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The Yielding Cup: Augustine and the God Who Forgets Our Forgetting (Lectio Divina)
We forget God many times a day, and no amount of resolve seems to change it. Augustine reads Psalm 23 and finds a cup that yields forgetfulness, which sounds like the very thing we are trying to avoid. This reflection sits with that strange paradox, and with the question of who is really doing…
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The Fire That Prepares Us: John of the Cross and the Dark Night of Divine Love (Lectio Divina)
What if the Love we keep putting off is already at work in us, long before we say yes? John of the Cross says the fire that transforms is the same fire that first prepares, and this reflection sits with a knock we cannot hear for the noise, and with how long mercy is…
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Listening to God: James Finley and the First Rung of Prayer (Lectio Divina)
We come to prayer with so much to say: our needs, our hopes, our hurts, our long lists. Without quite meaning to, we start talking before we have listened, and somewhere along the way we fall. James Finley names this quiet mistake as a missed rung on a ladder, the very first one. If…
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Before We Lift the Plow: Augustine and the Grace That Softens a Hard Heart (Lectio Divina)
What if the hardness in your heart is not something you were ever meant to break through alone? Augustine urges his hearers to plow the hard ground while they still can, and this reflection sits with the question of whose work that really is, and what we are being asked to bring to it.
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The Vineyard and the Vinegrower: Rabanus Maurus and the Gift We Mistake for Our Own (Lectio Divina)
Most of us tend our lives as if we owned them: the days, the work, even the prayers we offer. Rabanus Maurus describes each life as a vineyard let out to us to cultivate, and that one small phrase raises the question of who the vineyard really belongs to. This reflection sits with how…
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The Door at Our Lips: Gregory the Great and the Grace of Faithful Speech (Lectio Divina)
Is the safest mouth a closed one? Gregory the Great says no, and in saying so he unsettles the easy fix we reach for when our words do harm. The harder question is who gives us the discernment to know when to speak and when to stay silent.
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Faith Comes by Hearing: Thomas Merton and the Gift of Contemplation Within the Church (Lectio Divina)
What if Christ never shouts, and the pain that finally gets our attention was never the way He wanted to reach us? Thomas Merton says contemplation begins with faith, and faith with hearing, yet hearing is hard when we keep running from the very quiet that could hold us. What does it mean to…
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Pride and the Forgotten Giver: The Cloud of Unknowing and Allowing God to be God (Lectio Divina)
What if the sin that leads the way to ruin never announces itself as pride at all, but as independence, self-sufficiency, and the quiet conviction that everything we hold is ours? The Cloud of Unknowing warns that pride blasphemes God in the very gifts He gives, and leaves us asking what we have been…
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A Seasonable Silence: Cyril of Alexandria and the Mystery Meant Just for You (Lectio Divina)
What if the silence you have been called into was never something you chose, but something kept for you until its season? Cyril of Alexandria tells of a command to guard a mystery, and this reflection sits with how easily we reach for someone else’s calling, and with what we may be refusing when…
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Always Already Born: Meister Eckhart and The Word Still Being Born in You (Lectio Divina)
Before you were a whisper on His breath, the Word was already speaking you into being. But Eckhart insists on something stranger: that birth is not a thing that happened once, long ago, and is now finished. In this breath, this heartbeat, something is still being born. What would it mean to notice that…