On Tuesday, December 13 the Living Vision Community held the first session of our December practice. Below you will find my introductory teaching segment that we used to kick off this profound practice. We hope you will join us on December 20 and 27 when we will continue this practice from 7:30-8:30 pm at Yoga Roots at 444 Mitchell St. in Petoskey. Everyone is welcome to practice with us regardless of religious background or perspective. To manifest and celebrate our openness, our Lectio readings over the three weeks of this practice will come from the Hindu, the Christian, and the Muslim scriptures respectively. See you soon!
In Grace & Peace - Toby Jones
"In November, we familiarized ourselves with the discipline of apophatic prayer, which is a silent practice that helps us empty our minds. Tonight we begin to explore a slightly less silent practice that actually encourages our minds to play, wander, and explore through the medium of the “divine word,” or Lectio Divina.
All of the major religions of the world have some sort of scriptures, some sort of holy writ that their followers use for guidance in life and practice. Within each religious group and even within a single holy book, there are myriad ways of reading and interacting with that scripture. Modern followers are probably most familiar with Bible study or other devotional type reading models used to learn and grow. But Lectio Divina is quite different from such typical devotional and academic study.
One of our chief contemporary guides for this discipline, Daniel Wolpert describes Lectio Divina as “praying the Bible” rather than reading it. He writes: “Reading the Scriptures and praying them are two very different undertakings…” Modern followers often read their scriptures, Wolpert notes, in a consumeristic way, “to get religious information, to get right answers, to confirm our own ideas about God, or even to find support for our arguments with friends or foes.” But to “pray the Bible,” Wolpert notes, “is to apply listening and silence to the Word of God in order to hear God speak…It is a sacred reading of scripture.”
In Lectio Divina a small passage of scripture is read aloud two or three times in succession followed by a prolonged chunk of silence. Then the same verses are read again a couple more times followed by more silence, and then again, re-reading followed by silence. In those periods of silence, practitioners allow the reading to grab them somehow. Perhaps a particular word or phrase jumps out or maybe an image or memory pops into the listener’s mind. Rather than fighting off or silencing these thoughts, in Lectio Divina we welcome and pay attention to these thoughts, hoping that they might be the hand or voice of God.
It was the mystic Saint Benedict who included Lectio Divina in his Christian monastic order in 500 AD. For him, the purpose of this discipline was “to cultivate contemplative listening.’ It’s interesting to note that Benedict’s monks were illiterate. They could not read, and thus needed to be read to. Lectio Divina, with its small chunks and repetitious style, filled the bill perfectly.
Now, I noted earlier that in Lectio Divina, we don’t endeavor to shut our minds down, but rather to focus them on the passage we hear. Once focused, we then allow our minds to be led by the divine, living words. Wolpert believes that the key is NOT focusing too much on the literal surface meaning of the passage, for it is “quite possible that God will use the passage to speak to you about something completely unrelated to its literal content.” In other words, our focus should NOT be on figuring out what the passage means or on wrestling with the passage. Instead we enter the passage openly and see what happens. Maybe a particular word or phrase stands out and grabs your attention for awhile…Go with that. Maybe an image or picture comes to mind…Go with that. Or maybe your mind jumps to a situation or memory that was triggered by the passage…Go with that. Whatever happens in you, pay attention to it. Pay attention. We’ll have a chance after our first phase of Lectio Divina tonight to share where our minds and hearts went, if we so choose.
So we’ll begin. I’ll read tonight’s reading from the 6th chapter of the Bagavad Gita. First I’ll read it three times in succession, followed by 5 minutes or so of silence. Then I’ll read it another two times followed by another 5 minutes or so, and then a third time followed by 5 more minutes. And then we’ll break.
Let us pray….
From the Bagavad Gita,
Krishna says,
“I am ever present to those who realize that I am in every creature. Seeing all of life as my manifestation, they are never separated from me.”
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