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Explore My Reflections
Following the contemplative rhythm of Lectio Divina
Moving from Attentive Reading (Lectio)
To Reflection (Meditatio)
To Prayerful Response (Oratio)
And finally into Silent Resting in God (Contemplatio)
Grappling With Divinity invites a slow unfolding of Scripture, Spiritual Wisdom, and Lived Experience.
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Alone With God: Finding Sabbath Rest Amidst Creation (Lectio Divina)
What if solitude was never meant to feel like absence? Before there was a commandment to rest, there was a God who rested within Himself, amidst everything He had made. This reflection follows a strange kind of aloneness — one that turns out to be full rather than empty, and closer to us than…
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Leaven in the Dough: A Twenty-Five-Year Journey Home to the Catholic Church (Lectio Divina)
What does it look like to almost leave more than once, and still end up staying? James Finley’s image of leaven in the dough meets one man’s twenty-five-year detour through Buddhism, philosophy, and quiet desperation, and the surprising discovery of what was waiting for him all along, right at the center of it.
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The Voice That Fills Empty Nets: Gregory of Nyssa and the Astonishment of Grace (Lectio Divina)
What if the answer to your prayer was never what you thought you were asking for? Gregory of Nyssa sits with a boat, a command, and nets suddenly too full to hold — and with the same voice that first spoke light into being still speaking now, into whatever in your life has come…
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Sit Down, Be Still: The Cloud of Unknowing and the Craving for God (Lectio Divina)Template
What do you do with a thought that sounds holy? The Cloud of Unknowing insists that even our longing to understand God can become one more voice to release, one more thing standing between us and the God we crave.
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Sins in Front, Sins Behind: Abba Pior and the Practice of Self-Examination (Lectio Divina)
What if the sins you can’t stop noticing in someone else are lighter than the ones you’ve learned to carry out of sight? A monk named Pior filled a sack with sand and slung it on his back, then carried a smaller sack in front of him — and what he said about the…
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The Love That Cannot Be Hoarded: Augustine of Hippo on Loving Neighbor and God (Lectio Divina)
What if the love you offer your neighbor was never something you generated on your own? Augustine insists that the very love binding you to another person is the same love that is God — and holding onto it as though it were yours to keep might cost you the ability to love at…
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Go There Continually: John Chrysostom and the Grace of Continual Encounter (Lectio Divina)
What does it actually take to change? St. John Chrysostom knew that some of us are not strong enough to weather life’s storms alone — we need somewhere continual to return. This reflection sits with what it means to be transformed not all at once, but again and again, through people we never expected…
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Anger Never Reaching the Mouth: Abba Isidore and the Freedom Grace Gives (Lectio Divina)
Why were the demons so afraid of Isidore of Scetis? Not because he never felt anger, but because of what he’d stopped letting it do. This reflection sits with the gap between feeling and speech, and with what actually closes it — because willpower turned against a feeling only tangles us more tightly inside…
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Held Fast, Lifted Up: Thomas Merton and the Paradox of the Cross (Lectio Divina)
What if the answer to suffering was never escape, but staying exactly where you are? Thomas Merton’s own words, spoken shortly before he left for the East, name a paradox at the heart of the cross that unsettles our instinct to choose between enduring and rising above. This reflection sits with the ache of…
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The Door We Close Ourselves: Fr. Mike Schmitz and the Love That Never Leaves (Lectio Divina)
You’ve heard it said you have to choose heaven or you’ll end up in hell — but what if that choice was never a test you could fail? Fr. Mike Schmitz’s stark either/or on the Catechism in a Year raises a harder question underneath: what if hell was never a sentence handed down, but…
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No Eyes to See: Pseudo-Dionysius and the Silence Beyond Understanding (Lectio Divina)Template
What if the silence that feels most like abandonment is actually something else entirely — a light too bright for us to bear? This reflection follows what happens when the words finally run out, and what waits for us on the other side of understanding.
