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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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Not Your Own Making: On Divine Calling, Consulting the Lord, and the Life For Which You Were Made (Lectio Divina)
Most of us spend our entire lives searching for our calling — moving from purpose to purpose, desire to desire, and false identity to false identity. But a calling is not something we create or decide upon. It is something we hear. And our true calling is merely to listen for God’s calling. The…
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Hollowed Out by Love: Suffering as Purification (Lectio Divina)
Drawing on the haunting image of Abba Arsenius — whose tears wore a hollow in his chest over a lifetime of weeping — this Lectio Divina reflection traces the movement from suffering to purification, from emptiness to union. Our longing for God will cause us pain as we grieve for all that is not-God.…
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Turnkey to the Deeper Life: Sabbath, Stillness, and The Better Part (Lectio Divina)
What does God actually ask of us — and what does Sabbath have to do with it? Drawing on Steve Macchia’s image of Sabbath as the turnkey to the deeper life, this Lectio Divina reflection traces the movement from busyness to faithfulness, from striving to stillness. Along the way it follows Peter out onto…
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Beneath the Threat of Nothingness: Contemplative Prayer and the God Who Fills Every Void (Lectio Divina)
Contemplative prayer invites us into the darkness — into the silence and emptiness we most fear. Drawing on Meister Eckhart’s Sermon 4, this Lectio Divina reflection traces the movement from fear to trust: the fear of being alone and unloved, the surrender of everything we cling to, and the discovery that the vast emptiness…
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The Ceiling Was a Floor: From Zen to Christ Through the Cloud of Unknowing (Lectio Divina)
What happens when the tradition you love most can no longer hold you? In this deeply personal Lectio Divina, Robert Van Valkenburgh traces his spiritual journey from the Zen Buddhist tradition — which spoke to him before he had words for what it was pointing toward — through an existential crisis and dark night…
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When the Dead Remain: On Grief, Friendship, and the Communion of Saints (Lectio Divina)
Some losses arrive quietly — not as rupture, but as presence. In this Lectio Divina, Robert Van Valkenburgh reflects on the memory of a dear friend who died last year: a man who introduced him to Catholicism more than twenty-five years ago and whose silent faithfulness he is only now able to see and…
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Not a Stranger on the Road: Julian of Norwich and the Love That Raises Us (Lectio Divina)
Have you ever been called toward something — only to be redirected, then found again exactly where you least expected? In this Lectio Divina reflection, Robert Van Valkenburgh follows one such movement of grace: drawn to Julian of Norwich, detoured through St. Francis de Sales, and then surprised by Julian’s words arriving through a…
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The Wellspring of Joy: God, Love, and the Light That Darkness Cannot Overcome (Lectio Divina)
What does it mean to say that God is the source of all joy — and that the Evil One is defined by sorrow? Drawing on St. Francis de Sales’s portrait of the Evil One as a being of pure sadness who would draw all others into his misery, this Lectio Divina reflection traces…
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I Do: On Loving God With Everything You Cannot Give (Lectio Divina)
What does it mean to love God when your very capacity to love him is a gift he gave you? In this Lectio Divina reflection, Robert Van Valkenburgh draws on Thérèse of Lisieux’s Act of Oblation to Merciful Love — her prayer that the waves of infinite tenderness shut up within God might overflow…
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All Manner of Not-God: On Sabbath, Restlessness, and the Soul’s Hunger for God (Lectio Divina)
What drives us to labor — and what are we really searching for? Drawing on Beatrice of Nazareth’s account of the soul’s great torment of longing, this Sabbath Lectio Divina traces the spiritual root of all human desire: our soul’s yearning for infinite union with infinite God. Along the way it names the compulsions…
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I Cannot Have You Without You: On Longing, Powerlessness, and the Prayer Beyond Prayer (Lectio Divina)
Karl Rahner names it plainly: to present your life before God as a single prayer is completely beyond your strength. This post begins there — with a soul that has tasted divine presence, cannot unknow it, and cannot manufacture it again. The Meditatio moves through the full weight of that paradox: the insatiable thirst that…
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The Useless Hour: On Prayer, Surrender, and the Freedom of Doing Nothing With God (Lectio Divina)
On a morning stacked with obligations — an event to host, a class to teach, a daughter to get on the bus — something interrupts the momentum. Not a solution. A stillness. Henri Nouwen calls prayer primarily a “useless” hour, and this reflection takes that claim seriously: what does it mean to sit down and…
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Going By a Way You Do Not Know: Faith, Darkness, and the Unseeable Horizon (Lectio Divina)
The spiritual journey often begins in darkness — not knowing where we are going, led by a voice we cannot hear, consoled by a presence we cannot feel. Drawing on James Finley’s reading of Merton, this reflection moves through the cloud of witnesses who walked the same way before us: Abraham setting out for a…
