Meditating and Contemplating with Our Mouths as Well as Our Head

 Speaking Out Loud, the Lectio Divina and the Jesus Prayer

Contemplation

“The meditatio [the meditation part in Lectio Divina] is done not with one’s mind but with one’s mouth. When the psalmist tells us how he loves to meditate and finds it sweeter to his palate than honey from the honeycomb, is he talking about meditation merely as an intellectual exercise? I like to think he is also talking about the constant recitation of God’s law—so he meditates as much with his mouth as with his head.”—Anthony de Mello in Sadhana: A Way to God (Liguori, 1998).

Contemplation Jean Francois Portaels

De Mello also offers a unique way to practice the Benedictine Lectio divina. He suggests reading Scripture (lectio) until a word or phrase resonates with us, then stopping (meditatio) and repeatedly repeating the word with pauses. In this way, we pray not only with our minds but also with our bodies. When we feel saturated with the word, we stop and enter into prayer (oratio). He also suggests expanding the exercise to chanting, perhaps with others, and including long periods of silence.

De Mello adds an extra dimension to the Jesus Prayer by imagining Jesus with each word, saying his name with each breath, and ultimately hearing Jesus call us by name.

De Mello tells the story of a man’s deep guilt over barely missing his father’s death. My experience is that this often impels many people to seek spiritual direction. I am constantly amazed at how God works. God calls us back, even—and maybe especially—through those who have died. God calls us through the good and challenging times of our lives to connect with those who can guide us into spiritual practices that lead us back to God.

Contemplation Before Surgery Joe Wilder MD

De Mello calls us to live fully and intimately in the present moment, to become part of the grand mystery of God’s love for us and all creation. The present is where we meet God; it is also where spiritual practices such as Lectio divina and the Jesus prayer carry us.

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

How is Your Heart?

“How is your heart?”

“In many Muslim cultures, when you want to ask how others are doing, you ask in Arabic, ‘How is your haal?’ In reality, we ask, ‘How is your heart doing at this very moment, at this breath?’ Tell me you’re more than a machine checking items off your to-do list. Put your hand on my arm, look me in the eye, and connect with me for one second. Tell me something about your heart, and awaken mine.”—Omid Safi in On Being with Krista Tippett (9/16/2017).

Omid Safi, Director of Duke University Islamic Studies Center, once wrote a Thursday column for On Being. He is teaching us to be more intentional in our relationships, rather than simply making lists and completing tasks and assignments.

For example, my usual greeting when starting a conversation is, “How are you doing?” The word doing implies that I am interested in what you are doing, while I actually want to know how you are being—how we can stay connected in this relationship and learn to live together as humans being rather than as humans doing.

Now, I try to say, “How is your heart?” That introduction always draws us more quickly into the relationship we are seeking. Being implies that we live in the present moment, and it is in the present moment that we connect with each other and with God. Our experience of maintaining eye contact also grounds us in the present. If I visit someone who is ill, I also ask permission to hold their hand. Physical contact can also bring us to the present moment. 

We can also apply this understanding of our relationship with each other to our connection with God. Instead of starting our prayers with our to-do list for God and expecting God to give us one, can we open our prayers with “God, how is your heart? Show me your heart and open my heart to you.” 

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Celebrating 250th with Victories in the Revolutionary War Coming Through Unexpected Consequences

Celebrating 250th with Victories in the Revolutionary War Coming Through Unexpected Consequences

Guest Writers: Steve and Sally Harms

John Trumbull Surrender of Lord Cornwallis

Recent daily readings seem especially appropriate as we celebrate our nation’s 250th anniversary and thank God for the many blessings He has bestowed on our country. They remind us that some of our greatest victories have emerged from our greatest trials.

When we think about the American Revolution, we often reduce our success to inspiring rhetoric and heroic leadership. The reality was far more complex. Britain was the most powerful nation on earth, having emerged victorious from the Seven Years’ War only twelve years earlier. The American colonies had barely one-fifth the population of Britain, and only about 40 percent of the colonists actively supported independence. Roughly 20 percent remained loyal to the Crown, another 20 percent were enslaved and had little voice in the conflict, and many others simply hoped to stay out of it.

One often-overlooked factor in the American victory was biological. When Britain shifted its military campaign to the South, its troops encountered a formidable enemy they scarcely understood.

The organism, named 180 years after the Declaration of Independence, was Plasmodium falciparum and spread by the Anopheles mosquito. Arriving in the colonies through the transatlantic slave trade, malaria had long been endemic in parts of Africa, and many enslaved Africans possessed greater inherited resistance than Europeans or Native Americans. This tragic reality was one reason plantation owners relied so heavily on enslaved labor in the mosquito-infested tobacco fields. British soldiers, lacking prior exposure, suffered devastating illness in the southern swamps, with more than half of Cornwallis’s forces becoming incapacitated.

History reminds us that victories often come through unexpected means. (McNiel JR (2016) Smithsonian Mag)

Steve and Sally Harms

Joanna joannaseibert.com