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Listening for the God of This Moment: On Prayer, Presence, and Renewal (Lectio Divina)
Every morning, Robert Van Valkenburgh sits in the same chair, faces the same window, and prays to the same God. Same woods. Same birds. Same silence. And yet each morning is a different morning. Each morning he is a different person. And each morning, God’s face is not the same. This post moves outward…
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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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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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Did Not Our Hearts Burn: The Many Faces Of God (Lectio Divina)
Where does God meet us? Not only in the dramatic moments of Scripture — wrestling with Jacob at the ford of the Jabbok, speaking to Moses from a burning bush, leading Israel through the wilderness — but in the ordinary movements of our days. In this Lectio Divina reflection, Robert Van Valkenburgh draws on…
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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…
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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…
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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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The Whole That Is God: On Wholeness, Perception, and the Love That Holds the Universe Together (Lectio Divina)
Drawing on Ilia Delio’s vision of divine wholeness, this Lectio Divina explores the paradox at the heart of the contemplative life — that we are not separate from the Whole, but have forgotten this, and must remember what was never lost. A meditation on perception, the false self, and the slow, merciful work of…
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Standing Strong: Grace, Gratitude, and the Armor of God (Lectio Divina)
Drawing on the preface of The Cloud of Unknowing — a fourteenth-century anonymous English mystical text — this post explores the spiritual life as a daily practice of faith, hope, love, and gratitude in the face of subtle attack. Gratitude is not merely a feeling but an act of self-emptying love — and even…
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Silenced by Love: Finding Our True Identity in Christ (Lectio Divina)
We defend ourselves because we believe our identity can be injured by words. But the part of us that is wounded, offended, and exhausted is not the part of us where God abides. Drawing on the silence of Christ before His accusers and the contemplative wisdom of Father Malachy Napier, this post traces the…