After writing on Lectio Divina, I feel as if I hadn’t thoroughly said all there is to say. The phrase was everywhere I looked last week, which was odd as I encountered it for the fist time last Sunday. I was reading Addie Zierman’s memoir, When We Were on Fire, for one of my classes and it was there in print, staring up at me in the midst of words about her life. I then wrote the article concerning why we should re-read books and why it is so important to us to slow down and take in a text that we may otherwise miss the small elements.
Then, Sons and Daughters was in chapel last Thursday; the female lead singer said she wanted to do something with us that they do at their church and before their shows. She said, “It’s called Lectio Divina, or the art of sacred reading.” I looked up from checking email on my phone to stare at her. She continued, saying, “It’s important to stop and reflect,” and, over the next five minutes or so, she proceeded to read scripture and act out Lectio right there in chapel. She read a passage from Philippians 4, paused, read it again, and we sat in silence as she asked us to take a minute to mediate on it; she then asked everyone to read aloud it with her. It was a neat moment, when she acted on the importance of reflection and response before moving into the songs they had prepared to sing. As readers, the next question after encountering the idea of Lectio Divina is “Now what? What text/book/novel should I read?” I have found myself more and more drawn to texts filled with quotes that encourage me to see the beauty of words and stories in the middle of assigned readings for class. I don’t read many books that I choose for pleasure these days, but one that I have come across recently in a class has reminded me that novels and books hold a certain kind of weight that cannot be filled by Netflix binge-watching. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life is a book by Anne Lamott that details the struggle of writing well, and how to make the most of the time and ideas you have been given. There are also numerous quotes throughout her book that highlight reading as essential— something that lifts our spirits and revives us—such as: “For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.” I love this quote because it truly sums up what it means to engage fully in an author’s text and how good novels often parallel life. Something I have begun doing recently is to pick up a novel from my middle and/or high school years that affected me in some way. I take a pen and underline new sentences that have taken on a new meaning, and I read to remember the feeling of picking up the book for the first time. I appreciate the familiarity that makes it easier to let myself be caught up in the story, in the words. I think looking back on, and re-reading, those texts that were important to us once is helpful as we consider how Lectio Divina can help us to better reflect on what we read. *originally posted on leeclarion.com as part of my weekly literature column.
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By Hannah Cole, Literature Columnist Last week I wrote on setting a goal this semester of books to read, which can benefit us and prompt us to read more; we become better individuals for it. However, the other side of the conversation—the notion of fully investing in a text—is of equal importance. There is a phrase that I have come across recently that has kept me thinking about its implications constantly: Lectio Divina. It’s a Latin phrase that holds a piece of church history within it, prompting a reader to reconsider the way they approach a text. The notion behind Lectio Divina is rooted in an old monastic tradition where monks would choose a particular book of scripture and steep themselves in it for months on end. They would pour over the text, reading and rereading slowly and deliberately to get the most out of every passage and every word. It is something that at first glance seems strange and foreign—a practice that should stay inside the bounds of monastic life and come nowhere near our own. However, I think we need this. There is an ever-present question we face when we approach the vast world of literature and insurmountable accumulation of texts at a reader’s fingertips. What is the benefit of rereading a book when there is so much out there that I haven’t even encountered yet? This is where the idea of Lectio Divina comes in. Choosing to invest time in a particular novel forces us out of the hectic lives we lead, out of the mindset where we read solely to reach the end, to mark off another book on our list. We are so distracted by society and constantly pressured to go along with the constant flurry of activity and rapid change. We are conditioned to never stay in one place too long, never linger over something when we can easily be moving on to something else, something new and better. There is beauty in repetition, and I think we are afraid of it at times because we don’t know what to do with it. We feel that reading or encountering the same words over and over will cause them somehow to lose their meaning and fall by the wayside, empty. This just isn’t true. Lectio Divina introduces the idea of letting words surround you, to enter your thoughts as you read and to reside there. We ought to cherish the things we admire in books, holding on to them as we might hold on to the encouraging words of a friend, and seek to invest ourselves more fully in what we read. |
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