise words from Jesus? What might it make you feel and what might it make you realize you would like to have more of in your life? Or what kind of a relationship is it calling you to with yourself, with God, or love and with others in whatever non aggressive way you wish?
Let this passage of wise words that have meant so much to so many over millennia speak to us, and then we rest.
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.