bloggedy blog: the personal weblog of a music lover and aging punk wannabe

:: Monday, March 03, 2003 ::

My Lenten discipline: lectio divina
Maybe it's the Lenten season doing this to me, although I've never been much into Lent. (Too much giving up stuff -- too much mortification of the flesh.) Or maybe I, like Alan Creech, am growing nostalgic for the comfort and familiarity of catholicism. But more than that, I think it's that 17-plus years of happy-clappy charismatic Christianity is starting to wear a bit thin. I'm craving a connection with the ancient church. I'm craving that connection, knowing that I'm a part of a tradition, for better or for worse. So toward that end, I've decided to engage in an ancient spiritual discipline called lectio divina, a method of praying the Scriptures that is slow and contemplative. It is requiring me to be still, in hopes of hearing God's voice more clearly as He speaks through Scripture.

Yesterday morning, and again this morning, I focused on Psalm 1, and in particular the first two verses:

Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.
But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.

Yesterday morning, I focused on verse 2, particularly: on his law he meditates day and night. And then, it happened: that still small inner voice, referring me to another piece of Scripture: The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. I spent much of the day ruminating on these marvelous ideas -- the law of God, its power to convert the soul. The NIV says "reviving" the soul, but the notion of being continuously, inwardly converted by the law of God is more appealing than the thought of being revived (perhaps my rebellion against the evangelical ideas of the past 17-plus years is cropping up again, but I'm not in the mood for a "Holy Ghost Revival" of my soul today).

The idea of "conversion" as a process is foreign to many of us in American churchianity. We've been taught that conversion is an instantaneous event. But I'm thinking that the Psalms teach otherwise.

This morning, I again turned to those two Psalms -- 1 and 19 -- in hopes of a repeat performance from the still, small voice. Isn't that just like me? Do it again, God! That felt soooo good yesterday! Only this time, a little lower and to the right.

But the inner voice wasn't there. Or if it was, it was squelched by the press of life -- it is Monday, after all -- which seemed to pound insistently against the floodgates of my soul this morning, even as I was maintaining a stillness, a silence, a meditative, reflective stance of contemplation toward the Scriptures that are able to convert my soul. But perhaps part of this conversion is the silence of God. At least I was trying to be still and hear the voice of God. That is perhaps a step closer toward conversion.

:: Andrew 10:37 + ::
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