Dialogue 1: What is Lectio, Meditation, and Prayer?

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

You're listening to a podcast by the Center for Action and Contemplation. To learn more, visit cac.org.

James Finley (0:08)

Greetings, I'm Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates (0:11)

And I'm Kirsten Oates.

James Finley (0:12)

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Kirsten Oates (0:22)

Welcome, everyone, to season four of Turning to the Mystics, where we're turning to the 12th century mystic, Guigo II. And I'm here with Jim, and we're going to dialogue about Jim's first session on Guigo's book, The Ladder of Monks. So Jim, good to be with you.

I did just wanna start off by saying how moved I was by that first session. It was just beautiful. And how touching it is that this 12th century cloistered monk could speak so clearly and deeply to us today. It's true. My first question is around the way you describe Guigo's offering us distinct practical guidelines for prayer that can open up on a prayerful experience of God's presence. So I see myself as a beginner and I like having guidelines. That's really helpful. But what made your session very powerful was you role modeling how you pray using the method. And in your role modeling, you weren't concerned about the guidelines and you weren't pointing out to us, I did this and then I did that.

You weren't kind of focused on that side of it. You are immediate with God within the rhythm of the guidelines. So when you're a beginner, how do you balance learning the guidelines with this learning to be with God?

Does that make sense, Jim?

James Finley (2:08)

It does, yes it does.

And you can see this kind of, all these mystics really, their writings are really intended to be read as spiritual direction.

And so when we read them in the same attitudinal stance in which they wrote them, we're reading it and listening to it as spiritual direction. And so what we're really doing at the very heart of it is the sincerity of our desire to deepen our experience of in response to God's presence in our life. We know by faith that God is present in our life. And so how do I go about deepening my experiential understanding of God's presence? I just don't know it in principle, but I'm actually kind of experiencing God. God's oneness with me. And so we bring that sincerity, that's the desire that makes it authentic. Merton says, with God, a little sincerity goes a long, long way. So we start out like, here I am, Lord. So then we're saying, we sit in a quiet place. We remind ourselves in faith that God's here all about me and within me, closer to me than I am to myself. And so the first step in deepening my experience of God's presence in my life is to listen to God personally speaking to me.

Because my desire for God is an echo of God's desire for me. So I take a text, preeminently it would be the scriptures, the Psalms or the Gospels, or it would be like Guigo or a mystic text. But when you read the text, you read it in a sense of faith that God is personally speaking to you in the words that you're reading, which was what makes that Lectio Divina, like divine reading. So whatever you read it in devotional sincerity, so the reading is a kind of a prayer.

And what you're really listening for here is not information, but rather you're listening for how as you slowly read it, your heart immediately recognizes the words that you're reading are beautiful.

So if we hear Jesus say, fear not, I'm with you always. And if I believe in faith, just as I sit there, the deathless presence of Jesus is telling me not to be afraid, because God's with me right in this moment and every moment of my life.

And so that's what it is, really. It's getting used to that attitudinal stance of being attentive in that way. Another example that I've used elsewhere is imagine two people who are in this very intimate relationship. And she has to go off for a long time overseas or something.

And they know they'll miss each other terribly. And so they write a love letter every day to each other. So the highlight of the day is opening each other's love letter, and they read it. Well, here she gets unexpectedly come home, but she doesn't tell him she's coming home. And so she's sitting outside of the house in her car down the street a little bit, and she sees him come out and get the mail out of the box, and she knows her love letter is there. And she's so excited to see him, and he doesn't know she's right across the street. And so he sits on the sofa and he opens it up and he reads it. And in his love for her, everything she says touches him. He's just moved by the beauty of her words, because the beauty of her words are expressing her love for him. And so he's practicing lexio, divina. And she says something that sets in motion an inner reverie, images in his mind of union and moments they were together, they're going to be together, how much they love each other. And in a way he starts interiorly talking to her, thinks he's going to be writing to her in his next love letter. He's saying it, and he's engaging in meditation. It's a reflective process back and forth with her. And then what emerges in him is the desire for union. See, all this stirs up in him, the desire to hold her, to be one with her, to look into her eyes for them to be one with each other, and that's his prayer.