lectio divina

my time for reading is so sparse (not according to my husband, but to me), that i must prayerfully consider each book read, each word noted, each author i give my time to. for those authors enter into my life and pour themselves out as i pour myself out in lectio divina, or scriptural reading. reading can be, according to keating, a method of contemplation, and i employ it regularly. it is my greatest diversion and my greatest necessity. my words have long since failed me (my journals pecked with a few original poems, but largely full of nouwen, manning, foster, and now norris).

i am finding a longing for discovering the mysteries of the catholic church. iconography. liturgy. vespers. how to incorporate these many practices into my fragmented life.

i had been concerned with my seeming darkness, how the same haunting doubts linger, as have always lingered. but then i read this from no less than henri nouwen:

Today, my fifty-fourth birthday...as I reflect on my life today, I feel indeed like the least of God's holy people. Looking back, I realize that I am still struggling with the same problems I had on the day of my ordination twenty-nine years ago. Notwithstanding my many prayers, my periods of retreat, and the advice from many friends, counselors, and confessors, very little, if anything, has changed with regard to my search for inner unity and peace. I am still the restless, nervous, intense, distracted, impulse-driven person I was when I set out on this spiritual journey. At times this obvious lack of inner maturation depresses me as I enter into the "mature" years.

all is not lost. this is not the party line i have heard in church. it is not the standard i see being raised. this path of "downward mobility" as nouwen puts it, does not start, as i have been lead to believe with pristine saints (which i have NEVER been).

there is hope. for me and for you.

hallelujah.