Lectio
“Reading seeks for the sweetness of a blessed life, meditation perceives it, prayer asks for it, contemplation tastes it.”
— Guigo II, The Ladder of Monks
Meditatio
If you are reading this, you are a witness to my practice. You are a participant in my prayer life. You are communing with my communion with God.
This is an invitation. It’s an invitation to join me. To journey with me. To pray with me. To dance with me. To grapple with divinity, wrestle with God, and return to love with me.
Together we read. We take in the words of the saints, the mystics, and the Scriptures. We breathe in what they are breathing out. And when it moves us in some mysterious way, when something in their words invites us to pause, to sit, and to let God work in us through it, we honor that movement with stillness.
We sit with the words of those who came before, and we meditate on what they mean and on the hidden wisdom they are pointing us toward. We converse with them, challenge them, and allow them to challenge us, hoping to gain a glimpse of the truth that they offer. For a moment, we enter into their authorship, giving ourselves to their perspective, to think, feel, and see as they do. We pray through these words and they pray through us.
And through these prayers, we ask that God reveals his Word to us — the true and living Word of Christ — to heal and shape and guide and lead us into glory. We offer ourselves to be emptied of all that is not-God, all that is not-Christ, that he may increase through us. Our consent is our surrender to his will.
Our stillness is our sacrifice upon the altar of time. It is the acknowledgment of our powerlessness to become who he wants us to be, who our souls long to be, without him. It is acceptance of the utter unmanageability of our lives without his love to lead us. Our silence becomes the cross upon which we hang with Christ, giving ourselves over to him, abandoning our selves for him. Our silence is our nakedness before God and our concession that we are not him.
And our silence is the mountaintop from which he speaks, whispering, “I love you. You are my son. You are my daughter. You are my beloved in whom I am well pleased.” Our silence is our listening, our receiving, and our most humble way of saying back to our Lord, “Thank you. Thank you for all of this. I love you too.”
Oratio
the ladder of love
draws me toward heaven
whose heights
cannot be reached
by climbing
giving myself
over to grace’s ascension
one breath
one prayer
one day at a time
emergent light
within the darkness
unfolding
abiding
Love of all Love
Contemplatio
Is there a word or phrase from your spiritual reading that has been quietly following you? What might it be asking of you?
Related Scripture
“But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.” — Psalm 131:2 (NRSVCE)
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Lectio: Take Your Time, which reflects on Carl McColman’s invitation to let the spiritual life unfold in a gradual, unhurried way — a natural companion to this post’s meditation on stillness, silence, and the slow work of contemplative practice.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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