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Becoming Worship: Silence, Consent, and the Sacred Dance (Lectio Divina)
At the heart of worship is not a transaction but a dance — a mutual pouring out of love between creator and creation, lover and beloved, in which the lover is at once beloved and the beloved is at once lover. This reflection traces the sacred logic of consent: the yes given over to…
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The Gift of Patience: Waiting In God’s Presence (Lectio Divina)
Most of us know what it feels like to wait without knowing what we are waiting for — or how long it will last. Sabbath names that experience and reframes it: not as absence, but as the very place where God’s love is most fully given. This reflection moves through the great biblical figures…
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The Soul’s Sole Longing: On Surrender, Resistance, and Returning to Love (Lectio Divina)
What happens when a soul that has turned toward God tries to turn away? Teresa of Ávila’s words open this reflection: the struggle is fierce, and in the end, struggle is of little avail against the Lord’s desire. Drawing on the Rahnerian insight that grace and freedom are equally gifts of God, and on…
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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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We Know Not Where But With And To Whom (Lectio Divina)
What does it mean to follow Christ when we do not know where he is leading us? Drawing on Thomas à Kempis’s invitation to follow the Way, the Truth, and the Life, this Lectio Divina sits with the paradox at the heart of Christian discipleship: we do not know where Christ takes us, but…
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More Than We Can Handle: On Grace, the Cross, and the God Who Never Turns Away (Lectio Divina)
We are often told that God will not give us more than we can handle — but this is only partly true. In fact, God often gives us exactly more than we can handle: tests we cannot pass, crosses we cannot bear, laws we cannot follow on our own strength. And this is the…
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The First Word Was Love: A Prayer of Consent to the Love That Is All in All (Lectio Divina)
Drawing on Teilhard de Chardin’s vision of Love as the agent of universal synthesis, this Lectio Divina meditates on Love as the first and last Word — before all things, within all things, and as all in all. A reflection on the cosmic and intimate dimensions of divine Love, culminating in a prayer of…
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What Seemed a Fragile Thread: On Grace, Awakening, and the Love That Will Not Let Us Go (Lectio Divina)
Drawing on Ruth Burrows’s vision of God as the consuming desire of the heart, this Lectio Divina reflects on the invisible thread of grace that connects us to God — a connection we cannot break, though we may forget, deny, betray, doubt, or flee from it. From Adam and Eve to the disciples in…
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What the Flesh Cannot Hold: On Felt Absence and the Love That Remains (Lectio Divina)
When God feels absent, it is not because God has withdrawn — it is because the finite flesh cannot always bear the weight of infinite love. Drawing on the cry of dereliction, the agony in Gethsemane, and the Pauline vision of a life hidden in God, this Lectio Divina explores why felt separation is…
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The School of Divine Love: Consent, Centering Prayer, and Mary’s Humble Yes (Lectio Divina)
Drawing on Thomas Keating’s vision of prayer as a school of divine love, this Lectio Divina explores consent as the heart of the contemplative life — tracing Mary’s humble yes through the practice of centering prayer and into our own daily surrender to God’s quiet, knocking presence.