BirdSalad: Lectio Divina

“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.”
~ e. e. cummings

A friend just suggested that perhaps I could use my writing or journaling as my own personal lectio divina tool, to help me find my place in the world. I had to look it up, having no idea what a lectio divina tool might be. The answer I found sounds appealing. I will try a commitment to write every day for the rest of the month, in my own small fashion participating in NaNoWriMo, since I don’t have enough time to try to write 50,000 words this month on top of graduate school and parenting work.

Lectio is reverential listening; listening both in a spirit of silence and of awe. We are listening for the still, small voice … that will speak to us personally - not loudly, but intimately. In lectio we read slowly, attentively, gently listening to hear a word or phrase that is the word for us this day.

Translating that to my writing means that I must enter a place of stillness in my writing, and be open to the words or messages that might come to me. I have often described my writing as an opening, almost a channeling of something outside of myself. When my best writing comes out, I don’t feel in control of it. Rather, I seek to ride the torrent of words that flows through me in the way that a sailor finds the sweet spot in the wind to push her sailboat to the maximum, finding a delicate balance between over-steering and losing the wind or riding so high that the wind flips the boat over.

Once we have found a word or a passage that speaks to us in a personal way, we must take it in and “ruminate” on it. We must take in the words - that is, memorize them - and while gently repeating them to ourselves, allow the words to interact with our thoughts, our hopes, our memories, our desires. This is the second step or stage in lectio divina - meditatio. Through meditatio we allow those words to touch us and affect us at our deepest levels.

I have fallen out of a habit of meditating, lately. I have been busy, thinking, creating, writing, reading, job searching, learning new ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) techniques, pondering what worked and what didn’t in my work with autistic children. I have been researching for projects, researching for job ideas, thinking hard about where my place is. Perhaps I need to spend more time in reflection and meditation, thinking about the still, small voice that speaks to me.

The third step in lectio divina is oratio - prayer: the offering of parts of ourselves that we have not previously believed wanted. In this we allow the words that we have taken in and on which we are pondering to touch and change our deepest selves. In this oratio, we allow our real selves to be touched and changed by the words.

Perhaps, in taking the time to write regularly, to think deeply about the words I write, and to allow myself to be touched and changed by those words, I will understand the path my life needs to take.