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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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Wounded Into Communion: Merton, St. Paul, and the Thorns That Keep Us Near to God (Lectio Divina)
There is a particular kind of love that is not satisfied with being loved — it wants to hold, to keep, to call its own. Thomas Merton’s quiet warning about virtue and forgotten sin meets a grasping hand that ends up wounded, and asks whether holding on was ever the way this love was…
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Obediential Love: Eckhart, Christ’s Command, and the Cross We Are Asked to Bear (Lectio Divina)
What does it mean to be truly obedient — not to a rule, but to love itself? Meister Eckhart calls obedience “a virtue above all virtues,” but Christ’s own command to love God, neighbor, and self reframes obedience as something far more costly and far more freeing than mere compliance. Where the vertical meets…
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Hate the Sickness, Not the Sick: Amma Syncletica of the Desert on Forgiveness and the Cross (Lectio Divina)
We tell ourselves the ones who hurt us knew exactly what they were doing — because believing that lets us believe we’re different, that we’d never do the same. But what if the harm done to us isn’t the whole story? A desert mother’s ancient counsel and Christ’s words from the cross meet in…
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Rooted In Every Season: Hildegard of Bingen on Shame, Grace, and Growing Older (Lectio Divina)
There is a particular grief in looking back at who we used to be — the years we wasted, the mistakes we can still list by heart, the version of ourselves we would rather forget. But what if none of it was wasted? Hildegard of Bingen’s image of the aging tree, still rooted, still…
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Made in the Image of the Maker: Creativity, Grace, and the Work of Transformation (Lectio Divina)
We are not asked to create from nothing — only to take what has already been given us and make it more beautiful than we found it. But what if that quiet, ordinary work of transformation is not separate from the deepest mystery of our faith? SEO Meta Description A contemplative reflection on creativity,…
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The Bondage of Self: How Grace Frees Us From the False Self (Lectio Divina)Template
We like to believe our lives are our own — that we answer to no one, that our choices are simply ours to make. Thomas Merton says otherwise: refuse to serve God, and you will serve someone or something else instead. This reflection sits with that unsettling trade, and with a stranger claim still…
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Giving All But Asking Little: Sabbath, Covetousness, and the Love We Keep Spending Elsewhere (Lectio Divina)
What do we give ourselves to, and for how little? This post sits with a longing that never seems satisfied — chased through comparison, covetousness, and the everyday refusal to rest. Sabbath offers a strange invitation: only one day, though everything is already given. What might it mean to stop, if only briefly, and…
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Not His Gifts But Himself: The Cloud of Unknowing on Naked Love (Lectio Divina)
There is a particular ache in mistaking a kindness for the God who sent it — the coat, the cup of water, the good word we needed exactly when we needed it. Robert Van Valkenburgh turns to The Cloud of Unknowing to ask what remains when even these run out, when the blessings stop…
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The Altar of Silence: On Contemplative Prayer as Love’s Own Offering (Lectio Divina)
There’s a moment in prayer when silence stops feeling like absence and starts feeling like it’s asking something of you. Contemplative prayer is not only stillness — it is an offering, one that asks you to stop holding anything back, even the part of you that wants credit for having given it. What happens…
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Given Who, Not Why: Job, Christ, and the One Question Worth Asking (Lectio Divina)
There is a question most of us carry without naming it: why. Why the silence, why the suffering, why a God whose ways remain just out of reach. This reflection sits inside the book of Job, where that very question is met not with an answer but with an overwhelming presence — and follows…
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The Calm We Cannot Make: St. John Chrysostom on Tears, Confession, and Peace (Lectio Divina)
What if the peace you keep trying to manufacture was never yours to make? St. John Chrysostom describes the calm that follows tears the way a violent storm gives way to stillness, and this reflection sits with the ache of falling short of the peace Christ asks us to carry — and the distance between…
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Whitewashed and Withholding: Origen on the Mercy We Refuse to Give (Lectio Divina)
What if the reconciliation you keep postponing is the very thing standing between you and the God you’re trying to reach? Origen names a righteousness that’s dead on arrival — polished outside, hollow within — and this reflection sits with the mercy we’d rather hoard than pass on, and the depths waiting for those who…
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Before We Cry Out: Julian of Norwich and the Prayer God Prays in Us (Lectio Divina)
What if the prayer you’ve been struggling to find words for was already being prayed before you knew how to ask? Julian of Norwich names a goodness that does not wait for the right words, the right posture, or even the right understanding of what is happening — it comes down to meet us in…
