Episode 623
In this episode of the guided lectio divina podcast, we’re using Psalm 30:11-12.
To listen to the podcast, use the audio player below, or right click here to download the file.
I invite you to visit the Sacred Pilgrim Facebook page where you can share your word or phrase and what came up for you during your prayer time.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 8:30 — 9.7MB)
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Although the recording states the reading is from Colossians 5, it is actually from Colossians 3. Apologies for the typos all around, and many thanks to active listeners who caught the error right away!
Episode 622
In this episode of the guided lectio divina podcast, we’re using Colossians 3:15, 17.
To listen to the podcast, use the audio player below, or right click here to download the file.
I invite you to visit the Sacred Pilgrim Facebook page where you can share your word or phrase and what came up for you during your prayer time.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 9:13 — 10.5MB)
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Episode 621
In this episode of the guided lectio divina podcast, we’re interrupting our series with Emily Dickinson to begin a new series on Giving Thanks in preparation for the upcoming holiday. Today we’re using 1 Chronicles 16:34-35.
To listen to the podcast, use the audio player below, or right click here to download the file.
I invite you to visit the Sacred Pilgrim Facebook page where you can share your word or phrase and what came up for you during your prayer time.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 8:40 — 9.9MB)
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The Experience
I walked a new labyrinth on Saturday.
It was cold and windy, and soon it would be raining. I had come to the Labyrinth Walk Meetup directly from a Saturday morning centering prayer group, which incorporates a short lectio divina practice, where I had been chewing on Nan Merrill‘s twist on Psalm 46:10-11:
Be still and know that I am Love. I am exalted among the nations. I am exalted in the earth! The One who knows all hearts is with us; The Beloved is our refuge and our strength.
In preparation for the walk, I journaled about God as love and recalled how I have been invited this year to remain in God’s love. I set my intention of continuing to be present in the love of God and to be attentive to God as the Beloved without the need for words or the expectation for some grand experience. I gently rang the singing bowl to call attention to this threshold, this thin space, and I stepped into the labyrinth.
I walked the path laid out before me, holding my intention as lightly as I could, and gradually I began to notice––as I walked and paused and breathed and looked––that running through my mind was the hymn “O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus,” one of my favorites but one that I hadn’t thought about in a long time. Over and over as I walked, I heard my favorite lines:
…Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free…
Underneath me, all around me
Is the current of your love
Leading onward…
Each step I took, each breath, each pause along the journey was fully enveloped in God’s love. I had to smile, as I braced against the chilly wind, at the way God continually shows up to me––sometimes in surprising ways, and sometimes exactly as I hoped and prayed. Such a simple intentional walk brought such a beautiful and full experience of who God is.
I came to the end of the labyrinth, there on the edge of the world, breathed deeply, and rang the singing bowl again. This time, stepping across the threshold, I brought with me the current of God’s love leading me onward and the prayer that it might infuse and inform the way I choose to interact with the world as I re-entered it. I brought with me a renewed intention to remain in God’s love.
The Practice
Watch and listen to the video below and simply meditate on God’s love. You may want to replay the video a couple of times to allow yourself time to sink into the experience and notice what arises in you. As you play the video, you may want to try walking a finger labyrinth or coloring a mandala to help you focus your attention and energy. Be patient with yourself. Receive whatever comes up as a gift and hold it lightly before God.
You might also like to listen to this episode of the Daily Lectio Divina podcast.
The Response
And now, fellow pilgrims, I invite you to share about your experience in the comments below.
What came up for you?
What was it like to open yourself up to receive and experience God’s love?
Where might God’s love be leading you?
May we all walk in love today. Blessings on the journey, friends!
Episode 620
In this episode of the guided lectio divina podcast, we’re continuing our series on Life, Eternity, and Hope using selections from the reclusive American poet Emily Dickinson. Today we’re reading “How happy is the little stone.”
How happy is the little stone
That rambles in the road alone,
And doesn’t care about careers,
And exigencies never fears;
Whose coat of elemental brown
A passing universe put on;
And independent as the sun,
Associates or glows alone,
Fulfilling absolute decree
In casual simplicity.
To listen to the podcast, use the audio player below, or right click here to download the file.
I invite you to visit the Sacred Pilgrim Facebook page where you can share your word or phrase and what came up for you during your prayer time.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 9:05 — 10.4MB)
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Episode 619
In this episode of the guided lectio divina podcast, we’re continuing our series on Life, Eternity, and Hope using selections from the reclusive American poet Emily Dickinson. Today we’re reading “There is a solitude of space.”
There is a solitude of space,
A solitude of sea,
A solitude of death, but these
Society shall be,
Compared with that profounder site,
That polar privacy,
A Soul admitted to Itself:
Finite Infinity.
To listen to the podcast, use the audio player below, or right click here to download the file.
