-
To Simply Be: Evelyn Underhill and the Sabbath Beneath Our Striving (Lectio Divina)
Most of us spend our lives conjugating three verbs — to want, to have, and to do — until the wanting becomes its own kind of unrest. Evelyn Underhill named the verb beneath all of it: to be. This reflection sits with what it costs to stop, and what’s waiting for us in the…
-
A Joy That Forgets Itself: Teresa of Ávila and the Prayer We Cannot Earn (Lectio Divina)
What if the deepest prayer you’ve ever known was never something you did right? Teresa of Ávila insists that true contemplation cannot be summoned by discipline, memorized words, or sheer effort — it is a joy so total it makes the soul forget itself entirely. But if we cannot acquire this gift, what are…
-
The Room Becomes the Teacher: Abba Moses, Camping, and the Stillness We Cannot Escape (Lectio Divina)
Vacation is supposed to be rest. Instead, it became the most unsettling thing on the calendar — sleep in the wrong place, prayer at the wrong hour, the whole architecture of an ordinary week gone. Why does stillness feel so far away exactly when everyone else seems most at peace? An old desert father…
-
Stillness Recollecting Stillness: The Longing Beneath Our Longing (Lectio Divina)
Stillness cannot be forced, willed, or manufactured. It preexists everything we think, say, and do — and it remains long after all of it fades into memory. But this post doesn’t stop at stillness as ground. It asks something stranger and more beautiful: what if stillness is not waiting to be found, but waiting…
-
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…
-
An Excess of Presence: On Spiritual Darkness and the Gift of God’s Grace (Lectio Divina)
Some days God feels farther away than others. The fog of spiritual dryness settles in, and the mirror through which we see his reflection grows dark and unpolished. In this Lectio Divina reflection, Robert Van Valkenburgh draws on Pseudo-Dionysius’s Mystical Theology and the Mary and Martha passage from Luke’s Gospel to explore what we…
-
Stillness Upon The Altar Of Time: An Invitation To Contemplation (Lectio Divina)
In this lectio divina reflection, Robert Van Valkenburgh invites readers into the heart of contemplative practice — not as observers, but as participants in a shared communion with God. Drawing on Guigo II’s classic articulation of the four movements of lectio divina from The Ladder of Monks, this post moves through reading, meditation, prayer,…
-
God’s Soil: On Sabbath Rest and the Soul’s Emergence (Lectio Divina)
What does it mean to truly rest — not merely in sleep or idleness, but in the deep Sabbath stillness where the soul quietly emerges? Drawing on Mark Buchanan’s insight that all living things thrive only by an ample measure of stillness, this Lectio Divina traces the arc from body to mind to soul,…
-
The Daily Rendezvous With God: On Freedom, Longing, and The Gift Already Given (Lectio Divina)
What does it mean to receive a gift you were created with? This Lectio Divina reflection, drawn from James Finley’s meditation on our creation as the beloved, explores the freedom God gave us — not as distance, but as the space in which the gift of infinite union can be freely received. Moving through…
-
Lie Down, Be Still: The Gift of Sabbath Rest in Christ (Lectio Divina)
In this Lectio Divina reflection, Robert Van Valkenburgh begins with a friend’s confession that his life feels like a hamster on a wheel — spinning under the weight of obligations, responsibilities, and everyone else’s needs and agendas. From this honest moment of recognition, the post moves into a meditation on Sabbath not as idleness…