C
contemplative
Guest
Stop for a moment. Listen to all the voices around you. I don’t mean the voices that might be accidentally reaching your ear from nearby speakers. I mean the hundreds of meaningful communications being beamed to you from all parts of the world. You can’t hear them? Well, get out your little transistor radio and tune in. Given sufficient power and finesse in your radio, you can tune in to any message you want.
When we come to lectio empowered by faith, we tune in to the Word beamed to us by God, whether it is coming to us through the printed page before us, the voice of a reader, or the inner voice or imaginative page offered to us from memory. Since we don’t have to have a book in front of us to do lectio, the blind and sight-impaired can still do lectio, as many an old monk and nun will tell you. But our inner attitude—the listening we are—will make all the difference in our ability to hear what God is saying to us.
Certain dispositions are indispensable and enhance our reception making our listening able to receive the divine communication. These dispositions do not run down like the batteries in our transistor but rather grow in strength like a muscle if they are properly exercised, for like our muscle they are a gift from God, available for development with our cooperation. M. Basil Pennington from his book Lectio Divina
When we come to lectio empowered by faith, we tune in to the Word beamed to us by God, whether it is coming to us through the printed page before us, the voice of a reader, or the inner voice or imaginative page offered to us from memory. Since we don’t have to have a book in front of us to do lectio, the blind and sight-impaired can still do lectio, as many an old monk and nun will tell you. But our inner attitude—the listening we are—will make all the difference in our ability to hear what God is saying to us.
Certain dispositions are indispensable and enhance our reception making our listening able to receive the divine communication. These dispositions do not run down like the batteries in our transistor but rather grow in strength like a muscle if they are properly exercised, for like our muscle they are a gift from God, available for development with our cooperation. M. Basil Pennington from his book Lectio Divina