I invite you to visit the Sacred Pilgrim Facebook page where you can share your word or phrase and what came up for you during your prayer time.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 8:55 — 10.2MB)
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Episode 618
In this episode of the guided lectio divina podcast, we’re continuing our series on Life, Eternity, and Hope using selections from the reclusive American poet Emily Dickinson. Today we’re reading “If I can stop one heart from breaking.”
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
To listen to the podcast, use the audio player below, or right click here to download the file.
I invite you to visit the Sacred Pilgrim Facebook page where you can share your word or phrase and what came up for you during your prayer time.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 8:50 — 10.1MB)
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Episode 617
In this episode of the guided lectio divina podcast, we’re continuing our series on Life, Eternity, and Hope using selections from the reclusive American poet Emily Dickinson. Today we’re reading “To tell the beauty would decrease.”
To tell the beauty would decrease,
To state the Spell demean,
There is a syllableless sea
Of which it is the sign.
My will endeavours for its word
And fails, but entertains
A rapture as of legacies––
Of introspective mines.
To listen to the podcast, use the audio player below, or right click here to download the file.
I invite you to visit the Sacred Pilgrim Facebook page where you can share your word or phrase and what came up for you during your prayer time.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 9:02 — 10.3MB)
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Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing right now, pause. Take a moment to collect your attention. Settle into a space of inner quiet.
Now, look at the photo below. Keep looking.
Where is your eye drawn to first? Where would you place yourself in the photo? Invite God to meet you wherever you are in the photo. What stirs within you as you gaze? Notice any emotions, memories, or associations rising.
Sit for a moment with whatever comes up––without judgment or critique. Breathe. Rest.
Take some time to journal as you reflect on your experience. Share in the comments below.
Seeing and Being Seen
I took the photo above on a recent visit to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art here in Kansas City where a friend of mine hosts an occasional guided visio divina experience. On this particular night, I wandered around the museum longer than usual, wondering what would capture my gaze and trying to stay open and attentive. I entered one room and then another and another until I saw it, the photo above, there at the end of a long hallway, staring me down.
I felt uncomfortable and self-conscious as I walked down the hallway, closer and closer to the image. I noticed my discomfort and realized with reluctance that this was my image for the evening, so I pulled a stool up to the wall, sat down across from the photo, and opened my journal to sketch what I saw, per the instructions of the guided spiritual practice.
Now, I’m no artist, not even by elementary school standards, but I dutifully drew and drew, filling the page with my honest attempt to focus, notice, and capture every detail of what I saw. I reflected as I drew on the intensity and intimacy of the gaze in the photo, the unashamed revealing of the signs of age, and the unapologetic boldness of the photographer. I imagined my shape in the reflection of his large dark eyes and observed my feeling of exposure as I held his gaze, looked away, and looked again.
And as I drew, a man passed behind me in the hallway and paused to peek down with interest at my sketch. Reflexively, I hid the drawing against my chest as I looked up at him in horror, wondering how much he had seen in his brief glance and what criticism and judgment were flitting through his mind when he realized my utter lack of talent here surrounded by these monuments of artistic expression. He started at my abrupt response, apologized, and rushed on his way around the corner as I laughed and called after him that it was okay, really.
I laughed again to myself as I turned the page in my journal and began to reflect on this serendipitous interruption to my spiritual practice. I noted the overwhelming discomfort and exposure I felt at having someone, especially a stranger, see my poor performance in an activity I was attempting with genuine effort despite my certain failure. And I laughed at myself as I realized that here in the very moment I was reflecting seriously on the experience of seeing and being seen, revealing and being revealed, I was exposed as a poor artist by a stranger just as I was exposing my vulnerable, imperfect self before God. I took gladly the opportunity to poke gentle fun at myself and shake off the veil of the serious and studious contemplative to see a bit of my true self peeking out underneath.
I looked at Pablo Picasso’s face again, the unapologetic expression in his eyes, and saw in them the invitation to drop the veil a bit more often, to embrace the imperfections in myself, and to approach my spiritual practice with a bit more childlike spirit. It was an invitation to embrace the artless (both literally and figuratively) elements of myself. And I realized I was being invited to see myself as I really am and to allow myself to be seen just as I am, flaws and all, not only by God but also by those around me, even strangers at the museum. It may feel like uncomfortable exposure in the moment, but it is really just another layer peeling back to reveal a little more of who I am, of who have been created to be.
Questions to ponder:
What was your experience gazing at the photo?
What comes up for you as you imagine seeing and being seen?
How might God be inviting you to see yourself right now? To see others?
Episode 616
In this episode of the guided lectio divina podcast, we’re beginning our series on Life, Eternity, and Hope using selections from the reclusive American poet Emily Dickinson. Today we’re reading “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.”
Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
To listen to the podcast, use the audio player below, or right click here to download the file.
I invite you to visit the Sacred Pilgrim Facebook page where you can share your word or phrase and what came up for you during your prayer time.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 9:17 — 10.6MB)
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