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Category: Lectio Divina

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The Art of Lectio Divina

This week I am offering my lectio divina online class by donation ($25 suggested) with daily emails and weekly guided meditations for 6 weeks to support you in this beautiful practice.  It is my way of offering resources to help you deepen into this ancient and profound contemplative practice. My Lectio Divina book is not included but is highly recommended as an adjunct to the class material. One of the things I love most about lectio is how it calls us to cultivate a contemplative gaze on the whole of life and so other sacred “texts” such as art, poetry, music, and

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New book on lectio divina coming in late May

From the Afterword: The Divine Presence is Everywhere in my newest book Lectio Divina–The Sacred Art: Transforming Words & Images Into Heart-Centered Prayer (click the link to pre-order from Amazon.com or order through your local bookseller): Always We Begin Again It is wise to hold all of these worthy goals with humility. Benedict describes his rule of life as a “little Rule for beginners,” and because we are human we will continue to stray from the path we most deeply long for. Life will intervene and throw us off track. We will need to bring ourselves back again and again to the practice.

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Are you listening?

Growing up in New York City, my favorite place was The Cloisters (a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art with art from medieval European monasteries). I had fallen in love with the aesthetic dimension of monastic tradition long before I understood what that way of life really meant. The art, architecture, music, and illuminated manuscripts all made me swoon.  It wasn’t until graduate school that I really did begin to understand and fall further in love.  Hildegard of Bingen was my entrypoint.  Always having had a love of art and spirituality, I wanted to know more about this incredible woman who

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Lectio Divina Ordering Update

Some of you have let me know that you are having trouble ordering my book Lectio Divina: Contemplative Awakening and Awareness from Amazon (they indicate a 3-5 week delay) and Barnes and Noble indicates it being out of stock.  I contacted Paulist Press and unfortunately they didn’t have any clear ideas about why this was happening, but I ordered a number of copies from them.  If online ordering isn’t working you can order directly from Paulist Press.  You can also order copies directly from me, now that I have enough on hand.  I have to charge the full price of

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Lectio Divina Unleashed: Part Four (Music)

To find the previous entries on lectio divina with scripture, poetry, and icons, just click on the “lectio divina” tab under the title. To the Trinity be praise! God is music, God is life that nurtures every creature in its kind. Our God is the song of the angel throng and the splendor of the secret ways hid from all humankind, But God our life is the life of all. -Hildegard of Bingen, Antiphon for the Trinity Hildegard believed that music was an essential part of her community’s formation. In fact, at the end of her life she was in

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Lectio Divina Unleashed: Part Three (Icons)

“For the invisible things of God since the creation of the world are made visible through images.”                      (John of Damascus, On Holy Images) The beautiful icon above is by iconographer Heather Williams Durka who lives in Olympia.  You can find her website here.  Heather offers icon workshops and has affordable reproductions of her wonderful images available for purchase.  She also has some great reflections on the role of icons in Orthodox tradition. There are many wonderful books available on praying with icons. The tradition of gazing upon icons as a window to God is an ancient one.  Lectio divina

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Lectio Divina Unleashed: Part Two (Poetry)

“People turn to poems for some kind of illumination, for revelations that help them to survive.” -Denise Levertov, “Poetry, Prophecy and Survival” Poetry is language illuminated.  When we read poetry we are reading the same words we use for prose, but because of the compactness of images and the poet’s way of pointing us deeper than what we expect to see, poetry has the potential to reveal the sacred to us in new ways.  Much of scripture is written in poetic form, making use of metaphor, rhythm, meter, sound, and image to help us grasp an awareness of God.  Praying

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