EXERCISE 18: The Practice – 7: Trust: an introduction to Lectio Divina
This Exercise in the first steps of your Quest consists in an act of Trust.
- Still yourself.
- Again, we will read a short text from the Good News. (Rom 8: 38-39)
- This time we won’t necessarily use our imagination. We will treat the words as if they had been written to us personally – a love-letter from God, as it were.
- Read the text slowly, several times. Read it aloud. What word or phrase strikes you? Just note it. Read the passage again, and ask yourself what might God want you to understand by the words that struck you.
- Read the text again, this time offer a word of gratitude at what God might be trying to say to you through these words.
- Now, just sit with God in silence – as you would sit with a friend you are very comfortable with. Just sit and appreciate God’s company. (Or if you don’t feel it, appreciate your own desire for God’s company. Part of a spiritual practice is really to “show up”: to be there, to be available, whatever happens or doesn’t happen!)
- In traditional Spiritual Disciplines, this type of Exercise is known as ‘Lectio Divina’ (Divine Reading) and its history goes back over 1500 years…
Note in your journal what happened during the Lectio Divina.