I want to write about something quite simple: the practice of lectio divina.
Literally, it means something like sacred reading; historically, it is a Christian contemplative practice that was formally set out by a monk called Guigo in the 12th century. Wikipedia calls it “a traditional monastic practice of scriptural reading, meditation and prayer intended to promote communion with God and to increase the knowledge of God's word.”
In Guigo’s version, the practice consists of four steps: reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation. There are different ways of doing it but here is a basic version in the Christian line.
In the first step, you read the chosen passage. You read it slowly, very slowly, and perhaps you read it many times.
Once the words have entered you, you move on to the second step, in which you ponder the words you have just read. But the nature of the pondering is important. Rather than chasing after the words, trying out this meaning and that one, you wait and let the meaning come to you.
Then, in the third step, you pray in response to what has come to you. You enter into a loving conversation with God based on what He has said to you through the scripture you have read.
And finally, in the fourth step, you rest in God’s presence. You’ve read, you’ve pondered, and you’ve prayed, and now is the time to be still and silence - not a passive silence but a contemplative silence, the silence in which the great mystery may appear; the silence which is in fact the mystery.
I learned about lectio divina a couple of years ago, and since then I’ve regularly used it for the salons and the other groups that I am lucky enough to be able to co-create with some really exceptional humans. Just last week, in fact, we used it in a salon, and that’s what I want to tell you about now.
-
At the moment, the salon has the theme of money - you know, the thing we organize our lives around but are somehow too embarrassed to ever talk and think about openly. That. So last week, we did lectio divina with a piece of scripture - Matthew 6: 19-34. I’ve linked the text and also put it below so you can follow along, maybe even do some of the practice if you feel so inspired.
First, someone read the text out loud. It is remarkable how powerful this simple experience is. Immediately, there is a different atmosphere, palpable even over Zoom. Nick is an exceptional reader, but I have done this now with at least 30 different readers, and the effect is consistent. The text comes alive, you hear a person speaking it, and it is as though it is speaking to you - and perhaps it is.
For the first reading, my instruction is generally: don’t try to understand it. Don’t chase the text. Just let it come to you, whatever comes. Notice what you’re struck by, but let it be, don’t try to find interpretations or give it meaning.
Here is the text now if you want to do the first reading yourself.
-
Matthew 6: 19-34 (King James Version)
(19) Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
(20) But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
(21) For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
(22) The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
(23) But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!
(24) No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
(25) Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?
(26) Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?
(27) Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?
(28) And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
(29) And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
(30) Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
(31) Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
(32) (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.
(33) But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
(34) Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
-
I let the text sit for a while afterwards, I let Nick’s voice - God’s words - fill the space. And then, when I can no longer stand the silence, I try to wait a little more. And only then do I speak. I ask everyone: what stood out to you? What came up and asked for attention?
I try to be strict here - the question is about the text. There will be time and space later for personal responses, for individual context and history, but right now, the text is the object of our collective intention. So when I ask people to say what stood out, I am asking them to give us words or phrases or ideas from the text.
People speak, there is some overlap, some surprises. I try to organise a starting point, a phrase or a question to begin with, and we start thinking about it together. We ask what it means, or we ask if it’s true, or what might be necessary for it to be true, or why someone might think it’s true even if we don’t agree.
Inevitably, life comes up - we cannot purely stick to the text and what it means, because in thinking about what it means, we are necessarily appealing to the hinterland that shapes what things mean to us. And this is good! It is useful to have the discipline of attending to the text, but the discipline is only useful because it provides a focused channel for life to flow through.
-
Last week, the activity after the first reading was so rich that I let it run for an hour, and had to kind of hurry with the next step. In this step, the text is read out again, and the instruction is to listen to what our life is saying back to the text. So in this step we're not trying to directly understand the text. Instead, we're trying to figure out which bit of us, which part of our life, feels spoken to, and what it wants to say in return.
When I hear the text again, and hearing the echoes of our discussion in it, I feel … chastened. I wonder if I am laying up the wrong treasures; if I am spending my life in the pursuit of things that are only secondarily important. I think I might be.
I quit academia in 2022. I had a young child and I was the sole provider and I had absolutely no idea how to earn money. For quite a while, I didn’t. And I went through a tough 12-18 months, months with deep anxiety about money, sleepless nights, pounding heart whenever I got an official envelope or email because it might be something I had to pay.
And listening to Mike read Matthew now, I suddenly see, with painful clarity, that I have let that anxiety take over my life. I now serve Mammon, he is my master, and it makes it no better that the reason for doing so is that I must provide for my family.
But I am also struck by something else, something that other people in the group also find powerful. The image of the lilies, the flowers that neither toil nor spin but are simply themselves, not striving towards anything but being what they are … that too is a vision of life, is it not?
-
It is time to end, so we do. As always, I have been given something of incalculable value by the ninety minutes we have spent together.
It is very rare in this world to have a space where you can search for wisdom together, where you can pay attention to important things together - and where you can do it while swearing and making jokes about cats.
Some piece of this is not replicable, which I find absolutely beautiful - it lives in those minutes, with those people. There, and nowhere else, and no-when else.
This does not mean it’s always good or that the experience is always a peak experience. But it is always a real experience, and suddenly I am struck by how rare and how valuable this is.
But some other pieces do transport. And with that we come to the self-help section of this post.
-
Last week, we read 400 words in 90 minutes, and we ended up focusing on probably around 50 of them. That’s all. It’s nothing.
Now think of the number of words we consume daily - newsletters, blogs, websites, perhaps even newspapers and books. And then throw in emails and whatsapps and messages. And then add podcasts, videos, social media. Oh, and let’s not forget all those chats you’re having with your friendly LLM.
That’s a lot of words.
The self-help bit is simple. Instead of reading so much, maybe try, just as an experiment, to do a slow and deep reading of very few words. Try your own version of lectio divina with whatever text you fancy - in fact, if you want help, you can write to me and I can suggest a text and a method and that kind of thing.